In this holiday season where family and friends take on added importance, I would like to remember my father, Frank "Gunner" Gatski, who passed away just before Thanksgiving. After a long bout with heart disease, he died quietly Nov. 23, 2005.

Although we were not as close as many father and sons, and we did not see each other often in my adult life, my father had a sustaining influence on me, as well as my four brothers and two sisters.

The son of polish immigrants, my father grew up in a coal-mining town in Farmington, W.Va. during the 1920s and 30s. The tough coal-mining community life and his size contributed to his physical strength, which ultimately landed him in the world of pro football.

The "old man," as my brothers and I referred to him (with affection, of course and never within earshot), was a professional football player with the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions from the mid-1940s through the late 1950s. His mental and physical toughness -- and fierce competitive spirit -- were perfect for his vocation, and he thrived on it.

His intensity and focus on the task at hand resulted in an unflappable dedication to football. He bragged that he never missed a game or practice in high school, college or pro, and nobody ever disputed it.

He had the distinction of being the center for all those classic NFL Championship Cleveland Browns teams coached by Paul Brown. He still holds the record for offensive lineman playing in the most championship games. In 1985, his crowning accomplishment was induction into the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

I never knew him in his active football days; I was born two years after he retired. But as a child, I saw firsthand my dad's competitiveness and mental toughness that he carried into his every day life. In his colorful language and unsolicited off-the-cuff, bits of wisdom, he would talk about winners and losers -- and that winning was the only choice. Winners were "steak eaters, " he would say, losers were "cake eaters" and "knuckleheads."

I remember him exposing this philosophy over and over to the inmates at the reform school where he worked as athletic director during his post NFL years. "You gotta grow up and be somebody," he would say. Translation: work hard at being the best you can be; don't settle for mediocrity.

Looking back at my 46 years, I realize I carried my father's "be the best" attitude with me in whatever I did. In public school and college, I seldom missed classes. How you gonna be somebody if you don't make good grades? I remember receiving a couple of Cs in my first semester at college. I was crushed. But using that inherited resolve and single mindedness (for better or worse), I studied my butt off the second semester, learned how to better take the tests, and made the Dean's List.

And through my professional life, the old man's competitive drive to achieve has always been part of me. Whether I am better off for it, I don't know, but I don't think I have ever worked a minimum 40-hour week in any full-time job I have ever had.

Even at my first reporter job in 1983, I always made sure I got to the city council meeting 30 minutes before it started. I figured that if I got there before any other reporters, I could sniff out a story that could be turned into the next day's scoop.

When we started PAR in 1995, I remember being charged up to make the magazine succeed. I often told Publisher Carmel King that reaching the monthly revenue goal was merely a grade of C. In my mind, we had to get $10,000 more dollars than goal in order to get an A.

As I look back on his life that I knew, Frank Gatski's legacy was that he not only played football and excelled at it, but that he passed on to me that same drive to be the best. In reality, I may not have always been the best at everything I did, but I always tried my damnedest. And I still do. After all, I don't want to be no knucklehead?

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