Read time: about 10 minutes
AT A GLANCE
- This Sunday is Father's Day, so today's post is personal: three SWFL dads we have the privilege of working with, at three different chapters of fatherhood, each anchored to a home.
- It opens with a reflection on Martin's own father, Phillip Hawley, who cares for his wife through Alzheimer's, and on Kim's late father, the pastor and true friend who showed up when Phillip needed him most.
- Three Hawley sons in three callings: Jason the constant companion (banker and firefighter in training, dad to a granddaughter with a grandson on the way), Craig the instigating peacemaker (marine engineer at Turkey Point), and Stephen the steady rock (Assistant State Attorney in the Special Victims Unit).
- Three clients in real time: Bill, our pastor, adopting his foster daughter Zoe; Chris, buying a freshwater lake home so he can keep skiing with his kids; and Jay, a past client coming home to Fort Myers, closing Monday. If you are a SWFL dad this weekend, this is for you.
The Dad I Watch Now
My father is Phillip Hawley. I have loved and respected him my whole life. But there is a different kind of respect that comes with watching your dad take care of your mom through Alzheimer's.
He is an unbelievable caregiver. Patient when patience is the hardest thing in the world to find. Loving in the small, repeated, daily way that nobody sees and nobody applauds. Sparing no expense for her care. Doing the hard work of love in the season of life nobody trains you for.
I have written about market data, closing costs, hurricane shutters, and four hundred miles of canals on this blog. None of it is harder than what my father does every day.
Father's Day for me in 2026 is mostly about him.
And the Dad Who Showed Up When My Dad Needed Him
Kim's father was a pastor. He passed away when Kim was only nineteen. We did not get to know him for as long as we would have wanted.
But I want to tell you something about him. When my own father was going through one of the hardest seasons of his life, Kim's dad was the true friend who showed up. The kind of friend a man needs in a season when the easy friends quietly disappear. He pastored my dad through that season, and the friendship he gave changed who my dad became on the other side of it.
That is the other thing fathers do. They show up for other men's fathers. They build the friendships that hold their friends together when life gets impossibly hard.
Kim lost her dad too early. But the way her father showed up for my father is part of the inheritance we are both still living off of. He is in our family today even though he has been gone for many years.
We are carrying both of them with us this Sunday.
Three Sons, Three Callings
Kim and I have three sons. Each of them is his own man. Each of them is part of why Father's Day means anything at all.
Jason
Our oldest. The constant companion. Jason is the one who never loses touch. Family birthdays, family group texts, family lunches. He is the connective tissue of the next Hawley generation. He is a banker by trade and a firefighter in training, which tells you everything about a man who is willing to learn something completely new in mid-career because he wants to be more useful to his community.
Jason is married to Ashley. They live here in Fort Myers. They have given Kim and me a granddaughter, with a grandson on the way. Watching Jason become a dad to a daughter and getting ready to become a dad to a son is the closest I have come to understanding what my own father saw when he watched me have my boys.
Craig
Our middle. The instigating peacemaker. If you have met Craig you know what I mean. He picks at you. He cracks jokes. He turns your iPhone off when you set it down. He is the wind-up artist of the family. And in the entire span of his life he has never quarreled with anyone. He instigates, he laughs, and then he leaves the room with everyone smiling and no fight ever started.
Craig is a marine engineer. He works at the nuclear power plant at Turkey Point. The kid who used to crack jokes at the dinner table runs into work every day to help keep the Florida grid up. Steady, capable, deeply skilled, completely unflappable.
Stephen
Our youngest. The sensible, steady rock. Stephen knew when he was eight years old that he was going to be a lawyer. He never wavered. Not once. Not through middle school, not through high school, not through college, not through law school. He has spent that quiet certainty on something that matters.
Stephen is an Assistant State Attorney in the Special Victims Unit in Fort Myers. He prosecutes the cases that take the most out of you. He fights for justice for the downtrodden because he believes the people most easily forgotten deserve someone showing up for them every single day. That is who our youngest is. And he is married to Emily, whose steady presence beside him through the weight of the work he carries is one of the things Kim and I give thanks for every single day.
What All Three Have In Common
All three of our boys are men of faith. Their walk with Jesus is the center of who they are and the center of the families they are building. Kim and I prayed for them as boys, and we still pray for them as men. The single most important thing Kim and I have ever done as parents was point our boys toward Christ. Watching them stand on that foundation as grown men is the deepest joy of being a dad.
That is our Father's Day, this year and every year.
Three SWFL Dads at Three Chapters of Life
This is a real estate blog, so let me also tell you about three SWFL dads we are lucky to be working with right now. Each of them is in a different chapter of his life. Each of his chapters is anchored to a home.
Bill: The Foster Dad Building a Blended Family
Bill is my pastor. He is also a licensed Realtor who sends business our way (and yes, that is unusual; our pastor refers homeowners to us because he believes in the work we do, and we count it as one of the great honors of our profession). But Bill's Father's Day story is not about real estate. It is about a little girl named Zoe.
Bill and his wife are foster parents. Zoe is the foster daughter they have been raising alongside their own biological children. And right now, Bill is in the process of adopting her. Making her permanently and legally a Vecchio. Not just for the next chapter. For every chapter that follows.
That is what Father's Day looks like when you decide that being a dad to one more child is the calling on your life. Bill is showing the rest of us what intentional fatherhood looks like in 2026.
We are proud to call him our pastor, our friend, and (when the home he is helping a client with shows up in our office) our colleague.
Chris: The Dad Who Refuses to Stop Skiing With His Kids
Chris is a newer client. He homeschools his children. He is a man who takes his kids out on the water and goes water skiing with them, every chance he gets, all summer long. Chris is selling his current home and buying his next one specifically so the next home has freshwater lake access. So he can keep skiing with his kids.
Most home moves in 2026 are made for the schools, the commute, the size, the equity position. Chris's move is being made because he refuses to give up the afternoons he spends pulling his kids behind a boat on a South Fort Myers lake.
Fatherhood for Chris is a deliberate choice to engineer his life around being a present dad. The home is part of the strategy. Not the destination. The strategy.
We are honored to help him make the move.
Jay: The Dad Coming Home
Jay Curatti was our client years ago when he sold his home here in Southwest Florida and moved to Ohio. We thought, when we shook hands at that closing, that the chapter was closed.
It was not. On Monday, Jay closes on his retirement home back here in Fort Myers. He is coming home.
We have written before on this blog about how SWFL has always been a place people come to for the second half of their lives. Jay is one of those stories in real time. The dad whose kids are grown. The man who lived and worked in Ohio for a season. The husband who is now ready to settle into the rest of his life in the warm sun, on the water Kim and I both grew up near, in the same SWFL community that he chose for the first half too.
There are not many things in real estate that feel as good as a former client coming back. Welcome home, Jay. We are so glad to be a part of this chapter for you too.
The Thread Between Fatherhood and Homeownership
We have noticed something over the years.
Becoming a dad changes how you think about a house. The starter home was about you. The starter home was the place you lived. The next home, the one you buy after the first child or the second, becomes the place you are building a family in. The yard matters because the kids will play in it. The kitchen matters because the family will eat in it. The lanai matters because the grandkids will swim off it.
The forever home, the one Jay is closing on Monday, becomes something different again. It becomes the place the family comes back to. The place the holidays happen. The place the next generation will associate with grandma and grandpa.
A home is just walls and a roof until a dad turns it into something more. Bill is doing that with Zoe and his biological kids. Chris is doing that on a lake with his children behind a boat. Jay is doing that with the retirement home he is closing on this Monday in Fort Myers. My father is doing that every day in the home he and my mom have shared for so many years.
That is the thread.
To Every SWFL Dad This Sunday
To my father, Phillip Hawley: I love you, Dad. Thank you for showing all of us what it means to keep loving in the hardest season.
To Kim's father, who pastored our family from a place we cannot reach but whose friendship still echoes through our home: we miss you and we honor you this Sunday.
To Jason, Craig, and Stephen: Kim and I are the most blessed parents we know.
To Ashley: thank you for loving our oldest the way you do. We get to be in-laws to one of the people we love most because you said yes.
To Emily: thank you for standing beside our youngest as he carries the work he carries. The two of you are a gift to our family.
To Bill: we cannot wait to celebrate the day Zoe legally becomes a Vecchio. To Chris: we cannot wait to see you pulling your kids on that lake. To Jay: we cannot wait to shake your hand at the closing table on Monday.
And to every SWFL dad reading this, whether you are pulling toddlers out of a sandbox in Cape Coral, coaching a Little League team in Estero, putting in long hours so the grandkids can come to the lanai in Naples, or quietly caring for your wife through a season you never expected: we see you. The work you do as a dad is the work that holds this whole place up.
Happy Father's Day.
How We Can Help
Kim and I help SWFL families find the home that fits the chapter they are in. The starter home for the young family. The family home for the season the children are growing up. The forever home for the season the grandchildren come over.
If you are a SWFL dad thinking about the next chapter, give us a call. Sometimes the right home is the one that lets you keep being the kind of dad you want to be.
Kim and Martin Hawley are Realtors with The Hawley Team at Keller Williams Fort Myers and the Islands.
The Hawley Team at Keller Williams Fort Myers and the Islands
(239) 420-9027 | martin@teamhawley.com | teamhawley.com
Disclosures
References to clients Bill Vecchio, Chris Godfrey, and Jay Curatti are included with each client's implicit consent through ongoing professional relationship. Specific transaction details are kept general and do not identify properties or pricing.
Each Keller Williams office is independently owned and operated. Equal Housing Opportunity.
