Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Patriarch's Rules of Engagement from Chick-fil-A | Stepping Up™ Video Series

I want to tell you a little bit about my father, Truett Cathy, the founder and CEO of Chic-fil-a.

Growing up with my dad was a lot of work. He got us fair engaged at an early age. It

really was a place that built a lot of our self-esteem. We knew we were doing something

that no other kid got to do. He was always working so when he would get home from the

restaurant business he would go straight outside to put up barbwire, to hoe the garden, do

bush hogging behind a tractor and we would be usually trailing behind him finding out

really we were learning a lesson about working hard. I always felt he was very engaged as

a dad and tremendous role model for me and I often learned things from him parenting

wise, for instance, when Bubba and I would fight in the back of the car oftentimes, I

remember him pulling off the side of the interstate and making us run to the next exit.

and it soon got to the point where all he had to do, if Bubba and I were fighting, he

just tap the brakes, and total peace. And mom is very much a part of dad's life, they've

been married sixty three years. She's helped him in the store. She has helped him sample

Chik-fil-a across the country, so Truett Cathy's work ethic was very strong, but he did have

a day that he took off when meant more to him then the business.

He learned that the concept of the Sabbath as it related to the need to have rest. And

that rest and that reflection he can take a nap, in just a flash of a moment, you just

be consistent, in acknowledging God in all your ways, even while you're selling chicken.

Then he'll direct your paths. He's been a Sunday School teacher, as you know for well

over sixty years teaching, young thirteen and fourteen year olds.

Often he'd have these boys that had made foolish choices and decisions would sit around the

circular table in our kitchen. They were teenagers and here I am six, seven, eight, nine years

old hearing these terrible stories about foolish choices and decisions. He never talked about

trying to change the world and grandiose time, grandiose words, ideas and so forth.

He built very personal and deep, meaningful relationships with single individuals. There

are a lot of employee's that, when I started as a teenager, having regular hours at our

Dwarf House that some of the employees would pull me to the side back in the kitchen and

say, let me tell you what your dad did for me.

And it's almost as, I know they had expressed thanks to him for money that he may have extended

to them or help with school books or tuition or maybe a tuxedo for prom and so forth. It's

almost as if they couldn't thank him enough and they felt like they had to thank me. What

an experience as a kid to hear people talk about your Dad in such a wonderful way.

Much of our concept of God is formed by the relationship that we have with our dad. And

that is why I had such an incredible vision of who my heavenly father was because I saw

those kinds of expressions of appreciation and tremendous gratitude from people to my

earthly father. And it was real easy for me to project that my heavenly father is incredible.

He's been my role model. It's wonderful to have a Dad like that because he is the same,

at business, at church and at home and I've been very blessed

to have a father like that. While he's been a great business leader, he's been a great

Sunday School teacher. I think his greatest legacy maybe that he was an incredible husband,

number one, and he was a tremendous father, because the way he lived this life, a life

of integrity. It indelibly impacted and infected my heart and my brothers and my sister Trudy's

and we hope to be an extension of his life.