Vacation Nightmare Brings Out Dad’s Best

Poor Tim Ferguson. Add his name to the lengthy roster of luckless fathers who, at the end of a long day’s work, threw up their hands and wailed, “What’s a guy have to do?”

All the poor Mission Viejo auto shop owner had in mind was a grander version of packing up the family car and taking the wife and kids on a day trip to the beach. Instead of the car, he booked a 10-day cruise. Instead of the beach, he opted for Hawaii. If he racked up a big credit-card debt to do it, so what? The main thing was that the family would be together.

Was it too much to ask that in exchange for Dad’s hard work and good intentions, everyone have a good time and that no one in the family set off a terrorism alert?

Alas, it was.

Ferguson ran afoul of a rule I try to assiduously follow: no more than three family members in any one place at any one time.

Instead, he and his wife and their four daughters, all in their 20s, booked passage on a Hawaiian cruise that ended with the youngest facing charges of making terrorist threats aboard the ship. The young woman, 20, apparently missed her boyfriend back home in California and, in an effort to shorten the cruise, allegedly left threatening handwritten notes in the ship’s restrooms.

Ferguson, 52, grew up in the era of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, while his kids have grown up in the era of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. Ferguson told reporters the other day that the idea behind the trip was one last hurrah before the girls were too old. Something they’d all remember.

Boy, will they.

Somewhere between land and sea, the warm fuzzies were lost on daughter Kelley, who apparently thought that 10 days without her boyfriend was a torture no one should have to bear. So, like the seventh-grader who calls in a bomb scare to escape a math exam, she allegedly set out to ruin the trip for 2,400 passengers and crew.

All she did was end up in jail, facing charges that could bring years in prison.

It shouldn’t come to that. It would be ridiculous to sentence her to prison. The punishment that cries out to be administered is community service in which the young woman learns some responsibility and about other people’s feelings.

Meanwhile, what about dear old Dad?

He was manful, to the end. Back at the shop this week, he dutifully, if glumly, talked to reporters about something no parent wants to discuss publicly -- their kids’ screw-ups.

Rather than chase people away, though, he took the heat. He acknowledged his daughter’s thoughtlessness and immaturity but said she didn’t deserve prison. He apologized on the family’s behalf for all the trouble.

He told reporters his daughter “made a very, very, very bad mistake and now she has to live with it and pay the consequences.” However Kelley may seem to authorities, he said, she is remorseful.

I suppose the story is about Kelley Ferguson and terrorist fears. It was no doubt unsettling when scores of federal, local and military authorities boarded the ship and questioned people about the notes, which included threats to “kill all Americanos abord.”

It’s Kelley’s face we’ll see on the news. But the face I see is that of Tim Ferguson, head of the household, king of the castle and master planner of a trip that he’d envisioned for a couple of years and that cost several thousand bucks.

He learned the age-old dad lesson: Sometimes, the kids will let you down. Even then, you still have to be a dad. You still have to speak up for the family and your wayward child.

In a weird way, I both feel for Ferguson and commend him.

Under immense pressure, he played the dad role to the hilt.

Just like Ozzie would have done.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.