As far as I know he's very fair; he shared work out between himself and others evenly, trusted them to do the work, and made sure everyone was doing their share. He always tried to shield his team from the managerial crap from above. He also never got involved in office politics, and is generally quiet and softly spoken (I differ a little from him there).

I think a lot of people resent managers because they seem to do less of the actual work than those they manage. My dad always works hard at whatever he does, and he expected the same of his team. Now he's retired, part of me really wants to try doing some projects with him. He has a real interest in building web apps that I'd love to collaborate on.