To a son, his father is larger than life — the man with all the answers, the hero. Mine certainly is.

But while writing a book about my father, I learned the truth: My hero was scared. 

Starting when I was young, my father felt alone and unsure of what to do, certain the world had turned against his son and that he was the only thing standing between his little boy and ruin.

The man I celebrated every Father’s Day felt completely alone.

He wasn’t. Last fall I wrote “Born Lucky: A Dedicated Father, a Grateful Son and My Journey with Autism” as a love letter to one man; what came back to me was an army.

“I’ve felt so lost for so long,” a father in Massachusetts wrote to me — he is his autistic son’s only friend, certain no one else on Earth was feeling the same.

Hundreds have written since, almost every letter carrying the same line my father once believed about himself: I thought I was the only one, alone, hopeless and helpless. 

This Father’s Day, there is an army of fathers who feel exactly that alone — and not one of them knows the others that are out there.

At 8 I was diagnosed with what we now know to be autism. The psychologist had told Dad there was “generally not much” a parent could do for a kid like me.

Dad decided that was the wrong answer and spent the next 15 years proving it.

He quit his job and began trying to adapt me to the world instead of adapting the world to me.

To be fair, I’m in my 40s now, and my wife says it’s still a work in progress.

Once the diagnosis was delivered, Dad told no one. Not my teachers. Not his friends. Not even me.

The secrecy wasn’t shame — it was the method. He refused to let a diagnosis become my identity, so he carried it himself. 

I only understood how alone he’d been when I sat down to write the book and asked my parents about years we had never discussed.

To me, it was all about me — the bullying, the emotional cruelty, the physical humiliation. 

He would sit in my room for hours listening to me cry and scream, trying to take my hurt and make it his own.

What I didn’t know is what happened when he left my room — late at night my mother would find him alone, in our dark living room crying, certain he was failing, certain no one else could possibly understand.

Dad didn’t know of the army of others, and frankly I didn’t, either.

A single father in Las Vegas wrote that his marriage didn’t survive, so he raised his son alone.

The boy is 22 now, studying cybersecurity. They’re best friends.

None of these men knew the others were out there — and that is the cruelty of it.

The holiday we built to honor fathers honors each of them in private: one family, one card, one dad.

So no man in that army ever sees that he belongs to it.

We mark the day with a tie, a grill, a “World’s Best Dad” mug. A book (shameless plug!) 

None of it is wrong. But all of it misses the point. Fatherhood isn’t the trophy on the shelf. It’s the man at one in the morning, sure he’s failing, who gets up and does it again the next day — and tells no one.

One year, around Father’s Day, I asked my grandmother, “if there is a Father’s Day, when it is Son’s Day.”

She laughed and said every day is Son’s Day. I had no earthly idea what she meant.

I do now: Every day my father showed up, the day was already mine.

But she was only half right — every one of those days was Father’s Day, too. 

Not one Sunday in June. Every day a father shows up — for me, and for the children of every father in that army. That’s Father’s Day!

Dad still says he isn’t a hero — like all heroes the attention makes him uncomfortable. 

He is no longer my only friend, but we are best friends.

We still talk every night to say we love each other.  I wrote “Born Lucky” so that in a small way Dad would know that I’ve come to understand, as much as I can, the sacrifices he made over all those years.

What he still can’t quite believe is the rest of it: He was never the only one.

For every father in that silent army, there is a child who grew up to understand exactly how lucky we are to have him — a second army, just as large, every one of us born lucky.

So this Father’s Day, I’m not only saying it to my dad. I’m saying it to the whole army that never knew it was one.

I love you, Dad — and Happy Father’s Day to every last one of you.

Leland Vittert is chief Washington anchor at NewsNation.