By Mike Leno

  H. Lloyd Leno A.Mus.D.

My Father died of Pancreatic Cancer nine years ago this summer. And I miss him, especially around Father’s Day. Fortunately, some of the most important lessons I needed to learn, I learned from him. I remain grateful and comforted because of his legacy.

Dad may not have been perfect, but he wanted to be. The word “perfectionist” applied in certain areas of his life, especially music. And since music was his profession his perfectionism naturally spilled over into other areas including his family life. That was a good thing. Those who live under the illusion that life and the people close to them have to be perfect will find this earth a very difficult place in which to live. Fortunately, Dad was under no such illusion. But the drive to approach perfection as much as possible remains a very laudable aspiration. We want our surgeons, for example, to be perfectionists. And a musician who is not a perfectionist is simply not much of a musician. Dad’s form of perfectionism meant he never stopped being a teacher. He was patient and forgiving. But he never lost sight of the goal, the ideal toward which he was moving and toward which he thought his students and family members should be moving.