A Wedding Toast for Faith and Will

Dad and the Bride

Good evening. For those of you who haven’t met me yet, I am Joe, the bride’s father. You are each here because you touched Will and/or Faith in a very special way, and I would like to welcome you and thank you for coming.

Not everyone who wanted to be here could make it tonight. Most of my extended family is stuck on the East Coast after testing positive for COVID. So, for those watching or reading this afterward—we miss you, love you, and look forward to a time when we can be with you again.

This has certainly been a heck of a couple of years, and although this is my second pandemic wedding, being together still doesn’t feel completely normal…

Preamble aside, if you are enjoying yourself, I’d like you to know that I have had nothing to do with tonight (well, almost nothing).

Really, I want to thank and acknowledge Faith’s Mom, Amy, her husband, Kent, and Faith, who have done all the hard work to plan this wedding. Thank you for making this a special night for everyone.

While I was preparing tonight's toast, someone in my office told me a funny joke that I really wish I could take credit for, but even if I didn't write it, I have decided to use it…

Father of the bride toasts and raising children have a lot in common, both are a lot more fun to conceive than to deliver!

As the father of the bride, my job is threefold:

1. Stand up here, and welcome the assembled friends and family.
2. Keep the agenda moving, and
3. Offer the bride and groom unsolicited advice.

#1, check. However, because #2 and #3 conflict with each other, and history tells me Faith won’t listen to my advice for at least a year—I’ll try to keep my pontificating to a minimum…

That said, I do have some stories to share, as well as advice for the newlyweds...

When a couple decides to start a family, they have many hopes for their children… Will they have all their fingers and toes…? Will they look like my partner or her parents? Later on, those hopes turn into: Will they ever move out of the house…?

However, chief among those hopes is that she will find a soul mate, a family-oriented person with a dialed-in moral compass and high character and integrity. Faith has found that in Will. To Alan and Vicky, thank you for choosing to raise a son with these qualities.

Life is a series of choices; some are important, and others are trivial. Besides choosing to become a parent and devote your life to another human, there isn’t a more important choice than selecting your life partner.

Our Boeke Clan

No matter how seemingly consequential (at the time), other choices pale by comparison…

For instance, Faith announced to her mother and me (at age 14 or 15) that she didn’t need to go to college and was simply going to go to Hollywood and become an “actor…” Hours and hours of family counseling later, Faith decided college was a better idea. However, she insisted on majoring in Theater… (I hope you can imagine how worried her father was that she’d be able to make a living afterward).

When she graduated last month, she received a Bachelor of Arts in History, with a minor in Geospatial Information Systems… CHOICES…

Every choice, the small and the large, seemingly consequential or the not-so-consequential, add up and lead you to the most important ones… choosing your soul mate isn’t only important, but a reflection of who you are.

I have benefited so from seeing Faith mature and grow into adulthood; her choices have made me a better person. Similarly, Will’s qualities have made Faith a better person, and I believe that Faith’s qualities will also make Will a better person. As a couple, they are more than the sum of their parts and even better still.

Saying their vows

I have seen how Will looks at Faith. He is kind to her, cares for her, and is passionately and deeply in love with her—and there is nothing more important to a father than knowing his child has that kind of love. For that, Will, I can’t help but love you too and welcome you into our family.

Faith once told me she and Will were “saving themselves for marriage.” Surprised, I was silent. She followed with, “We are good kids… would you rather it be any other way?” Well… not really… CHOICES.

Will is polite and respectful. Faith is polite (in public), respectful, and strong-willed. When she was young, she couldn’t be separated from her mom… I was her bottle-fetcher until her mom left town one night. That night, we became closer. Each choice led us here tonight.

Will & Faith, now that you have joined each other to begin a new chapter in your life, I do have some fatherly advice:

• In searching for meaningful purpose in life, don’t seek outside experiences—you will find it at home, where your family will be.
• Continue to communicate with one another.
• Continue to fight life’s battles together.
• Continue to love, and more importantly, grow your love and build your family.

Because nothing of any value or magnitude tops your family.

Now, if everyone will join me in raising your glasses…

To Faith and Will, Lieutenant and Mrs. Witherow… our collective wish is that you remember this day with these people as you build your wonderful life together.

Cheers!

The Vanishing Center: What The Right Answer Still Gets Right

The Right Answer: How We Can Unify Our Divided Nation
by John K. Delaney

My rating: 3½ of 5 stars

In December 2019, a friend gave me The Right Answer by John K. Delaney as a holiday gift. At the time, I was vaguely aware of Delaney as the first Democrat to enter the 2020 presidential race, but I hadn’t paid him much attention. The field was crowded with louder voices, flashier platforms, and sharper ideological lines. The gift felt like a gesture of quiet hopefulness—offering not just a book, but an invitation to consider what politics might look like if we chose construction over conflict. By the time I sat down to write this, Delaney’s campaign had long since ended—he suspended his bid in January 2020, before a single vote was cast. And yet, the book lingers—not as campaign literature, but as a thoughtful reflection on what our politics might be if we made more space for decency, data, and the discipline of governing.

I read The Right Answer that winter, noting passages that spoke to the civic impulses I still believe in: common ground, mutual responsibility, the hard but necessary work of listening. Delaney’s vision, laid out in earnest and unvarnished prose, wasn’t revolutionary—and that was precisely the point.

Delaney, a former congressman from Maryland and successful entrepreneur, brought a rare combination of business acumen and policy pragmatism to the national stage. Before entering politics, he co-founded two publicly traded companies focused on healthcare finance and lending to underserved communities—ventures that reflected his interest in both innovation and equity. Elected to Congress in 2012, he represented Maryland’s 6th District for three terms, earning a reputation as a pro-business Democrat who valued bipartisanship and data-driven legislation. His 2020 presidential bid was an extension of that philosophy: a campaign rooted in optimism, civility, and practical solutions—what he called “facts over fury.” He stood, in many ways, as the last echo of a brand of politics that once thrived in both parties but now seems dangerously close to extinction.

None of Delaney’s campaign was designed to set Twitter ablaze. All of it was grounded in the belief that Americans still wanted their government to function.

But The Right Answer arrived—and was largely ignored—at a time when the political center was already disintegrating. In the 2020 Democratic primaries, Delaney's moderation felt out of sync with a party energized by sweeping structural reforms and ideological purity. His voice was steady, not soaring; his appeal was to voters’ practical instincts, not their tribal loyalties.

Looking back, it’s clear Delaney wasn’t just running for office—he was submitting a kind of civic preservation report. His book reads like a blueprint for a governing philosophy built on what used to be bedrock: compromise, incremental progress, mutual respect. It now feels like a dispatch from a version of American politics we are dangerously close to forgetting altogether.

The erosion of the political center isn’t just about polls or party labels—it’s a slow unthreading of the civic fabric. We trade in the deliberative processes of governance for the dopamine hits of outrage. What once lived in Rotary halls and town meetings now festers in comment threads and curated feeds. The incentives are all wrong: media algorithms reward extremity, primary systems punish moderation, and fundraising emails raise more when they vilify than when they unify.

This isn't a plea for false balance or nostalgic centrism—but a recognition that without a stable center, democracy cannot hold. The center is where the work gets done: where laws are negotiated, budgets are passed, and citizens feel heard rather than herded. It’s where humility still has a seat at the table, and where policy is shaped not by purity tests but by lived experience. When we lose that space, we don’t just lose consensus—we lose the conditions necessary for pluralism to survive.

And so The Right Answer stays with me—not as a relic of a failed campaign, but as a reminder of what we still risk losing: the belief that governance is possible without vilification, that policy can be more than theater, that democracy is slow, communal, and—if we’re lucky—boring. But if the center fades at the top, it still flickers below. It’s in church basements, PTA meetings, Rotary clubs, volunteer fire departments, and union halls—places where Americans still come together not as partisans, but as neighbors.

Reviving the center doesn’t begin in think tanks or TV studios—it begins with regular people doing regular things with civic intent. Democrats and Republicans alike can help breathe life into the center by simply showing up: for school board elections, for community listening sessions, for city council public comment. We ask harder questions of our political leaders—about real solutions, not slogans—and support candidates who are willing to risk a primary loss to preserve their integrity. We reward bridge-building over brand-building and remember that pluralism isn’t a liability—it’s the heart of the American promise. The work ahead is ours. Civic strength doesn’t trickle down from elite circles; it bubbles up from participation, trust, and collective effort. The center doesn’t have to be mushy; it can be muscular—rooted in values, powered by engagement, and carried forward by people who understand that compromise is not capitulation, but courage.

I don’t know if John Delaney would have made a great president. But I do know he wrote a book full of humility and resolve, and I’m grateful someone thought to give it to me. Like reading real history or sorting laundry by hand, the work of democracy is quiet, deliberate, and unfashionable. But it’s still worth doing.

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