It is Sunday morning, and as I cook breakfast for my family, I slip on a stained white apron that hangs in the pantry.

There are other prettier aprons I could wear, one that my mother sewed for me, with deep, sensible pockets, and another from my sister, with a rooster on the front. But I usually prefer the old white one, because when I pull it over my head I am reminded of my father, who wore it for his job as a baker.

In my childhood home, the apron hung on a nail in a stairwell leading to the basement. You could always smell when dad was home from work, as the flour and lard that clung to the apron would waft up the stairs and into the kitchen whenever one of us kids came through the cellar door.

When I wear the apron today, I remember my father, a quiet simple man who died almost 25 years ago, at the age of 66.

With 12 children to support, my father was a very busy man: at work; in his backyard garden, where he grew vegetables to feed his family; or in his basement workshop, where he often retreated after supper. There he busied himself with projects that would help stretch the family's meager budget: making homemade soap from the bacon grease he got from work, mending metal screens ripped by a baseball, or reinforcing the handle of a frying pan.

It is also where he would give his 10 sons haircuts. One by one, they'd come to the workshop area of the basement, where they'd sit on a step stool under a naked light bulb that hung from the floor joist. Sometimes when he was finished, he'd take them by his side and show them how to repair whatever it was he was fixing.

Growing up, I never had much one-on-one time with my Dad, and maybe because of that, I have minimized in my mind his influence on my adult life. When I remember my childhood, I usually think of my mother as the one in charge, setting the rules, shaping my life.

But that is only part of the picture.

Last week at work, as I was leaving to go home, I walked by our department's conference room and saw that the light had been left on. Thinking I was the last person to leave the floor, I flipped the light off.

Waiting for the elevator, I saw my boss emerge from his office and head toward the conference room.

"I'm sorry, Robert," I said to him. "I didn't realize that you were still using the conference room. I have a habit of turning off lights that aren't being used."

"That's OK" he said as he flipped the light switch. "I like light-turner-offers."

With the approach of Father's Day, I have been thinking a lot about my dad. Certainly it was he who made me the "light-turner-offer" that I am.

But I have come to appreciate other areas in which he has influenced me, like gardening and baking as well as politics and current events.

To all men who guide and nurture, some in their own quiet ways like my dad, I wish you a Happy Father's Day.