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Home › Dad of the Month

Eric Hunsaker

By Renee Roberson

Each month, iParenting.com spotlights a father who inspires and moves us, who embodies the qualities that we all admire in a person, a man and a father. Above all, the Dad of the Month is dedicated to his children. Rich or poor, famous or not, he shines as an example of what fathering is all about.

Eric Hunsaker from Huntersville, N.C., always wanted a large family, but he probably didn't anticipate that meaning he would be the only male in a family of six.

Hunsaker and his wife, Renee, are the busy parents of four daughters, and between tackling his duties as an application support manager at the corporate offices of a large bank, completing home improvement projects and attending his daughters' karate competitions, Hunsaker is the epitome of a 21st-century "hands-on" dad.

"I took Catholicism classes after I met Renee, who was already a member of that faith," Hunsaker says. "They asked us questions like how many kids we each wanted to have, and we had to write the answers down on a piece of paper and show them to each other afterward. I had written down that I wanted four or five children, and Renee wrote down that she wanted one."

Hunsaker says when he got married at the age of 25, he wanted to wait a few years before starting a family, but Renee was a few years older and wanted to go ahead and start trying.

"Kendall, 11, and Alesha, 8, were actually both fertility drug babies, and Kayleigh, 5, and Erica, 3, were au natural," Hunsaker says, joking.

A Hands-on Dad

Hunsaker is the kind of guy who'll pull out his toolbox and help a neighbor assemble a playset without a second thought or help host a neighborhood Super Bowl party. This past fall, he also started "A Girl and Her Dad Lawn Service" with his oldest daughter, Kendall.

Starting up the company started out as a fluke, Hunsaker says. Kendall was looking for ways to make extra money. For several months Hunsaker suffered from seasonal allergies and became very fatigued as a result of them. Kendall and her mom started taking care of the lawn duties, and he at first paid her $10 to mow the lawn.

A few of the neighbors noticed her mowing and asked her to mow their lawns as well. Currently, he and Kendall mow around three lawns a week, spending about six hours after school and on the weekends working. Half the money she makes goes directly into her savings account; the rest of the money goes back into the business to help her purchase gas for her mower and other landscaping tools.

When He's Not in the Yard

When he's not helping with "A Girl and Her Dad," his bank job keeps him busy, but he recently started shift work that offers him hours that differ from the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. day he used to work. Hunsaker works 12-hour shifts, which is sometimes hard because he's away from his family from about 5:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. with his commute.

Other times he works at night from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. from his home. When his shift is over, he helps gets the girls ready in the morning, drops them off at school and comes home and sleeps for a few hours. Then he's able to spend time with his daughters when the three oldest come home from school. After he's worked three or four 12-hour shifts, he's off work for three- or four-day stretches, which allows for a lot of family time.

Family Time

In their spare time the Hunsaker family likes to go camping in Georgia and the mountains of North Carolina. They enjoy watching movies together (Phantom of the Opera is a family favorite; even the youngest, Erica, knows the words to all the songs). They also love to watch football (Kendall is a huge Carolina Panthers fan, but the others cheer for the Pittsburgh Steelers).

"It's kind of ironic, really," Hunsaker says. "Kendall is the only one of the kids who was born in Pittsburgh, and the other girls were born in North Carolina, but she's a Panthers fan instead."

Above all, Hunsaker is a dad who believes in teaching his daughters the importance of family values. Each child is expected to do their share of chores and complete their homework right after school, and they treat all the neighborhood children like their own siblings.

The Hunsakers can always be found doing some sort of home improvement project as well and don't shy away from renovation challenges. With a little hard work, Hunsaker upgraded the family's kitchen to one of their dreams, and last year, he spent several months converting one of the bedrooms into a media room, complete with custom-built bookshelves and pink, purple and turquoise painted walls.

"Just today, we were all out there staining the fence together," Hunsaker says. "The girls were complaining, but I told them this was payback for all the time I've spent at their karate practice and events," he says, joking.



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