A Tribute To My Dad, Fred Freeland
My father passed away on 2/3/23, he was just gettin’ up there in age— I thought about never telling anyone my grief, ever, because I like to deal with stuff like that, death of a company, a relationship, etc in private. But mom encouraged me to set up an auto responder on my emails to take time (which I don’t know if I’ll do), so I wondered about how I might do that for social media/LinkedIn since I use them for tools to communicate about work as well. [Which is where I initially published this post.]
I can’t tell if it’s weird to make a post like this on LinkedIn for the business community, but I’d like to share that in his obituary we talk about how he worked 30+ years as an IBM engineer. Dad mostly showed his heart through work. “Acts of Service” was definitely his love language, and he did everything for me and mom.
When I had ATX KIT, the snacks company I launched at onset of pandemic, dad came down from Dallas to help with an order of 400+ kits. I started noticing in the moment, that it was unexpectedly one of the best memories I had with him— he was so surprised that his little girl was driving this big U-Haul with thousands of her favorite snacks. (He took that pic of me, below) We pulled it off together in no time, as a great team. If you’ve ever worked with your parents, even as a one-off project as I did, you know it can be life’s most special moments.
While ATX KIT is not operational anymore, I wanted to share pictures of our logo stickers on both of my parents’ fridge. I found it funny at first as a child, that you want your parents to put your (in my case, crappy) drawings on the fridge. But there I was, even as a 32 year old woman, wanting my parents to proudly display my company logo on their fridge.
That feeling will never leave me for the rest of my life as I go on to do other things, start other companies, and still want to make him proud. He couldn’t make the Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce gala to see me accept “Organization of the Year” for AVA, and I was upset because I knew we didn’t have that much time left together. Even better is I know he’s making sure to find the biggest fridge in heaven where he’ll have room for 10, 20, 30 more company logos.
As I share the same qualities of dad, I see that my entrepreneurship is in a big part because “Acts of Service” is how I like to show my love as well. It’s working hard, bias toward action to help people, and loving to build. People have told me that’s what they admire about me, and what they’re actually seeing is dad… As always, thanks for letting me share my heart and in one of the most heartbreaking but meaningful times. If lucky enough, everyone should give their dad a big, big hug!
