By the time Senator Dillard had climbed to the elevated pulpit, we had already sung the sad sustaining hymns and his two sisters had delivered their poignant eulogies that kissed their father goodbye and embraced the rest of us in a lifetime of their family's love and joy.

Naturally, there was not a dry eye in the packed church in Clarendon Hills. Men and women who decide the futures of twelve million others in Illinois sat bolt-upright, not daring to glance left or right because a torrent of tears would betray their common humanity at a humbling moment in one of their most cherished colleague's life.

It must be true that our fates are sealed in God's hands for a greater good, or it would be too cruel and too tragically unfair for the man who was about to address the assembly to have been denied, or for the moment "suspended" just four days earlier, the opportunity as the best prepared to serve as Governor of Illinois as a fulfillment of 32 years of hard and honest work. Even a President had recently coolly climbed over this man's career to enter the White House.

Because he would not pander to the mass of voters by promising not to do what others would inevitably and unwisely do, over his staunch objection and veto, with Illinois tax policy within the next eighteen months, Kirk Dillard would stand like Moses outside the gates of the political promised land, just 350 votes short of validation and victory.

He stood for a long moment, looking deathly ashen himself, trying to gather his thoughts, catch his breath and master his emotions. When he was ready, he softly kidded his younger sister for needing reading glasses, that he did not, to see her notes. The congregation exhaled their chained up silence and gratefully laughed.

The senator and son went on to define his father through his cars, his baseball, his teaching, and strong trees in the backyard. Kirk described Edward F. Dillard, Jr. as a truly nice man, a professional teacher, a coat-and-tie teacher, a man who missed only three days of work in forty years (for the birth of his two daughters and the swearing into office of his son), raised-in-the-Depression frugal, owned not one Edsel but two!, exploding Ford Pinto, pushbutton-transmission-with-direct-heater Corvair with the "Fred Flintstone" floor accessory, and even an assortment of Ramblers.

But, as a boy when Kirk made fun of someone else's bad car, his good father counseled a lifelong lesson, "Kirk, they don't drive those cars because they want to, it's because they can't afford any other."

The funeral prayer card is a baseball card which reads: "Bats right, Hits right, All-star Player at Wrigley Field from Lakeview High School, Pittsburgh (the old, proper spelling) Pirates Minor League 2nd Baseman, Army-Philippines started the First Interracial Baseball League& 2010 to Eternity (Traded) Field of Dreams, Star on the Angels Team."

Every night Kirk's father bragged about his students over dinner. For decades later, whether Kirk met them while campaigning door-to-door or at train stations, his dad's students bragged thumb to their own chest about having had his father as their teacher, "I had your dad & he was a blast!"

Senator Dillard talked about how his father passed along what is good in our lives to his children, students, and friends. When I wonder how Kirk keeps such well-balanced composure, he shared that he got his demeanor from his dad. And, for those who know what it feels like to have millions of daddy's dollars spent, without slander laws, to destroy a hard-earned independent reputation, Kirk's oblique and classy reference was gently, "My father didn't have a lot of money to help me in politics, but he had a heart of gold."

You simply cannot work for decades at such close quarters, under such intense pressure, with a person whom you so deeply respect, without intimately understanding the anguish and pain that Kirk felt as he faced his friends and family to open his heart, in the larger context of a political business that punishes vulnerability and sensitivity.

Kirk Dillard understands the "appropriate" and protocol. He understands structure that systematically includes all of us in a process that extrudes "out of the many, one". He embodies the principle that restoring trust in public institutions--not in individual politicians--begins with the personal conduct of those whom we elect. It is the difference between sacred rule of law and trashy cult-like celebrity.

If you wonder what the true impact of a good father is upon daughters and a son, just review Kirk's eulogy notes and look at his life.

When sisters Kimberly and Mina were done, and Kirk greeted friends and fellow mourners with Stephanie, his lovely and strong wife, at his side, his father would have said so proudly, "Well done". And the rest of us would agree, "Like father, like son".