Detroit Jewish News “Bloomfield Hills Dad Publishes Debut Book Reflecting on Fatherhood”

Howard Emmer has “always had a story to share,” as he tells the Detroit Jewish News from Alaska a day before boarding an Alaskan cruise for a father-and-son trip with his son, Max Emmer.

Yet Howard Emmer, who works in residential remodeling, doesn’t call himself a professional writer. While he’s authored children’s poems, including a special poem for his 3-year-old grandson, Rocky, called “A Womb with a View,” writing a book was never truly on his radar.

Emmer, a Los Angeles native who now lives in Bloomfield Hills, spent a winter at his California residence where he wrote 300 pages over the course of four months. He changed, erased and deleted his work, coming back to the same story time and time again until it finally materialized.

The copy would become A Father’s Wish, a book for teens and up, published by Emmer on Amazon, that’s based off of his relationship with his father and his relationship with his son, Max.

Released last September, Emmer calls A Father’s Wish a fictionalized story where “90% of the book” is modeled after his own life experiences. Through the story, he hopes readers will remember their own childhoods with fondness and rejoice in the memories of their fathers.

When Teacher Becomes Student

Howard Emmer’s father, Mike Emmer, passed away at age 57. “I was very close to him,” Emmer explains. While the Emmer family grew up in near-poverty, Mike Emmer was always coaching football and baseball games and ensuring his three boys had clothes on their backs.

“He lived through his boys,” Emmer says. “I didn’t know how to be a parent [when my own son was born], but I saw how my parents treated myself and my brothers.”

Mike Emmer taught Howard Emmer important lessons in life: to treat everyone how you’d like to be treated, to show up 15 minutes early for appointments (or consider yourself late) and how to hustle, helping his son overcome conditions of poverty and become a successful businessman.

Yet, as he grew into parenthood, Howard Emmer, 68, realized that although his father’s life lessons were vital in his personal story, he didn’t have to teach his son, Max, every philosophy.

It’s an age-old conundrum Emmer likens to “the teacher becoming the student and the student becoming the teacher,” where he learned through Max how to be the best parent for his son.

A Book for All Parents and Children

While much of A Father’s Wish is shaped around Emmer’s life, he changes the plot to feature a father and son with a difficult relationship, and a father who doesn’t understand why it isn’t like the relationship he had with his own father (in real life, Howard and Max are two peas in a pod).

In the story, the father “desperately wishes to connect” with his son the same way. Yet, as he asks his late father for help, a miracle happens — and he learns to never give up on his child.

Even the cover of A Father’s Wish is modeled after a practice Howard and Max Emmer share: meditating by envisioning slowly blowing a balloon further and further away. Gracing the book is an illustration of a father and his son watching a white balloon float by, a nod to Max, now 36.

One day, Howard Emmer, who is involved with Jewish Federation of Detroit and American Friends of Magen David Adom, hopes to see his book hit the big screen in movie form.

“It’s really about parents and their children,” he explains of the intended audience, which goes beyond just father and son.

“It’s going to make you smile, make you laugh, make you cry,” he continues, “but it’s going to be tears of joy.”

By Ashley Zlatopolsky