For thirty years Detroit was his home,
Where he landscaped the yards, and his children were born.
He put food on the table, a good honest man,
Felt the summer sun and the cold winter's hand.
He never raised his voice, ne never complained,
Just planted the gardens through the sun and the rain.
With his three children running all around,
Was a man with his wife on American ground.
And she asks the question, what did my husband do?
Oh, what did my man do?

The seasons turned over, every year he would go,
To that government building in the ice and the snow.
He carried the papers, his story in a file,
He believed in a promise all the while.
He sat on a bench, a man with a face,
and waited his turn to again beg for grace
He held faith in a system he thought would be just,
Til the day it all crumbled and turned into dust.
And his children ask the question, what did our father do?
Oh, what did Daddy do?

They broke the promise that he could remain,
They put him in a van, then they put him on a plane.
The morning was cold, he had no time to say
A last word to the family who waited that day
Now his tools all lay silent in the shed,
All the work he gave, and all the words he said
to the neighbors who loved him, they just stand and stare
at the hole in his family and the empty chair.
And they all ask the question, what did he do?
Oh, what did this good man do?
Oh, what did this good man do?

end