My father was born on 30 September, 1916. He died on May 11, 1982. Just a couple of lost weeks before my graduation from the Naval Academy. He was a good man, although not, I think, a great one. There were times where I resented this in him. I don’t know why.
He was, for most of my life, the best friend I ever had.
He was born in a hardscrabble town just outside Richmond, settling in the still-wounded city with his long suffering mother and his complex, sometimes brutal immigrant father. She was a daughter of the Old South, born in 1875 and raised on stories of The Cause, and how things used to be. The man my father – and all the rest of us – called “Pop” had sailed to Africa as a merchant seaman by age 16. He fell somehow afoul of the law in France – I only found out later that the scrolls and daggers tattooed on his forearms were underworld signifiers for the men he’d swore to kill – and sought greener pastures in the New Country.
Pop was a big man, a giant for his time. His first job here in the US was as a strike breaker in Chicago, complete with the ax handle. Got a real job at last as a lineman on the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad, eventually working his way up to being an engineer. Stopped off one day in Richmond and convinced my grandmother that there was money in his exotic European accent and steadily paying job, while he was himself convinced that there had to be something behind all of that genteel refinement. She was a nurse, and had spent some time in San Francisco before coming home to Richmond. They both lived their lives together as poor as field mice but surrounded by her family and his occasional roguishness until the day she died of complications from diabetes. I was too young to much remember her.
Pop had ice blue eyes that had become clouded by age and perhaps remorse by the time I knew him. His physical strength had dissipated within his still enormous frame. A French last name – an alias it turned out – behind a Dutch accent. The smell of pipe smoke and old man, of things collected in the attic and withering there. My dad, who didn’t share much about his times growing up, admitted to me once as Pop lay dying – he was north of 90 when he went – that his old man had been pretty hard on his sons growing up. Beat them around quite regularly, and with force.
My dad never touched me, except out of love.
He’d dreamt of going to the Naval Academy, but while his grades were good, his family was too poor to have any influence with the local congressmen. So he spent a year at Randolph Macon College, doing agricultural and mechanical work to pay for it before the money ran out. That would have been around 1935 and the Depression still pressed down hard on everyone. His test scores were good, and he was restless. He joined the Army with a promised stint at the coastal artillery school at Fort Monroe, Virginia. It was a kind of prep school for West Point at that time. After a year he was accepted to the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York. Most of his classmates went on to Corregidor and Bataan.
I came along late in his life, he was 44 years old and had already left the sea behind him, while continuing to serve as a reservist. Gave me his own name out of pride, not knowing perhaps that it hadn’t traveled the years very well. He managed to instill in me a pride of family, and a pride in the land that somehow avoided all the negative influences that could go along with being a Son of Virginia.
He loved to laugh – used to nearly choke himself with laughter – but would never countenance a racial joke nor any kind of stereotype. He could not tolerate a bigot. Considering the time and place he grew up in, I often found myself wondering in later years how he had become so evolved. But like many things, he never spoke about it. When the old man would tell a sea story, one could lead on to another and that to the next, me having to place mental bookmarks where I’d ask questions afterward, but the things he would not speak about could fill volumes.
Despite his relatively advanced years as a first time father, and an incautious attitude towards health maintenance, he tried hard to be the dad that threw a football or baseball around, although he had no notion of soccer, considering it something of an imported enthusiasm. There were hard hikes through the Shenandoah mountains, fishing in aluminum boats on the Virginia lakes and rivers, camping trips on the Appalachian Trail and Boy Scouts. There was help with the math homework. There was always an answer for every question, and never a lie or a promise not kept. He knew the names of all the trees in the forest, and all the stars in the sky. Every once in a while he would pull his old sextant off the wall, go into the back yard and shoot the stars for lines of position affirming him home, or else check his watch against the sun and declare it officially noon in Virginia.
He was a deeply honorable man, and a thoughtful one. Something of a romantic, his favorite childhood book had been Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe.” There was never much in the way of disapproval, except when I would most richly deserve it: The old man could curse like a sailor when provoked, and thankfully that didn’t happen too often. When a softer touch was called for, perhaps I would say something mildly objectionable when we’d be riding back from some country jaunt in his Porsche 356 Speedster, his answer was a studied, neutral silence that would always set me back to thinking. Every little victory was celebrated enthusiastically, and there was always encouragement when things looked blue. Depression era deprivations had kept him a compact man throughout his life, but you could actually see him swell when he was proud. Sometimes it looked like he might burst, and what flowed out of him would flow into me, and then back again.
When you’re a teenager or very young man, all full of whipcord muscles and restlessness and certainties and everything in front of you, you’re in a far different place than a man on the other side 60, carrying too much of the world on his shoulders. At times I believed he had become soft, almost maudlin. He drank rather more than he probably ought to have occasionally, and when he did so he was not always at his best.
The last time we spoke I was 21, we argued about something and, knowing everything there was to know, I chided him when he expressed some class of doubt or weakness. A week later my mother and sisters arrived unexpectedly at the Naval Academy in tears to tell me that he had died suddenly of a heart attack while helping his older brother put a boat in the south fork of the Shenandoah River, where once we used to haul fat black bass out one after another on a good day, or watch the bobbers swirl in the gentle current, the pipe smoke wreathing us in the mist when the fish weren’t biting. I felt like something essential had been suddenly hollowed out of me, something I had always counted on for strength without even knowing it was there.
Sometimes it feels that way still.
Every time something went well for me early in my flying career, there would be an urge to call him on the phone and let him share in it, before remembering that there was no one on the other end any more, that there never would be. One of my first real regrets in life was that last conversation we had. Another was wishing I had had the chance to form an adult relationship with him, to get to understand him better as a man.
It’s taken a while, but I think I understand him now.
With apologies to the Bard, whom we both loved: He was a good man, take him for all in all. I doubt that I shall look upon his like again.
Great story Lex. Thanks for sharing.
Damn cloudy screen!
My father was in many ways different, though we were also very close and I lost him not many years younger than you did yours. You capture it all so well.
Our last interaction was a strategy game played as he sat in his hospital bed (he was not in imminent danger). He was a brilliant man and I beat him at the game for the very first time; he was unconscious minutes later. I was too young to recognize anything more than the crushing pain, but “hollowed out” is exactly the right description.
You have such a way with words.
Why do I bother blogging? Every topic of substance I wish to address, Lex addresses with a far defter hand.
XBradTC, I’ve always been told I could do anything, and that I should do it as best I can and I should endeavor to be the best at it.
Then I read this blog.
So I scratched blogging off my list. Can do it, could do it, can’t even hold a candle to the talent here.
I’m taking up synchronized lawn-mowing as my next endeavor. Wish me luck — Lex probably owns a Husqvarna zero-turn the way my luck has been.
– Max
Max/
Hey Fella! Buy American for cripes sake! What’s this Husqvarna outsourcing bit? Good ‘ole Minnesota-made Toro right next door in Bloomington up in your neck of the woods has a zero turn machine too. Get with the program Mister!!
(PS: One thing I DIDN’T know, though–Toro builds the stuff it sells thu Home Depot with cheaper components to hold costs down than the same item bought thru their more expensive dealerships. HD-sold equipment is said to have a MUCH shorter half-life and greater repair freq. as a result)
Lex:
Wow, same birth year, in a dirt-poor farm house on the western edge of Albuquerque. Passed a year earlier, the night before his 65th birthday, in ‘81. Went to sea as a Merchant Marine engineer, as his father before him. Told me the only way he would ever let me go to sea was in the Navy, when I announced my intention to follow the “family trade.” I keep my hopes and aspirations for SNO and SNT to myself; they will find their own course. All we can do is to give them the tools. That’s what we’re supposed to do, I think. Happy Father’s Day, you done good.
VR,
Comjam
Thank you Lex.
Thank you for sharing this with us, Lex. Your parents and grandparents grew up and lived through hard times and made their way in the world. Just as you have memories of your father, I have of my mother. She was the strong one in my life, giving me love and security and having to work to support me and ultimately my dreams for schooling. She bled, sweated and sacrificed all she had for me—and never once did I hear from her that I “owed her.” All was freely given with no strings attached. I too wish that I could share the knowledge of what her sacrifices enabled.
But I think both she and your father do know…
Thank you Capt….I sit here in my mind writing about my own dear old Dad..thank you for sharing …
It is difficult, at best, to truly appreciate all we have in the moment; one of life’s cruelties that puts us in our place when we are most complacent. Thank you, Lex, for reminding me that the moment is now and for providing the inspiration to introspectively acknowledge my shortcomings of late.
RE: Brad — same question and likewise for myself…
The best compliment I’ve ever received – by far – was when my folks came down to Parris Island see me at my boot camp graduation. The staff held some sort of reception for all the parents the evening beforehand, and when our DI came back into the barracks we all wanted to know if he’d met our folks. I specifically remember him looking at me and telling me, “Harvey, you’re just like your dad!”
To this day I’m not entirely sure how he meant that comment, but in my mind I could ask for no higher compliment.
Would that whenever anyone looks at us, they immediately see a reflection of Our Father.
I am speechless. Thank you for taking the words out of my mouth.
I had a good relationship with my Dad, never doubted his love, and he did have and/or made a lot of time for me and my brothers – basically a 50’s or 60’s TV show kind of family thing. But even so, the greatest things I remember about my dad were: a letter he sent me between my freshman and sophomore years in college to figuratively smack some adult sense into me (I have the letter to this day and it hurts to read it every time because I had been such a immature s**t at the time; and then there was him saying, “I’m proud of you” when picking me up at LAX upon a return from an overseas ‘adventure’. Nothing else really came close to that simple but sincere statement. Good memories.
Thanks, Lex, for getting the memory going.
There are words to an old John Denver song that always remind me of my Old Man:
Since he was the one who taught me to fly I always rememeber him when I see an airplane go overhead. I always thought Denver wrote this of his father, the Air Force officer who inspired his love of aviation as well.
Your words capture so well the emotions of this day.
That was written about his father. He had died in the early 80s, not long before Denver wrote that song.
Denver had a very hard relationship with his father, but they had slowly come together as Denver’s career took off in the 70s. Towards the end, he flew Denver’s jets for and with him.
I understood Denver’s situation as I had a similar relationship with my father. My father died before I graduated Engineering School, leaving much unfinished business between us. At least Denver had something to miss.
I have no idea how to submit a trackback so here you go: Father’s Day 2009
Thanks, Lex.
Thanks Lex. Tough day today, listening to the songs on the country stations about Fathers. I lost mine Marh 2007, at age 89. I miss him so. He too had hard upbringing during the depression. Went into Army Air Corp at 17. Then onto the Navy, where he saw action starting at Pearl Harbor, and other places. Got a GED along the way. Taught himself advanced math, while I flunked it. A Good Man. True, honest, and thinking back never a critisism,even when I really messed up. A son of the south, Georgia and Texas, but taught me to judge a person on the persons actions. Perild.
And Lex, not knowing your Father, but reading your blog, I think that you are wrong. Your Father was a great man. He taught you well, as my Father taught me well.
Dad was the only child of a steel worker, and the family moved to wherever the work was. Did four years as an MP before going into insurance. He and I would build and launch model rockets; more sharing than teaching. He thought I had surpassed his accomplishments; don’t know if I agree with that. I took him flying the Christmas before cancer sent him home, one week before his granddaughter was born.
She turns 3 this weekend.
I’ve sort of started a tradition with my sister over Christmas where we’ll watch a movie we would have seen with him. Last year it was Iron Man; this year it might be Star Trek, or maybe Harry Potter; he was an avid magician, and hooked me on the series.
Happy Father’s Day to you and yours.
Can’t express how much I appreciate your remarks about the old man. Truly miss mine after these 24 years. So intelligent – an AT&T/Bell Labs EE with numerous patents who could fix anything around the house. His favorite form of relaxation was painting the house, a chore I detest. When I asked him why he so enjoyed the painting he replied “I don’t have to think.” I sometimes would visit him at Bell Labs and at that time it was a real think tank doing pure research. It would be common to see some of the Bell PhD’s just sitting in their offices doing some heavy pondering about God knows what. Dad was hardly impressed by these guys – dismissing them with a remark that “they may have a PhD but they don’t know which end of a hammer to use”.
BTW Lex, despite the French surname, do you happen to know your Pop’s original Dutch surname as well?
Van Thouizia, or Van Thouzia is what we were given to believe. Gran Lula called him “Mr. Van.”
Never could find it under a list of Dutch surnames.
Great writing, heartfelt.
Good thing I was able to talk with my Dad this afternoon, or I’d be crying.
Yeah, an O-5 (ret) can still do that.
Thanks, Lex.
Lex, maybe we should re-think greatness. My father, as all men do, had flaws, but I would not have traded my time with him for anything. I find myself reaching for the phone to call him for advice regarding my nine year old son, before realizing he will not be there.
Damn, I miss him.
If I can see to type through the tears, I’ll say thanks to Lex and to all of you for your stories about your dads. Father’s Day has been hard for me for a long time – my daddy died a week after Father’s Day in 1972. I miss him still and wish he could know my grandchildren. Even after this long a time, things happen that I’d love to tell him about or talk over with him.
Happy Father’s Day to all you good men.
Thank you Lex for a great story and tribute to your father. My dad and I have a somewhat complicated relationship. When you’re really young, you tend to think they are the best, kinda superheroes. Then in the teenage years, you don’t agree on anything, and as we age we can see that they were not perfect, yet we learned a lot from them. No matter what I still love him and couldn’t ever repay me for sacrificing and giving me a chance to live free.
Less than two months ago lost my father in law, whom I’ve known for nigh onto 20 years. 64 year old retired Master Chief. going up to Andersonville tomorrow to pay my respects and those of his daughter who is now in NC helping her mom cope. A great man, who became a better father to his girls as he got older. Taken too soon by massive unexpected heartattack as he was preparing to retire to florida this december, buy a boat and fish and spoil/spend time with my daughter, his only grandchild. More than anything I mourn what she has lost. Reinforces the fact that life is not fair, and definitely not helping in my relationship with the big Guy upstairs
For our fathers, great or less so, but without whom we wouldn’t be here.
Claudio
PS Ivanhoe was in my top three as a kid back in the old country along with anything by J Verne and Robinson Crusoe
Wow Lex, you do know how to turn a phrase don’t you…and bring up a well of emotions that have been buried for a long time.
This is not a bad thing.
After nearly 15 years – I feel this way most days. I admire your courage in talking about your dad; not sure I could do the same about mine.
Lex and Rivetjoint, both of you, took me on the greatest trip back in time. Lex, my Dad was about three years older than yours, but died in the spring of that same year. I thought I really knew him, but learned more of his many qualities. Rivetjoint, my Father had a tested IO in the top 1%, but was a very shy man and never talked about himself. He was a man who used his genius on the applied level. he designed and built machinery to work with glass by hand. But also within this man, my Dad, there was a bit of a little kid, he could be a real prankster. One day, I was doing some chores away from the house, he brought me a sandwich wrapped in foil. I unwrapped the sandwich and ate it. I then threw the foil into the trash. He grabbed a magnet and the foil was attracted to it. Astonished, I said, “You’ve got to be kidding, steel foil.” It always kept your mind growing.
@Will Pearce, there is a great wisdom in what you write. I notice you did *not* say, I spent some time with Dad. It appears you *invested* some time with your Dad, *wise move*. You’re a wise man if you can still cry.
I remember one time being in the VA Hospital, I went into a seizure, that led to a deep coma. In my dream, I was at a picnic with family and friends, The one common denominator, they all had passed away. Nobody could see me, but my Father. He came over to me and said, “What are you doing here? Get back there.” We need to remember our Fathers are not gone until we stop thinking about them and “Secure Delete” their file. I fear the subtle change when I move them to “Archive”.
Allow yourself the right to *invest* some time with Dad, any way you can.
Another great one Lex. I’m sure your dad and his dad are looking down at Chez Lex this June and thinkin’ the Lad done good.
If there is a trend in these comments and the original post, it’s the age of our fathers. My father was a boy in the depression, many of the others here even older. By and large, we have no baby boomers for parents. Which possibly explains much about this audience, that we all have very direct links to an older, more gentle and yet more austere and disciplined time. And as I suspect I understand more of my father as I myself grow older, I also wonder what down the line my children will understand of me.
My father is still alive. He’s 90 now, and not as spry as he once was, but still the same old fellow. Grumpy, stubborn, honest and responsible, with a wicked sense of humour.
He was born in 1918, and remembers very well the sting of the depression. He talks about going to school and having to make do with what they could get. You’d use a pencil right down to the nub, and never waste a sheet of paper. His mom would make sandwiches for him and his brother, wrapped in waxed paper and they’d carefully refold the paper and bring it back to reuse. One of his prized possessions was a tin lunch box.
He had a pair of blue denim coveralls and two shirts. One pair of shoes. One coat. His dad made a living by maintaining apartments for landlords, until he scraped up enough to buy a house and convert it into apartments of his own. My dad learned a great deal about carpentry, roofing, glazing, plaster, etc by helping his dad, and he passed those skills down to me. To this day I hate having to hire someone to do work that I could do. Or think I could do.
Dad and his brother enlisted in the Navy just before Pearl Harbor. They needed work, and so signed up. Uncle Joe became an Electrician’s Mate. Dad wanted to be a storekeeper, but they made him a Pharmacist’s Mate instead. he thought it would be interesting to work in Sick Bay, so he dove in. After the war broke out, they asked him if he’d be interested in what they called “Independent Duty”. He found out later that that meant being assigned to Marine units as a Corpsman.
He made a number of landings, and came through the war unscathed physically, but mentally there were some issues. The hardest job he ever did, he told me, was helping to repatriate American POW’s from Japan, sailing back to the states with them. To this day he has no love for anything Japanese.
He did well for himself, and he and mom managed to raise 6 kids. Like many of the depression-era kids, he saved religiously, made do with all sorts of things, but bought a huge house. He wanted to make certain that us kids always had someplace to live, if worse came to worse. We had a huge garden, something his folks had done back then, and again during the war years, and we always had fresh vegetables.
The things he taught me, to be willing to sign your name to your work. Be honest, straight up, and responsible, served me well. I miss him a lot, but we still talk regularly. I’ll be calling him later today, in fact.
Thanks for a wonderful post, Lex. It’s a joy to read your works.
respects,
[...] Lex introduces us to his dad, while reminding us that Lex can write well, in a remembrance of his father for Father’s Day. Comments [...]
So very well said, Lex, and thank you for it. Your father and mine were contemporaries in age and probably other aspects as well… given their generation. That said, my father more closely resembled your grandfather than your Dad, as you’ve described them. Still and even, although my father was a “hard man” I believe he taught me well. He passed in 1987 and I still miss the man.
A great tribute to a man who begat such a talented son.
I think I’ll sit back with a cool one and contemplate my own Da who passed over 37 years ago.
b2
Sounds like he was not only a good man but a great Dad. His Naval Academy dreams were a legacy to you. He must have been proud.
My goal is to try to be the father and husband my Dad was to his family. However, he set the bar so incredibly high, I’ve not come close. This is one of those days I’d like to thank him for that example. If only I could.
Really enjoyed this, Lex! Thanks!
I did wonder about your comment: “…all the negative influences that could go along with being a Son of Virginia.” I thoroughly enjoyed my childhood in Virginia and I miss her terribly.
Cheers!
Beavis
Thank you Lex. My father is still with us, a spry 75. I try to remember that someday I’m going to be remembering the last time I talked to him. I sure hope it’s a good one. I’m right proud of him and he lets me know he’s proud of me and my family, so I guess we’re good.
Last time I saw my mother was in 1999. Folks came to visit for a long weekend. My youngest son was 5 and playing on a Soccer team with a miserable record. Unfortunately, my dear wife was the coach. Last game of the season, Grandparents watching from the sidelines, final score 3 to 2, with our young hero scoring the middle goal of the three. I’m still not sure who was happier, Mom the Coach or Grandma the spectator. It was a wonderful weekend and, though I didn’t know it at the time, a wonderful way to say goodbye.
Only regret I have is not being able to share all my daughters accomplishments with my mom, beings she’s the only granddaughter. I do know that those Irish green eyes are smiling down on all of us though.