Grab the tissues!
Ahead of Father's Day weekend, NBC Nightly News asked some of the dads who regularly report the news to pen a letter to their kids about coping with the magnitude of the last fifteen months.
Al Roker, Craig Melvin, Tom Llamas, Jose Diaz-Balart, and Peter Alexander all wrote touching notes to their children, but 'Granddude' Lester Holt went a different direction.
"My own boys are now grown men and while they occasionally take advice from me, this letter is for my two and three year old grandsons," Holt, 62, said in the tribute video, speaking of grandsons Henry and Samuel.
"By the time you are both able to read and understand this, the world around you will have changed in dozens of ways," Holt said. "My years as a news person have taught me these things I want to share with you.
"We are far more resilient than we know. We manage to find our way out of the dark. And while bad often writes the headlines of the day, good ultimately writes the full course of history. Love, Your Grandude"
Earlier this year, Holt revealed on "The Kelly Clarkson Show" that the decision on what to be called as a grandparent is tough, but 'Granddude' helped him still feel cool.
“I’d been working on ‘Granddude’ with him when my daughter-in-law was pregnant with her first baby,” Holt said, referencing his daughter-in-law Morgan, who is married to Holt's son, Stefan.. "She said, ‘Well, what do you guys want to be called?’ And I said, ‘I think I want to be ‘Granddude’ because ‘grand,’ it bows to the fact that I’m older. But ‘dude’ says, ‘I still got a little bit. I still got a little,’ you know?"
Holt, who will welcome his third grandchild this year, embraces his role.
“Everything they say about being a grandparent is true," Holt told Jimmy Fallon on "The Tonight Show" after his older grandson, Henry, was born. "You get to experience the love, the joy and then, at the appropriate time, you (gestures) ‘Here you go,’ and get a full night’s sleep … and not feel guilty about it.”
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