I loved my father with all my heart.
He always took me with him when I was a kid. Wherever he would go I would be right there beside him. He used to take me to work with him when he worked an extra job on the weekends. He used to do the books for this furniture store in middle of Bed-Stuy in the sixties which was a real rough place back in the day. We used to get out of the subway and walk past burned out buildings that made the landscape look like Dresden during World War 2. He taught me that if you walked confidently and looked people in the eye and always treated people with respect, you would be OK.
He met my mom when they were both working for the Irving Trust Bank on Wall St. She was the naive first generation Italian girl in the cable department and he was the handsome personable Irishman who was quick with a joke or a kind word. He used to tease her and ask when she was going to cook him a nice Italian dinner. She finally invited him over one night. They ate dinner together every night for the rest of their lives.
He was an Irishman surrounded by Italians. He liked to go to the bar on a Friday night with his buddies and tell stories and hoist a few. But he was a family man through and through. He loved his family more than anything. But he was also partial to the Mets and his Reingold Beer. Everynight in the summer he would put the game on the radio or TV and pop a can of Reingold. Well a few cans of Reingold. You know what you have to do as a kid. You have to go against your old man. So I became a Yankee fan. He didn't care, he made sure to take me to see the Yankees in the Old Yankee Stadium. I got to see Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and the 1961 team.
He would spend his vacation with me. When I went to Boy Scout camp for two weeks, he used up part of his vacation to help out. Whenever I was interested in something he taught me about it or showed me how to find out about it by looking it up long before we had such a thing as the internet.
He was very active in the church and the Knights of Columbus. He was always tabbed to be the treasurer or some other thankless job. He was always about doing the work and not about getting the credit. To this day I meet people who come up to me and tell me how he helped them with some problem in their life. Immigration or taxes or just a letter they needed to compose for their kids to go to college. People still remember him vividly and he will have been gone for twenty one years this August 15th.
Most of what I know about being a man I learned from him. How to treat people. How to be a son. How to be a friend. How to be a dad. How to be a grand dad.
I miss him every day and think about him more than you can know. Tonight I am going to have a Reingold. I will even watch a little of a Met's game for him.
If your dad is alive, give him a kiss and thank him for what he has done you. If your dad has passed, say a prayer for him.
Happy Father's Day Daddio. I love you.
21 comments:
Oh, Trooper! This was so touching - I'm all misty over it. Thanks for sharing your dad with us. And thanks to your dad we have you - and an awful lot of your dad, I'm guessing.
Thanks Darcy.
I would love to hear a remembrance of everyone else's father if they would want to share it.
My dad?
He was a Marine who served in WWII on the U.S.S. Idaho. Grew up with my mom and dated her for a bit before she married someone else and had 3 kids. Sadly, my mom's first husband died young and guess who was there to step in? :) My dad didn't mess up his second chance, and they had four more kids to boot!
Father to seven children. Great provider, great listener...my favorite fishing partner and my mom's biggest fan.
Miss you, Dad.
I'm going to wager that your father had a keen devotion to Our Lady given his date of passing.
Here's my recollection of my dad.
It pains me to say it, but most of my memories of my dad (going back roughly to when I was 10 or 12),are fairly unpleasant. It isn't just me either; my siblings and their spouses mostly try and avoid him too. The biggest problem is that my mom is the most pleasant and easy to get along-with person on the planet, but they are kind of a package deal--can't see one without the other.
My wife and I have three daughters and they are the best part of our lives. I try to be reminded that the mere fact of being their father is not enough to keep their affection forever. If I am a big enough jerk for long enough, they will write me off and well they should. This is why I try and be the best father I can for them--it is certainly the most important job I will ever have.
Okay, I don't want to end on such a sour note: My dad is no fun to be around, but he was a great dad to brag about when one-upping friends:
He was a highly decorated fighter pilot who flew 3 tours in Viet Nam in RF-4C's, drove a racy red Austin Healy and had a rifle-like tennis serve well into his 40's. As a kid, I was very proud to have such a cool dad.
My dad lied about his age and was in a B-17 shooting down planes over North Africa and Italy when he was 17. He sent money home to his mother every paycheck while in the army. She saved it for him, so he used it to wire her house with electricity when he came home.
He used the GI bill to go to college and Med School. He was President of the Tennessee Cancer Society, and pissed everyone off by making the board meetings no smoking. He later pissed everyone off again by inviting some Grand Ole Opry star to get involved. Sarah Cannon turned out to be a lovely lady and the two were friends till their death.
He loved my mom, he loved me and my sister. Sadly, he could not stand up to my mom for very long, but nobody is perfect.
My mom died first. It was very difficult for my father as she was a source for much of his confidence. For the two years he survived her, he pondered whether or not he would be reunited with her in heaven. It troubled him. He even had a vision concerning it.
I have forgotten the details, but he saw an open book and a voice telling him "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." After that, he still did not know the answer to his question, but he realized that the question was not nearly so important as it once was. He was working on a painting of the vision, I have the sketch.
I was beside him when he died. The last word he said was "I love you."
I went to wash the tears from my face after he died, and for a moment, for a brief moment, he came into the room with me. I could feel him there, his love, his acceptance, and a new joy. Then he was gone in a flash. He had somewhere wonderful to go, and he went there in an instant.
Dad, I love and miss you, but you know that.
Trey
Reminds me of my dad. The greatest guy in the world. Everyday I find myself thinking about him. I wish he were still here.
Sadly, I don't have very many positive memories of my father and a lot of negative ones. I've had mailmen I've liked more.
Aww.
Happy Father's Day to all of the fathers here at TY.
I was lucky enough to see the '61 Yankees, as I have written here before, and am thankful for that.
The old man, he was not good for anything around the house, but we lived in a small town and I had a good support system outside of my family.
I try to remember the good things my father gave me, a love of music, an ability to work all the live long day and a sense of humor. The rest can be put to rest with him.
Life goes on and I try to be a good father to my sons.
Both my parents pretty much ignored me. If I had a problem I had to deal with it myself or suffer.
I remember being in kindergarten and having to walk home across a field from the bus stop. Every day I'd have to make my way in utter fear as an unleashed German Shepard circled me, growling and barking like I was some sort of deer it was about to take down.
I remember, it must have been before kindergarten, being left behind on hikes through the Rocky Mountains because I wasn't walking fast enough.
I remember having to threaten to call an ambulance to get taken to the hospital.
I remember and don't think I'm going to forget!
I would love to hear a remembrance of everyone else's father if they would want to share it.
Just back home from having fun being a dad.
My father was born at home on a farm outside of Richland Center, WI in a house his father built. He was the 3rd in a family of 8. The family farmed, but couldn't make a go of it during the Depression. There was work to be had in the town though so the family got by. I would love to have known by grandfather, but he passed away when I was three.
My father had a Walton's like childhood, and very happy by all accounts. He and his 4 brothers were all too young for WW II, but came of age just in time for the Korean conflict. His oldest brother was drafted and served in combat. My dad was drafted after high school and spent two years driving tanks, guarding the German/Czech border. A younger brother went to Germany too.
After his service, he returned to his home town and worked odd jobs before starting an apprenticeship as a printer. He started dating my mother (5 years younger) while she was in still in high school, and they married a month after she graduated and turned 18.
They left their hometown for a better job for him, but didn't really go far. My father worked for the newspaper in Madison and my brother and I grew up in the nearby town of Middleton.
My dad never really cared much for his career as a printer: his real passion was scuba diving. He got into the sport '50's when it was still a new sport. He ran a dive shop out of our house growing up and gave lessons. Chances are if you were into diving in Madison in the '60s and '70s, you knew my father. I had a C-card before I had my drivers license. He was into underwater photography too and actually won some awards for it. This August I'm going back to Wisconsin and plan on spending some time sorting through a vast collection of negatives and prints, now lodged in my brothers' basement. I should blog about some scuba stories, because there are so many, and because I'm not getting any younger.
In retrospect, my dad should have left Wisconsin and moved us to Florida or California and pursued his passion. He even wondered that himself. But he didn't. Familial ties kept his autonomy in check.
He kept his job until the late '70s, when printing technology changed and he found himself without a job after a long and protracted strike at Madison Newspapers. His career as a printer came to an end, and he took a custodial job for the local school system.
In 1982, a brain tumor (pituitary adenoma) appeared. Surgery and radiation followed and his cancer went into remission. He lived another 13 years before the cancer came in a particularly wicked and pervasive way. He didn't survive the second onslaught and passed away in 1995 at the age of 62, dying at home.
Not a day passes that I don't think of him and the things he taught and gave me. I dearly loved him and still do. I only wish that he had lived long enough to see his two beautiful grandchildren whom I'm sure he would have adored. They each inherited so many of his traits, each in their own way. In that respect, I feel lucky that his life passed through me, rather than just passing over me, or even ending with me.
I won't spoil the happy memories with my unhappy ones from my childhood, but let me tell y'all about what was the best Father's Day gift I could have received today.
My family is camping up at the US Forest Service Campground that happens to be in our county. It's the best campground on the planet. Not anything to do there, except pitch your tent, park your camper, or pop your pop up. No swing sets, nothing for the kids except woods, a creek to play in, and bears to raid your campsite. My family's site has been raided twice in the past week.
Anyhow, camping up there is great, because about half of the (80+) sites are locals, who escape up there, where it's typically 10-15 degrees cooler. It's simply a giant party, and you don't have to worry about your kids. They ride bikes all day, stomp in the creek, try to catch crawdads, and pester each other.
I'm swamped at work, and haven't been able to camp, but I've hauled up firewood for the wife and kids a couple of times, and made the rounds, visiting everyone we know. One fellow is a grandpa, who plays baseball with the kids all day, everyday. He pitches a tennis ball just about the entire time he's up there. All the kids adore him. He pitches easy to the little ones, and hard to the big ones. Kids from 3 to 17 play alongside each other.
Anyhow, the grandpa came into the restaurant today. We were talking about how great it is up at the campground. All that chit chat. Here comes the Father's Day part.
He said to me, "Your son is a very polite young man. He's great with all the kids, even the little ones, and he's a pretty good poker player, too."
Man, I was busting at the seams. That's my boy. I don't think any parent tires of hearing someone else brag on their kids.
Not having much of an example to draw from of how to raise a kid, it's heartwarming to have someone pay my a compliment like that. I'm clueless as to how to raise my kids; most of the time, I'm making it up as I go (like everyone else if they were honest), so it's reassuring to hear something like that.
I didn't get to see my family at all today, so that was cool to receive a compliment like that. My little girl did call me on my cell phone and left me a Father's Day greeting. That was special, too, because I know that they had to drive out about 3 miles to catch a signal to make the call.
Happy Father's Day. Troop, I'll drink a toast to you and your dad right now. Cheers.
Thank you, Trooper, for kicking this off and for honoring your own dad.
Among other things, it's good to be reminded not to take for granted having honorable and loving parents.
My father was the quieter, handsome, self-effacing older son of a gentle father and a spirited, spitfire mother. His hotshot, blond, WASP-y looking 2-yrs-younger brother, who was on track to be a Jewish Kennedy (was a Liberal student leader at Harvard, which was like being SDS in the mid-'60s; was a protegé of the Roosevelts, offered a govt. internship that would have spared him serving, which he declined) called him "the gentle Puritan."
The great tragedy of my father's life was the loss of his brother. Alan, a pilot in the Naval Air Force, died in a test-piloting accident in Florida, trying to save the plane instead of bailing out when the landing gear jammed. My dad accompanied the body back from Florida to Chicago on the train, with a bottle of whiskey to numb and release him. He'd been married to my mother for a year at that time. They saw "Casablanca" the night before his brother's death, so he never wants to hear "As Time Goes By" again.
My father had always said the one thing he didn't want was to be the last one of his family left. And that happened. Both his parents died within little more than a decade of his brother, seven years or so apart, both at age 67.
My father went on to surround himself with a large family (see the last picture here and as if he'd paid in advance, he has been blessed in every way since. Knock on wood, spit three times, no tragedies, addictions, or even disabilities. Some near misses, most notably his own: at 67, right on schedule, he began to have a massive heart attack; fortunately he was on the surgical table being prepared for a bypass, the drastic blockage of 4 of his coronary arteries having been discovered almost by chance the day before.
Now he's 91!!!
Jewish families are often matriarchies (possibly because -- going way back -- when you live surrounded by somewhat hostile majorities, it's not safe for the males to be boldly assertive; those males get killed off). Ours was no exception. When we were kids my dad was self-denying and emotionally controlled, like many men of his generation, and to some extent he expected the same of us. Our mom was a volatile spitfire, like his mom. But we always knew that underneath he was the steadily loving one. And in the years since his bypass, that has come out in the wide open. (Bonus: Mom has grown into much more than just a diva, too.)
They still have each other. We still have them -- more than ever. So lucky.
Sorry to have linked twice to same post. That's annoying.
Titus lost one of his "kids" today. He just announced it over at Althouse.
Happy Father's Day to the rest of you.
My best friend of almost forty years (we met in sixth grade) and I were reflecting upon the fact that our teenage children are not as troubled as were were during those years.
We are continually amazed at how we have these well adjusted children. Why was it different for us?
It finally occurred to me that the difference is that our children have the gift and benefit of a steady male presence in a stable home.
I was eleven years old when my parents were in the midst of a heated divorce and my father was killed in an accident.
My friend's home life was in similar turmoil as a young teenager.
Our husbands are always there for the kids. My friend and I may bitch and moan about the perceived unfairness of division of house hold chores, etc., but at the end of the day, these husbands of ours have played a more important role than they can possibly know.
What great stories. I respect my dad more than any other man I've known (except possibly my husband). He is a great dad. Sorry I missed this on Father's Day.
Trooper I know I say this alot but you have a real talent. Your father sounds like he was a great man.
I was busy bein' a dad yesterday. Sorry to have missed this. But, you know, playing in the pool with The Flower and The Barbarienne.
I was also bein' a son. Took my dad--and The Boy--to the movies. My didn't get me started on my movie love, but he supported it for two or three decades.
Post a Comment