Samuel Black talks to his wife Edda Fields-Black about his father who worked 16-hour days operating the boiler room of a high school to ensure that the pipes did not freeze. “Working all those hours, he didn’t have time to discuss things. You had to get it right that time and that time only.” A stern disciplinarian, his father only had to look at his sons and they knew what he was thinking.

Originally aired September 29, 2006, on NPR’s Morning Edition.