In this Fox News opinion piece, journalist Asra Nomani reflects on the death of her father, Zafar Nomani, who died in early August 2026 in Morgantown, West Virginia, aged 93. Writing over the Labor Day weekend, she recounts how a formative moment in 1962 – seeing his own university professor washing cars alongside students – instilled in him a lifelong belief in "the dignity of labor," a philosophy he passed on to his daughter and that shaped her understanding of him after his death.

Nomani describes growing up steeped in 1970s feminism, initially believing she gained her strength by resisting her father's patriarchal authority, but now recognising that his quiet, largely invisible labour and care made her independence possible. She recalls the family's early poverty as graduate students in Piscataway, New Jersey, and the two months she spent caring for him in hospital before his death. Central to the piece is her father's guiding philosophy of gratitude, "I get to" rather than "I have to," which he applied to work, study and family life, and which she says redefined her own understanding of labour and caregiving.