DIXON, CA (MPG) - This Sunday is Father’s Day and most will celebrate the contribution that fathers and father figures make for their children’s lives. In talking with three different dads years apart in age, the goal was the same: strengthening family bonds.

“Father’s Day means the world to me,” Donny Everhart, 54, said as he exhaled deeply and leaned against the door jamb of the newspaper office. “For two reasons: One, I had a father and two, I am a father.” Everhart, Dixon’s Citizen of the Year, takes Father’s Day seriously and sees it as an opportunity to share with his sons and pass on some of the respect he had for his own father.

They have a tradition of watching a bunch of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Audie Murphy movies or one of the many ‘oldies but goodies’ that he watched with his dad. His favorite is the Duke and over the years, they have watched the “Fighting Seabees,” “Kelly’s Heroes” “Big Jake,” and “Where Eagles Fly.”

“I watched a lot of the Duke with my Dad,” said the father of five who moved to a cozy chair to talk about fatherhood. “My older son will be coming over and this is a way I’m honoring the memory of my father and passing my values onto my sons.” It’s true those movies can help teach respect, liberty, loyalty, fairness and honor and more of the moral foundations all while munching on beef jerky or Slim Jims.

“The single most important attribute that I want my sons to get is integrity,” he said. “A person’s worth is only as good as his word.” Then he listed honesty and a deep sense of family noting with apparent appreciation that he got that when he was growing up. Everhart owns Dixon Financial and Insurance Services.

Jim Ward, 64, is a 20-year Dixonite who has seven children and 15 grandchildren and will probably be seen at the Barn and Pantry with a few members of the family for Father’s Day. He say it depends on what family or what child it is, because they have seven “very diverse personalities that are entirely different,” and it matters if they come with their children or not, he said.

All remember him with cards, visits, or calls--and at least half the grandchildren do, too.

“It makes me feel old,” he said with a laugh. “We always have someone coming over because six out of the seven are married with their own lives and they all work in very different fields and lead very busy lives.”

“It’s really bittersweet, though,” he said. “It’s because we celebrate Father’s Day but my father passed away in 1992 of a heart attack and I lost my mom in 2011. When you’ve lost your parents, then the day is also reflective.”

“It’s nice to get all the cards and attention but at the same time you reflect back on all the years that have gone,” the retired CHP Officer said. “I was very close to my dad even though my parents separated. Neither of them ever got remarried and he always lived in the area. He’d take us out every Sunday for about seven or eight years [into adulthood] and never missed picking us up.”

Ward easily remembers his dad taking him to movies that had just come out and definitely remembers many Father’s Day with his dad.

“Between 6 and 12-years-old, there was always a brand new Disney movie so we went to those together,” he said. “Even after that, it was a tradition to see every single James Bond movie from 1962 to 1992. I’d only go see those movies with him.” He’d like to do something repeatedly with his own children but they have grown up with truly diverse careers so what works for getting together for one doesn’t work for others.

“What a lot of people forget is that the 50s was a different time, a different everything, and then came the 60s and it was different again and people are still trying to attest what was right or wrong back in those times. But you can’t judge it by today’s standards because we’re living in different times,” he said.

That’s why he’s happy there is the Barn and Pantry in town and that’s where he plans to go because it is a bridge between the generations.

“When they had everything going on last summer pre-COVID, it was really great,” he said. “We had gone a couple of times to their live entertainments and my daughter really liked the décor, the entertainment and the atmosphere.”

Tyson Krous, 37, is a younger Dad who has two young children, Jameson and Faith. There is always action around their house with energetic little people and he hopes to spend Father’s Day like the other two dads interviewed: With family. He plans to go out fishing with them and if all goes well, they will be having fish tacos for dinner. According to Jameson, it isn’t Father’s Day; it will be “Happy Tacos Day.”