My father went in for some surgery on Monday and I’ve been thinking about him more than usual the past few days. I’m the executor of his will and we had the “talk” about where to find the box containing all that I’ll need to carry out that job when the time comes.

It’s ironic that Take Your Daughter (and now Sons) to Work Day also happened this week, because one of my favorite memories with my dad involves just that.

I had to be all of three year old when my dad let me tag along to his side job as a school bus driver. I can remember the details vividly, down to what I wore - my furry parka with the pine cones.

This being the 60s, none of the seats had seatbelts. When the kids boarded, I sat on a ledge behind my dad in the driver’s seat. I distinctly recall opening the first aid kit mounted on the wall and having all the contents fall to the floor.

At one point I got to sit in the front seat next to a student and pretend to be a first- or second-grader. Then, when all the kids were off, I ran up and down the center aisle as my dad drove the bus back to the garage (and lived to tell the tale).

My dad represents the end of an era. He was a high school graduate who married his high school sweetheart, bought a house in the town where he was born and raised a small family with a steady job as a shift supervisor at a steel warehouse. As his wages and benefits grew, he was able to sustain a solid middle-class lifestyle and drop the moonlighting.

The only time I ever saw my dad wear a suit to work was during union contract negotiations. The only times I ever saw him cry were when his own father died and when he found himself out of work 30 years after the steel company he started at closed.

It took some false starts, but my dad was able to find a successful post-retirement career with the County Parks Department. Because he already had a full pension from the first job, he was in this second one for the benefits. It’s a strategy that paid off handily for him. He loves to calculate how much he would now be paying for prescriptions if he didn’t have the great civil service perks from ten years on the public payroll.

For years, my parents have talked about selling their house and moving into a condo. But the security of a mortgage paid in full and neighbors they like always dissuades them. My mother gets a pension of her own from a lifetime spent working for a family-owned company a mile from the house.

My dad’s surgery went okay and I’ve been blessed by another gift at this stage of his life:

Because of his careful financial planning and luck at being born in the era that he was, my sister and I are not at all worried about having to help pay his medical bills, or of he and my mother outliving their money.

If my dad were a union worker today for Ford (F), General Motors (GM), United (UAUA) or American Airlines (AMR), or any of the other steady bulwarks of the last century, the story wouldn’t be the same.

I hope I can leave his legacy to my own daughter.

Do you think we'll be able to give our children the same gift? Weigh in on The Exchange.