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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Like Everything Else, Dads Are Not All the Same

Like Everything Else, Dads Are Not All the Same

by WaterGirl|  June 18, 202312:50 pm| 151 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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My father was a great dad; a quiet, gentle, kind man who supported me and trusted me in all things.

When he died, instead of sending a big display of flowers, my godmother sent a single boutonnière for his lapel, with a card that said only “For a true gentleman.”

I know everyone is not that lucky, and many of us who were that lucky no longer have our dads today. My dad died 28 years ago, and I still miss him.  The year my dad died, a big billboard for Father’s Day that I passed every day said “Everyone has a father!”  When I passed it the first time I yelled “No they do not!”  And I cursed that sign until they took it down.

I remember that first year after both of my parents were gone – I would be in a restaurant and see people my age sharing a meal and a nice conversation with their parents and would wish I could tell them how lucky they were, and remind them to appreciate them no matter how annoying they might be at times!

We owned a neighborhood bar, which we called the tavern, and we lived upstairs so I knew all the customers from a very early age.  I was daddy’s girl, and I used to hang out with my dad in the little workshop we had downstairs.   He was always working on some project, and he had a million little inventions.  As I type this post, my neighbor is running his saw, working on some project, and I can smell the wood from here, and it’s taking me back in time.

My dad wasn’t perfect, of course.  What mattered is that I loved him unconditionally, and he felt the same way about me.

My dad was quite dapper, and as kids, we 3 girls thought of him like Cary Grant.

Like Everything Else, Dads Are Not All the Same

My dad was quiet, maybe because when you tend bar all day long you get enough of people and conversation. :-)  But he wasn’t wimpy!  The year after my mom died, I broached the subject of my dad possibly meeting someone and getting married again, trying to let him know that I was good with whatever he wanted.  He turned to me and said “What would I want do to that for?  I finally get to do whatever I want!”

Okay, then.

Alison Rose lost her father this year, and I am sure she is not alone in that.  Of course, some people have never known their dads, some have father figures that are 10x better than their biological parent, some are surely ultra MAGA, which has to be hard.  In my group at the University, we used to say that you could put 10 IT people in a room together, and you would get 11 different opinions.  I imagine the same is true of people and their dads.  Put a million people in a room and they surely have had a million+ different experiences with their parents.

Anyway, feel free to share about your dads, whether it’s love or gratitude or rage and disappointment, or even indifference.

Or not!  As always, open thread, so talk about soccer or whatever you want.

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Reader Interactions

151Comments

  1. 1.

    Another Scott

    June 18, 2023 at 12:57 pm

    Very nice. Thanks.

    I admired my dad a lot, but we almost never talked.  I think part of it was his job where he had a security clearance.  He had a zillion hobbies and was always reading and had books about almost everything everywhere. I got that addiction from him.

    An avid history buff, Larry David, took his daughter to every one of the Civil War battlefields for a family vacation. pic.twitter.com/kDkxOwgtMG

    — Wars (@wars) June 16, 2023

    (via Oryx)

    Happy fathers and father to be and acting fathers day. Remember the good times.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  2. 2.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 12:58 pm

    @Another Scott: She looks happy. //

  3. 3.

    rikyrah

    June 18, 2023 at 12:59 pm

     

    Representation Matters🤗🤗

    Little Jewish boys and girls will love this🤗

    https://vm.tiktok.com/ZT8JNV3wP/

  4. 4.

    japa21

    June 18, 2023 at 1:00 pm

    Less than 2 years into our marriage, just after our first son was born, Mrs. Japa’s father died suddenly. Six months later my father passed away, also suddenly. In a way, her father’s death had more of an impact on me than my father’s. I think it was because I had had almost 30 years with my father but only knew hers for 3 and would have loved to get to know him better.

    Neither man was perfect. Both liked to imbibe a little too much (in my father’s case it was a ot too much), but both were caring, loving men. Both of us have always missed the opportunities our boys didn’t have to know them.

    But to disagree with one thing you said, both of us still have our fathers, they just reside in out hearts now.

  5. 5.

    Gin & Tonic

    June 18, 2023 at 1:01 pm

    My father picked up a bad habit when he was a POW, and I’m convinced it contributed to his fairly early death, 42 years ago last week. A couple of years ago I surpassed the age he was at when he died, which is a sobering occasion. He still shows up in my dreams from time to time.

    He was very, very good at what he did. Made me want to do something else, so I wouldn’t be tempted to try to measure up

    ETA: His early passing meant my kids never knew one of their grandfathers, which made me sad, because I never knew either of mine (war is hell.)

  6. 6.

    twbrandt

    June 18, 2023 at 1:02 pm

    My dad was a kind, quiet, gentle man, but I never knew how much people valued him until he died. His memorial service literally filled the church, where he served as an elder, organist, and apparently friend to all. He taught me that kindness, compassion, sympathy are the most valuable qualities people can possess.

    ETA: he died 16 years ago, but I still think of him every single day.

  7. 7.

    Soprano2

    June 18, 2023 at 1:03 pm

    This July 22nd will be the 41st anniversary of my father’s death, so I haven’t thought much about Father’s Day for a long time. I sympathize with your feelings about that billboard, WG – it’s hard to be young and without a parent. There is a nonprofit here called Lost and Found Grief Center that I donate to because I wish they had existed when my father died. They concentrate on helping children who have lost a parent. It’s hard to be the only person whose parent is deceased.

    My hubby says he’s been thinking about his son a lot this week. It’s the second Father’s Day since his son died.

    God I hate the IPad keyboard!

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    June 18, 2023 at 1:06 pm

    My biological father was a shmuck.

    My step-father was a bigger, world class shmuck.

    Let’s just say that Mom’s taste when it came to men was found wanting.

  9. 9.

    Soprano2

    June 18, 2023 at 1:06 pm

    @Gin & Tonic: Yes, that feels strange. When I turned 49 I realized how short my dad’s life really was, because I had lived longer than he had.

  10. 10.

    Scout211

    June 18, 2023 at 1:08 pm

    Lovely post honoring your dad, WaterGirl.

    For this Fathers Day, I honor the three dads of my 7 grandkids.  All 3 are loving and kind and actively involved in parenting their children. All 7 grandkids are incredibly lucky to have them as dads and their spouses are lucky to have them as partners. 

  11. 11.

    rikyrah

    June 18, 2023 at 1:12 pm

    I lost my father when I was 19. As I get older, I realize how short a time we had together. When I look at Facebook and I see contemporaries who still have their parents, people that I knew when I was child, I admit that I am jealous. Of all the years that they’ve had. I hope that they appreciate them.🤗

  12. 12.

    Alison Rose

    June 18, 2023 at 1:19 pm

    Thank you, WG. Yes, this is my first Father’s Day without my Dad, and it’s very difficult. I’ve missed him every day since he passed, of course, (four months ago now) but today is a little extra tough. He was always such a strong presence in my life, from the very beginning.

    A few years ago, I’d found this little “What I Love About Dad” book in Hallmark, with 50 pages for you to fill in the blanks. Things like “When I was little, I loved to _____ with you” and such. My mom brought it to me after he passed, and I made a little flip-through video. (The FB post should be public if you wanna give it a watch.) It made me smile and also cry to go through it.

    Sending lots of love to anyone else having a tough time today <3

  13. 13.

    Baud

    June 18, 2023 at 1:20 pm

    Beautiful remembrance of your dad, WG.  He rocks in that fedora.

  14. 14.

    Carlo Graziani

    June 18, 2023 at 1:21 pm

    My Dad passed away from compound illnesses in Florence, in 2004. He could still move about the apartment, but had been unable to walk around the neighborhood and talk to people, as he loved to do, for a couple of years. 9 months earlier, when he had been hospitalized, both my brother (who lives in Saint Paul) and I made emergency trips to visit, staying for a couple of weeks in expectation that the end was nigh, and leaving after he recovered a bit and was discharged. We didn’t tell him we were coming, and my sister kept the secret, so he got two surprise family reunions a few hours apart, which certainly appeared to lift his spirits.

    By an amazing coincidence, I happened to go to Italy for a conference in Rome the week he died, and I stopped by my parent’s Florence apartment for a couple of days before traveling on.

    My Dad and I spent 2 of his 3 last days on Earth puttering about the house working on small projects—fixing cabinet door hinges, repairing a small stool, tightening chair screws, etc. He’d always liked wood/tool projects (when I was a child he built a small boat in our garage), and he was so happy and funny as we worked together.

    A few minutes after my conference talk in Rome, one of the organizers asked me to call my sister, who had asked them not to notify me before the talk. She told me that he had passed away in his sleep the day before. I got on a train back to Florence a couple of hours later, and helped my sister with the arrangements.

    It was hard, and sad. But at the same time I can’t help thinking what an incredible gift I received when I was able to secure a few more precious memories of him before he passed away. I will always be grateful for that lucky, lucky happenstance.

  15. 15.

    schrodingers_cat

    June 18, 2023 at 1:24 pm

    If I have the courage to speak my mind and be my own person and be able to think for myself I owe it to my dad. My lifelong love of learning and reading is also because of him, he would read to me every night. Books and other reading material were also plentiful in my house when I was growing. He never stopped me from reading anything even if it was age inappropriate. I owe him a lot

    ETA: When I was growing up he would spend time with me, get to know my friends, my interests etc. He was never a hands-off dad like many an Indian man of his generation.

  16. 16.

    Nukular Biskits

    June 18, 2023 at 1:25 pm

    My father passed away 19 years ago this very week. It was his 63rd birthday and he had just put in for Social Security.  Us kids joked that he did so on purpose to prevent us from getting him Father’s Day or birthday presents.

    I can’t do justice to the family history that shaped my father but both he and my mother had the horrible burden of watching their first-born, the sister I never met, suffer, waste away and die of liver cancer back in 1964 when little to nothing could be done.  She was all of 18 months old.  This profoundly affected both of them and, in all likelihood, contributed to their divorce when I was 7 years old.

    Probably because of the loss of a child, Daddy, despite being a crusty old bastard, could not stand to see people suffer.  It was extremely difficult for him when his own father and a one of his brothers became ill and passed away, my grandfather from heart disease and my uncle from bone cancer.

    Daddy smoked and drank way too much and worked 16-hour days.  Before his mother passed away, she told me that she had fussed at him for working so much at his age, that he was gonna kill himself at work.  He told her he’d much rather die at work than in a hospital hooked up to machines, suffering and being a burden to loved ones.

    While sitting at the counter of the local plumbing supply store where he worked in 2004, he fell off the stool onto the floor.  Coworkers and customers said he got back up and sat down on the stool again.  When they asked him if he was okay, he reportedly said, “Hell, yeah!”, fell off the stool again and was gone due to a massive cardiac arrest.

    He got his wish.

  17. 17.

    Kelly

    June 18, 2023 at 1:29 pm

    My Dad, oldest of 9 left school at the 8th grade to help support his family. Worked big grain farms in the Palouse. By the time I was born he was running heavy equipment for logging and construction which is what he did for the rest of his life. Built several thousand miles of gravel logging roads. Ran dozers, graders, backhoes. Worked until he died suddenly of a heart attack at 58. Steve Goodman’s Dad died at 58 so this song speaks to me.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=410fZm0HWtw&ab_channel=SaltyCarr

  18. 18.

    UncleEbeneezer

    June 18, 2023 at 1:29 pm

    My Dad is the typical white, cis/het boomer who claims to “stay out of politics” but for some strange reason has always hated Democrats and loved Reagan.  He’s always been a good person to me, but I will never forgive the fact that he refused to vote for Hillary, purports to value science yet denies Global Warming and refuses to get the Covid vaccination (he never took issue with any vaccines as far as I can remember, and we were always fully-vaccinated in order to attend school/college).  He’s been a great example for me of all the things I never want to be when it comes to my political identity and civic duty.  I see his many blind-spots and they help me avoid developing them in myself.  That’s about the best I can say.  I’ve given up on trying to help him change for the better.  I’d rather put my energy towards people who actually want to change, and help them along the path.

    Hope you all are celebrating or remembering your great Dads, or surviving/enduring your shitty ones.  There’s no shame in severing ties with asshole family members.

    And of course, mad respect to all the great Dads here who are raising their kids right, and helping them have empathy, respect, and solidarity with marginalized groups.  You all are helping change the world for the better.

  19. 19.

    Eunicecycle

    June 18, 2023 at 1:31 pm

    I had a great dad, and he lived to be 90, so I had a lot of years with him. He was a veteran of WW II and Korea. He helped liberate Dachau when he was 19 years old. He was always very proud of his service but he did have a form of PTSD because of it. He made friends wherever he went; I did not get that from him. I miss him still.

  20. 20.

    p.a.

    June 18, 2023 at 1:32 pm

    My father died on mothers’ day.  I’ve always thought that would be a good opening line to a story, novel, movie.  Feel free to use it, I won’t.  39 years ago this year.  He hated his factory job, but it provided a good living (union, 1960s & ’70s) but it did kind of beat him down a bit.  Nobody’s perfect, but homelife was fine, quite supportive, no major dysfunction.  I think I was a handful to deal with, not a criminal (drugs/crime a definite prospect in my neighborhood) but mouthy.

  21. 21.

    Crimson Pimpernel

    June 18, 2023 at 1:32 pm

    Lovely recollection, WaterGirl, and a great photo.

  22. 22.

    Betty Cracker

    June 18, 2023 at 1:33 pm

    WG, was your family’s tavern the one where a regular would bring in his boxer dogs? Glad you had such a nice dad; sorry you lost him young.

    My dad and I were at loggerheads for much of our lives and have always been polar opposites politically. We were estranged for most of my 20s, but we’ve had a positive relationship since then. I think one thing that was the key to our détente is that Dad really likes my husband. 

    When hubby and I moved back to my swampy home county five years back, Dad seemed genuinely thrilled about it, which I found somewhat surprising and touching. We have lunch once a month or so, and some days he comes roaring up to our house in his obnoxious airboat, which he lets me or my husband drive (and then teases us about how we drive).

    I’m glad the old wingnut is still around.

  23. 23.

    gene108

    June 18, 2023 at 1:34 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I surpassed the age he was at when he died, which is a sobering occasion.

    It’s a milestone of some kind.

    It’s surreal, especially if dad died young, and you realize how much life he should have had left to live.

  24. 24.

    kindness

    June 18, 2023 at 1:35 pm

    Nice piece, especially it being Fathers Day and all that.  My mother and father were happily married till they died.  I know, a 50’s fairy tale but it worked for them.  Both were born before the Great Depression and grew into life during it’s ravages.  Dad lied about his age and joined the navy the week after Pearl Harbor.  They knew he lied but took him anyway.  My father died in the mid 90’s.  Ma was never the same after that.  She carried on well enough but lost her bearings more and more after time went on.  She died in early 2009.  I miss them both and am so thankful for what they taught and gave me.  Love you Ma & Dad.  Thank you both for everything.

  25. 25.

    Trivia Man

    June 18, 2023 at 1:41 pm

    It’s complicated

    he taught me to comfort the afflicted and used Hubert Humphrey as a guide to what government could do to help people. He taught me the (deserved!) hatred for Richard Nixon I still carry.
    then he moved to Michigan and fell into the Pat Buchanan hate hole. Later he was part of the crew that got TFG traction in Michigan, paving the way to our current nightmare.

    when he died there was an old, big silver dollar on his nightstand. He loved to tip with those and 50 cent pieces and $2 bills. I’ve carried that dollar in my pocket every day since, some days it’s a joy and others a sorrow.

    if anyone needs a hug from a dad who accepts you as you are, and can’t get it from your own dad, here you go. (Hug)

    it’s complicated

  26. 26.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 1:41 pm

    @Baud: I have always loved fedoras.  I wonder why.  :-)

  27. 27.

    Kelly

    June 18, 2023 at 1:44 pm

    Mark Hamill Happy Father’s Day

    https://twitter.com/MarkHamill/status/1670419861837844480

  28. 28.

    Betty Cracker

    June 18, 2023 at 1:46 pm

    @Carlo Graziani: Such a gift those days were! Thanks for sharing that story.

  29. 29.

    Betty Cracker

    June 18, 2023 at 1:50 pm

    @Kelly: Hamill is a national treasure. ;-)

  30. 30.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 1:51 pm

    @Kelly:

  31. 31.

    NaijaGal

    June 18, 2023 at 1:52 pm

    Nice tribute to your dad WaterGirl! I lost mine when I was about 8 months old. My mom told me he was very hands on with all his kids – diaper changing, bottle feeding and all that, which for a Nigerian man at the time was unusual. I obviously don’t remember him, so I call my mom’s brothers on Father’s Day, and I’m especially grateful to her youngest brother who was in college when my dad passed away and moved in with us to help my mom raise me and my brother when he should have been partying hard. He’s the one I remember dropping us and picking us up from school and playing practical jokes on us.

  32. 32.

    cain

    June 18, 2023 at 1:55 pm

    It will be an emotional one for my wife who lost her dad to Parkinson’s about 5 years ago or so? On his birthday she tends to become really emotional.

    Last year, it was an emotional one because it was my first Father’s Day and my wife’s kids (and now mine!) wished me Father’s day. I couldn’t help but tear up, of which my daughter also teared up. I never thought I would have a family with kids that would consider me their bonus dad.

  33. 33.

    Tom Levenson

    June 18, 2023 at 2:06 pm

    My dad died when I was ten (a boating accident; I and my brothers were all there too, and all fine).  He was 48.  That was over fifty years ago.

    He was a good man, a kind one, ferociously smart, and his absence turned him into a constant influence on my life, my view of the world, and pretty much my whole career.

    He was a historian of China, (Joseph R. Levenson if any of you hang out in that meadow) and when I got to college, I took an East Asian history survey course to get me up to reading his work. When I did, I was blown away, by his style, by his approach to history—the way he made meaning out of engagement with the past—and by his voice, the humor that came through even his most professional writing.  I became an East Asian Studies major, went to that side of the Pacific after graduation, and became a writer in large part because of that encounter.

    This year I wrote a piece about him and some of that influence for what will be the first edition of his major work in Chinese and available in China.  It comes out soon (translated into Chinese), and I’ll post it somewhere in English when it does.  I’ve been thinking a lot about dad these last several months, half a century gone and always present.

    That’s all I got for now.

  34. 34.

    frosty

    June 18, 2023 at 2:07 pm

    Dad’s been gone almost 20 years now; a tough end with Parkinson’s.

    But my favorite memory: When I was 24 I drove my clapped-out TR-3 across the country from California; limped into Maryland burning a quart of oil every 50 miles.

    He scored pistons and cylinders from a friend then took a week off of work to help me rebuild the engine.

    It took me awhile to figure out his philosophy: not “Don’t pay someone to do something you can do yourself” but “Don’t pay someone to do something you think you can LEARN to do yourself.”

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 2:11 pm

    @Betty Cracker: Yes, the two boxer dogs!

    My dad served some basic food in the tavern, plus homemade chili, and served sandwiches on these pressed cardboard plates.  The owner of the boxers would always pour some beer into the little pressed cardboard plates for the boxers to lap up.

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 2:13 pm

    @Betty Cracker: That’s so nice that your dad is so happy that you moved back!  He must be a good guy for your most awesome mom to have chosen him. :-)

  37. 37.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    June 18, 2023 at 2:14 pm

    My brother and I were talking earlier this week about what we both see as the mystery of our father. He graduated from high school, and then there’s a gap of maybe 10 years before he enlisted in the Canadian navy in 1939. Neither of us has any idea of what he did during those years.

    He met and married our mother in 1944. The navy trained him to run heating equipment, and he held jobs in that area for the rest of his working life. My brother insists that the jobs he held and the salary he earned were below what he should have had with his training. His father was a pharmacist and his brothers were all professionals.

    We don’t know what to make of it. Maybe he just took an extra long equivalent of a gap year, but who knows?

  38. 38.

    frosty

    June 18, 2023 at 2:16 pm

    @Another Scott: My dad had clearances his whole career. At his retirement party my sister spoke and said that we never knew what he did because all he would say was “Something in radar.”

    Then we hear this from a co-worker in the back of the room “That’s all he tells us, too!”

  39. 39.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 2:16 pm

    @Trivia Man:  It’s always complicated, isn’t it?

    Silver dollars.

    I have a big bag of silver dollars in my dresser drawer.  We got silver dollars from the “tooth fairy”.  I am willing to bet they are worth some money, but I won’t part with them.

  40. 40.

    cain

    June 18, 2023 at 2:16 pm

    My dad is still alive and kickin and he’s 84 now and he’s traveling to India twice a year – he’s showing some signs of old age but he’s in way better shape than any other 84 his age.

  41. 41.

    Layer8Problem

    June 18, 2023 at 2:20 pm

    My dad was the first in his blue-collar family to go to college, then medical school, where he met Mom, an RN from a far-off state who read, and one thing led to another, they got married, and seven months later I show up. He was by no means perfect. In later years I’d tell people he always carried his own proscenium in order to better emote. He had a dose of James Tyrone Senior out of Eugene O’Neill. He loves to sing, even though he’s no Sinatra, and that’s where I’ve seen him happiest. Life did not give him everything he wanted, and I think he realized too late that he could have done things with better grace, and that some things he had done could be understood by his family over time, but not easily forgiven. And yet when I would call, at the office during the workday or whenever, he would always, always take the call. I have a lot of his gift of retentive memory, and maybe some of the drama. I wish he had been better. Life sometimes is complicated.

  42. 42.

    StringOnAStick

    June 18, 2023 at 2:20 pm

    @UncleEbeneezer: You speak for me in many ways, though my anger addicted RW father is always very political and my parents quit speaking to me for several years after Obama was re-elected because they knew that I,  DFH to the core, had voted for him.  He was mortally wounded when I gave up trying to find work in geology in the early 1990’s recession and changed careers, which deeply offended him.  An engineer who refuses to believe in global warming but did get all his Covid vaccines.  Loves FOX news but now hates TFG and refuses to vote for him though will no doubt vote again for Boebert and every other R on the ballot.  I have given up talking to him on the phone because he’s in a constant FOX induced rage and every conversation turned to him yelling about whatever splinter he could find to pick at. I send him emails with photos to discuss of where we’ve travelled recently or interesting things in the local area, and that’s as good as it’s ever going to get since he’s 91.

    My late FIL was a truly kind person and I enjoyed my relationship with him and miss him.  I doubt I will miss my dad because I didn’t miss my angry alcoholic mother when she passed 5 years ago; both of them and how uninterested they were in their kids is a big reason why I made sure to never have any.

    Those of you who had excellent or even middling relationships with your parents are very lucky indeed, I hope you have a great day with your parents or a great day honouring their memory.

  43. 43.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 2:20 pm

    @Carlo Graziani: That truly is a gift.

    My story is the inverse of that.  I didn’t really know my grandparents, but my partner’s gram lived with her parents, so she was Gram to me, the only grandparent I had ever known.

    At some point Gram moved to a (nice) nursing home, and one day I was riding my bicycle home from somewhere and I passed the street that would have taken me to see Gram, hesitated, and then decided that I would head on home and bicycle over tomorrow.

    You can see where this is going, tomorrow never came for Gram, and I regret the certainty in my thinking I’ll just go tomorrow.

    Glad it all worked out with your dad.

  44. 44.

    Kelly

    June 18, 2023 at 2:21 pm

    When I was a child Dad taught me to navigate in the woods with a topographic map and no compass. “Keep your eyes open. Always look all around.”

    When I was a teen he took me out to our rain slick pasture to teach me to drive on ice.

    He got me a summer job on his logging road construction crew when I was in college. The work was fun and the money was great. September rolled around and I didn’t think I wanted to back to academic poverty. “Yeah, this is fun in the summer. It’s not any fun in November when the rain is washing the snow down your neck and the mud is over your boot tops. By the time you’re my age everything hurts” I finished my CS degree and had a comfortable career in IT.

  45. 45.

    trollhattan

    June 18, 2023 at 2:23 pm

    @Kelly: Oh God, that’s hilarious! Hamill, you slay me. “Just wait’ll you meet dad.”

  46. 46.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 2:23 pm

    @Tom Levenson:  Annotated with my thoughts in italics.

    He was a good man, a kind one, ferociously smart… (the apple didn’t fall far from the tree)

    …and his absence turned him into a constant influence on my life, my view of the world, and pretty much my whole career.  (Dreams from my father?)

  47. 47.

    Another Scott

    June 18, 2023 at 2:23 pm

    @frosty: :-)

    My dad worked on radars too (Gemini capsule, C-5, etc.).  He occasionally told stories about sitting around playing cards at work because there was nothing to do (but the company didn’t want to lay them off and lose their important expertise when business picked up again).

    Life is weird.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  48. 48.

    John S.

    June 18, 2023 at 2:25 pm

    Dad is a complicated man, as many are. He left his first wife (and 4 kids) to be with my mom, so he was already in his 40s by the time I came into the picture.

    Like a lot of engineers, he’s on the spectrum, so he wasn’t very good at expressing himself or his emotions. He didn’t know how to interact with children, so I never got to do things like play catch, because he treated me like a tiny adult. When my parents divorced I was young, and I got to see my father even less — especially given his work which took him to Asia for months at a time (where he eventually met my stepmother and moved).

    We didn’t speak to each other for many years until my grandmother died. And my wife convinced me to try something crazy… so I forgave him for not being the father I wanted him to be, and embraced him for the father he was.

    That was over 25 years ago, and we have had a good relationship ever since. He’s still a complicated man, without any sense of social etiquette, but he’s my father and I love him all the same. I’m just hoping to get over to see him again soon before I lose the opportunity. He turns 88 this year.

    ETA: Dad taught me how to fish, go hiking and enjoy nature. He taught me how to use tools, even a soldering iron, and shared my love for building model rockets. I really learned quite a lot from him being a tiny adult and all, and I am constantly amazed at all the memories I have of doing things with him (even if they weren’t the typical childhood activities).

  49. 49.

    trollhattan

    June 18, 2023 at 2:28 pm

    Happened to find a box of family ephemera yesterday, containing a few of dad’s things, including a watch he bought from his ship’s PX or whatever the Navy calls them, during WWII (still runs), a Boeing money clip, some cufflinks, a tie clip, etc. These items transport one back across the decades. He died at 65, on Elvis’ death date, and I miss him. Mom outlived him by a lot, passing at 88. Mom was the anchor in our lives.

    None of us plans correctly for how life actually proceeds, so love them now, your nutty family. My favorite BIL was released from the ICU yesterday after suffering a stroke at home. We’re five months apart.

    I am SO in a good mood, because my kid texted me Father’s Day wishes, as they do now.

  50. 50.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 2:29 pm

    @Kelly: At one point, I thought I wanted to own a little neighborhood tavern, and the response from my Dad was similar to yours, though the details were different.

  51. 51.

    laura

    June 18, 2023 at 2:30 pm

    I adored my dad and he adores us kids. He would not tolerate injustice. He was a proud Union man and worked as a butcher and meat cutter since he apprenticed at 14. He went deep into hobbies until each became physically impossible- hot rods, hydro boats, dune buggies, dirt bikes and finally sailing. He and 3 friends crewed a racing boat back from Hawaii after the 2001 Transpac race and after a 3 or 4 day stay away order was the first person to bring a vessel into San Francisco Bay after the attacks on 9/11. We used the photo of him at the wheel with the sun and the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. He was a very bad boy in his youth and he married the sweetest girl in the world and was married for 61 years until our mother died. He loved jazz music so very much and music so prevalent in the background of our lives led both sibs to become roadies and they in turn introduced dad to many of his musical heroes. I miss him so very much. He wanted us to be good people and insisted happiness would result.

  52. 52.

    trollhattan

    June 18, 2023 at 2:31 pm

    @WaterGirl: Cheers, sadly, is a writer’s concept for the most part.

  53. 53.

    Betty Cracker

    June 18, 2023 at 2:32 pm

    @WaterGirl: My parents were married for seven years, and they were ill-suited and fought like cats and dogs, but I don’t think he ever stopped loving her. It shook him up when she died — he told me he never thought he’d have to live in a world without her in it, which is the most emotional thing I’d ever heard him express.

  54. 54.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 2:32 pm

    So many lovely heartfelt stories in this thread, thanks to all who are sharing them.

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 2:39 pm

    @Betty Cracker:  That’s really touching.  Love is a funny thing.

  56. 56.

    Betty Cracker

    June 18, 2023 at 2:40 pm

    @John S.:

    I forgave him for not being the father I wanted him to be, and embraced him for the father he was.

    Beautiful!

  57. 57.

    JoyceH

    June 18, 2023 at 2:42 pm

    My dad was a minister who never, EVER, talked about politics, because he firmly believed that ministers should not. Different times, huh? I always suspected that he was a Democrat because he’d shush Mom when she would mention political stuff at home and she was a Republican, mainly because her own parents were. He didn’t want us to inherit political beliefs as a family legacy and just go with them. Which might be how the younger kids came out of ruby red Southern Illinois as Democrats.

  58. 58.

    FelonyGovt

    June 18, 2023 at 2:46 pm

    Lovely stories, WaterGirl and the rest of you.

    My dad died almost 36 years ago, when my daughter was only 6 months old so she has no memory of him. He was a wonderful man who loved to read and loved words and took me to the public library all the time when I was a kid, resulting in my lifelong love of reading.

    After my mom died in 1980 we had to figure out how to talk to each other on the phone without him putting my mom on! And then he started having lady friends. At his funeral where I flew back to NY, all these ladies I had never met came up to me and told me “you must be the daughter from California: and talked about how wonderful he was.

    I miss him all the time.

  59. 59.

    Sure Lurkalot

    June 18, 2023 at 2:50 pm

    Like many, I had a mixed experience with my old man. When he was happy, he was wonderful and funny, but he could turn on a dime and rage. He would never seek help for his bipolar ways (treatment for anything non physical was a sign of weakness to him) and he likely suffered from PTSD from being a POW in WWII.

    He really changed in his 60’s, the grandkids did what his kids never could and he became loving and sweet. He died before his 67th birthday in 1986, right when I wished he would live long and prosper.

    He was a businessman, and a couple of hundred people showed up for his funeral. So many told me stories about how wonderful a person he was and how he helped them in their lives. I could have been bitter that he was more present for them than for me, but I never have been.

  60. 60.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 2:55 pm

    @FelonyGovt:

    After my mom died in 1980 we had to figure out how to talk to each other on the phone without him putting my mom on!

    Oh my gosh, yes!  My dad was not a phone talker.  Weather for a minute, and then “here’s your mother!”

  61. 61.

    Ruckus

    June 18, 2023 at 2:56 pm

    Dad passed 22 yrs ago at 84 and for him it was merciful.

    Had my arm around him in his hospital bed.

    He’d had Alzheimer’s for about 15 yrs. Couldn’t even speak.

  62. 62.

    Another Scott

    June 18, 2023 at 3:02 pm

    @WaterGirl: +1

    My dad was scarred for life by AT&T charging $5 a minute or whatever it was back in the olden-days of “long distance”.  At least, that was an additional scarring episode.  I got that from him, too.  ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  63. 63.

    patrick II

    June 18, 2023 at 3:06 pm

    My father joined the Marines with six buddies in December of 1941. My uncle told me much of what happened later, Dad didn’t talk about it much.  He was among those at Iwo Jima who fought his way up Mt Suribachi and one of the few who came back down.  He also fought in Okinawa where during the beach landing where he was shot in the head on the beach, but his helmet saved his life and he was just knocked out and left for dead. He awoke some time later to no one around him but the dead bodies and he had to fight his way through the jungle back to find his company. He was wounded three times in all; shot twice and once hit by mortar shrapnel from which he carried shrapnel in his body for the rest of his life.

     

    On Iwo once at night, a Japanese soldier snuck up behind him in his foxhole with a knife. They fought, Dad won.  Dad did not take trophies from the Japanese he killed with this one exception. He was angry that the guy snuck up behind him and so took his wallet.  He kept a picture of a young Japanese family as a reminder for the rest of his light.  Years later at night, we sat at the kitchen table and after a few drinks, he told me that he often thought of the men he killed and their families and wondered what happened to them. The sadness of them and his own lost friends never left him.

     

    He was that way, God bless him.  Many people come back from war against people of another race and they never get past the racist instincts that may have helped them hate the enemy enough to keep them alive during the war.  But my father never did. He taught me to treat everyone with respect.  Years later I brought home my bride whose father had been in the Japanese Navy.  He treated her like a princess and could not have loved her more. He thought I was the luckiest guy in the world.

    Even if you are on the winning side of a war it takes away so much. Dad died of cancer in his fifties, as did his marine ranger brother a fellow marine all of whom were stationed in Japan and at Nagasaki after the war.

    War is on my mind a lot.  I read Adam every night, and have some sense of the struggle that will go on long after the war is over. God bless those brave soldiers for the war they fight now and their own battles after.

  64. 64.

    Ruckus

    June 18, 2023 at 3:07 pm

    @Ruckus:

    Should have added, I started working for/with my dad when I was 12 and he opened his business. I took it over later, after HS, the navy, and college, although I worked there when I could during those other life events. Dad, as I said above had Alzheimers and was showing signs before it became obvious. So I had to take over the business and owned it longer than he did. And now, as my sister just passed I am the family. Youngest of my family, oldest of the cousins.

  65. 65.

    Eduardo

    June 18, 2023 at 3:17 pm

    My father was a communist’s communist — very relevant because the 29 years I live in his house the country was full blown totalitarian.  He was also an alcoholic,  a homophobe — gays were Castrismo’s favorite minority — and immensely selfish.  What they call now a narcissist.  Oh, he was also physically abusive with my two sisters and me.  I learned to forget/ignore about everything,  and enjoy every little thing I could (food or books or walking around daydreaming).  We were civil when we both were adults and send him medicines and food when he was old.  I never hated him.  But I don’t miss him, never missed him and will never do.  Un cero a la izquierda as we said in Spanish.

    Edit:  He went to 2 wars, courses in the Soviet Union, and worked always long hours.  I went to boarding school from 12-18 years.  All that helped tremendously!

  66. 66.

    UncleEbeneezer

    June 18, 2023 at 3:19 pm

    @StringOnAStick: I’m lucky that my Dad doesn’t really want to talk politics and he isn’t a constant Fox watcher.  He’s mostly disinterested and has reverted back to his BothSides/Libertarian, Don’t Vote It Only Encourages Them bullshit.  But I’m extremely disappointed that the Trump years and Covid didn’t move him in any way, to be better.  Especially given that he has a Chinese-American grandson, yet he’s never said a damn thing about the Trump/GOP-inspired wave of hate crimes and slurs against Asian-Americans.  Like I said, he’s always been good to me and our family, but when I look at his civic activity, he is the typical white, cis, het man who will never lift a finger to help marginalized groups, which just makes me sad, angry and ashamed.

  67. 67.

    Glory b

    June 18, 2023 at 3:25 pm

    My father’s  mother died when he was very young, I’m not sure he ever knew why. He spent most of his childhood in rural south Georgia with his grandparents while his father worked on the railroad. When he remarried, my father went live with him & his stepmother in Jacksonville Florida.

    My father told us that picking cotton was much harder than it looks, the leaves covering the bolls are thick & get hard as it ripened. The points can draw blood & teasing a boll out of the hard pointy keaves without leaving any behind is tricky.

    Hogs are smart & dangerous, their teeth are long and they can kill or maim. You kill them by walking up casually (with all of the men & male teens in the group), hit them in the forehead with a mallet, tie their legs & slice them open before butchering.

    He was always embarrassed about being from Florida but never learning to swim, at most bodies of water close to him black people weren’t allowed to swim.

    He could have played baseball for the Negro leagues or gone to college on the GI Bill. He chose college, his family didn’t think he did well at farming & baseball didn’t pay well. He met my mother there & eventually moved to Pittsburgh (her hometown), where the pay was much better.

    He was a teacher, Counselor & principal. His funeral was so well attended that traffic at the church had to be rerouted. He died in 2015, I miss him every day.

  68. 68.

    Jacqueline Squid Onassis

    June 18, 2023 at 3:29 pm

    My dad wasn’t intentionally abusive.  Nevertheless, my childhood was more brutal than that of nearly anyone you’re likely to meet.  To his credit he did apologize when I was in my early 20s.  He (and my mom) also started treating me better as I seemed less weird what with getting married and having a lucrative career.  That changed once I transitioned and seemed too weird again.

    This will be the worst Fathers’ Day, yet.  He’s spent the year sending me links to articles about trans issues – from FTFNYT, NY Post and other anti-trans mainstream media.  I asked him to stop sending them to me because I didn’t have the bandwidth for those conversations and most of what he sent had bought into the anti-trans propaganda from the fascists.  Last week he sent me an article about Rose Montoya’s activism at the White House and said how stupid and awful that was.  I disagreed (I thought it was pretty genius) and he just kept going.  I finally wrote that he should just stop.  He responded with a long email reiterating how he’s right and he’s not anti-LGBTQ+ and ended it with, “Jeez, you’re so touchy and defensive.”

    Ugh!  I will not be calling him today.

  69. 69.

    Ruckus

    June 18, 2023 at 3:33 pm

    @John S.:

    Typical childhood activities are the one’s you have. We are all human, at least to some degree. Our parents have lives, we have lives, if we have kids, they have lives. Rarely do they ever work out the way intended or desired. The vast majority of humans aren’t that lucky. Or maybe we really are. Life is a journey, without a map, direction or often even a point, other to breathe and exist. All humans do what they can, how and when they can. I never expected to own a bicycle shop, hell I never expected a lot in life, but I’ve gotten a hell of a lot of experiences because I often took risks that others wouldn’t. I’ve also had a different kind of life because of that. But I learned many, many decades ago that life is what you make of it, what you make of what is in front of you, good, bad, indifferent. Pretty sure I didn’t get that from my parents, at least not directly. I got some of it from the literally thousands of books I read, from moments like when mom got me an adult library card when I was 10 or so. She wanted me to be something but she gave me the opportunity to be something different. All in all what my parents gave me was the concept to be an individual, to think, to not hate, to live and let live. And really what more can you give your kids?

  70. 70.

    Eduardo

    June 18, 2023 at 3:35 pm

    @Jacqueline Squid Onassis: The warmest thought to you.  May you leave the best life you can.

  71. 71.

    Miki

    June 18, 2023 at 3:41 pm

    My Dad was an electrical engineer (he worked on the boosters for the first US satellite in the 50s – we went to the same church as the von Brauns), a Republican, an introvert, an Episcopalian deacon (who wasn’t allowed to give sermons), and a man who loved his odd-ball wife (my mom) to the moon and back. He passed on January 31, 2008, fifty years to the day of the launch of that first US satellite.

    He was a really, really decent guy. But tbh, I think he made it hard for his 3 daughters to find life partners – each of us expected our partners to be completely tolerant of our at times exasperating personalities, just like he was with our Mom. Fat chance of that happening, but we sure did try (3 sisters, 8 marriages, no kids). My brother, otoh, remains married to his one and only.

    We were so lucky to have him.

  72. 72.

    Glory b

    June 18, 2023 at 3:51 pm

    • @Miki: LOL, my mother told my father that his daughters wouldn’t be able to get married because we’d expect that our boyfriends would be as good as men as he was.
    • She was wrong, we both have good husband’s. Not perfect like my Dad of course, but perfectly serviceable. 😀
  73. 73.

    Another Scott

    June 18, 2023 at 3:55 pm

    @Jacqueline Squid Onassis: I’m sorry for the pain and annoyance you’re going through.  Take care of yourself.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  74. 74.

    Ruckus

    June 18, 2023 at 3:57 pm

    @Glory b:

    Once on a family drive when I was maybe 6, dad stopped at a cotton field and we picked for a bit. Looked a lot easier than it was. I did learn something though. A lot of humans have to do very hard jobs to live. And a lot of those jobs can make life easier for a lot of other people. And most people don’t have a clue.

  75. 75.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 4:16 pm

    @Eduardo:  Yikes.  Families are complicated.

  76. 76.

    rivers

    June 18, 2023 at 4:20 pm

    The most important thing about my Dad was that he was a decent human being and he taught me how important it is to be a decent human being.

  77. 77.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 4:23 pm

    @patrick II: Just reading that brings the reality of war home in a tangible way. Thanks for sharing that with us.  Wondering if you learned those stories from your uncle while your dad was still alive?

    My dad never talked about the war, either.  All I know is that he worked in communications, running communication lines, etc so behind enemy lines but not in the fighting per se.

    He did tell us one story, though.  I believe he was in Okinawa at Christmas time, and he and his buddies decided they wanted a christmas tree on Christmas Eve.  So they went and cut down a tree and brought it back to camp.

    There was apparently a HUGE amount of snow because in the spring when all the snow melted there was a really tall tree with no top – the one they thought they had “cut down”.  All they had really done was cut the part they could see with all the snow.

  78. 78.

    StringOnAStick

    June 18, 2023 at 4:25 pm

    @UncleEbeneezer: I hear you; I get your disappointment.  My folks had 3 grandkids just over a mile away and never once visited them or invited them over to do grandparent stuff with.  They were addicted to booze and political hate, and workaholics so they could justify never having time for any kid or grandkid.  Always made a big show about “family” at thanksgiving and Christmas though!

    It’s taken decades to not be angry or bitter about it.  I consider it a victory that now I’m mostly uninterested in any of it.

  79. 79.

    Kayla Rudbek

    June 18, 2023 at 4:25 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: maybe he was a bootlegger?

  80. 80.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 4:27 pm

    @Jacqueline Squid Onassis:  After reading what you wrote, I am sad and angry for you. It’s pretty clear to me that your dad is abusive; I am so sorry.  Sounds like your Dad has no clue about the concept of unconditional love.

  81. 81.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 4:29 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:   What a mystery.

    @Kayla Rudbek: That’s a fun thought!

  82. 82.

    StringOnAStick

    June 18, 2023 at 4:30 pm

    @Jacqueline Squid Onassis: Definitely don’t call today.  If he wants to continue to be so hateful about who you are, you don’t need to pretend he deserves your attention, especially on a Hallmark holiday.

  83. 83.

    JPL

    June 18, 2023 at 4:33 pm

    For those who know aaron rupar, his father passed away yesterday.  He has a wonderful tribute on his twitter feed.  Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) / Twitter

    Aaron is the one that watches the news so we don’t have to.

  84. 84.

    SteveinPHX

    June 18, 2023 at 4:37 pm

    My old man came over from England right in after WW I. His mom and dad broke up a few years later and the husband went back. She moved from Michigan to FL, bought a boarding house. Raised my old man. He was a ne’er do well until he met my mom. She wouldn’t marry him until he had some prospects. He was a highschool dropout. He went back to school, finished college and went on to a doctorate in organic chem from Purdue. Raised me and my brother.

    He was a meat n’ potatoes guy, drank a lotta gin, but he and the ol’ lady stayed together. He & I had a few fallouts (major one after my first marriage ended). But in his later in years we got a long OK.

    I was a late arrival to marriage so he never saw my kids. His body just gave out when he turned 74  (Jeez, that was 36 years ago).

    I got my love of fishing and jazz from him. That’s helpful!

    Posted from a phone. Ugh.

  85. 85.

    JPL

    June 18, 2023 at 4:37 pm

    @Jacqueline Squid Onassis:    Just because he was part of your creation, doesn’t entitle him to your love.    You’ve handled it so well.

  86. 86.

    UncleEbeneezer

    June 18, 2023 at 4:37 pm

    @Jacqueline Squid Onassis: Ugh.  I’m so sorry your Dad is like that.  You deserve better.  Virtual hug or whatever is appropriate, to you.

  87. 87.

    Tehanu

    June 18, 2023 at 4:39 pm

    My dad wore exactly the same glasses as in the photo and it really brings him back to me. He’s been gone 9 years now and I still miss him every day.

  88. 88.

    UncleEbeneezer

    June 18, 2023 at 4:42 pm

    @StringOnAStick: I’m mostly not angry and bitter.  Probably 85% over it.  But when I think about it it still upsets me.  Especially since my Mom died on a ventilator (before Covid) and MIL was a double lung transplant who got Covid in icu and while it wasn’t her cause-of-death, it certainly didn’t help.

  89. 89.

    raven

    June 18, 2023 at 4:44 pm

    Me ‘n my old man.

    He was mixed for sure, he’d knock the shit out of me and say “it wasn’t what you said, it was how you said it”. Was it WW2 that fucked him up? I don’t know, his dad was a gentle as could be so I lean toward yes. He’s probably the reason I never had kids.

  90. 90.

    hitchhiker

    June 18, 2023 at 4:54 pm

    I was the first daughter of 8 kids, born after 3 boys, and I think my dad was expecting a Shirley Temple-style girl. With curls. Who liked to be cute and compliant. Who could keep her clothes clean and untorn, and who could sing and dance. Who would be the kind of teenager who had boyfriends.

    Instead he got me … a pudgy, straight-haired child in glasses with a sharp intelligence and no respect for clothes — tho’ in my defense most of what I wore was hand me downs from my brothers.

    I was in my 30s before I understood that we were kind of even, in the sense that he wasn’t the dad I’d have chosen either. We made do. He laughed at my jokes and was happy for me when things went well. When I told him I was going to major in civil engineering, he was very excited, because he thought I’d probably marry an engineer.

    He died in 2001 while my husband was lying paralyzed in a trauma center, having broken his neck a few weeks earlier. I made it to the funeral, traveling alone, and came right back to try to deal with modifications to our house. My siblings told me that he was very proud of how he’d quietly sent me money when I was a dead broke college kid — something that never happened, but I guess it means something that he knew it would have been the right thing to do.

    I don’t know. I’ve now watched my kids and my grandkids having beautiful, rich relationships with their dads, and for me that’s plenty of reason to celebrate this day.

  91. 91.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 5:05 pm

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    The Depression was a really hard time—I have realized that more as I have gotten my mother to open up about farm life in rural Tennessee in the ’30s—so who knows what he experienced?

    This reminds me that I need to make more of an effort to capture as many of my mother’s “stories” as I can.

  92. 92.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    June 18, 2023 at 5:06 pm

    All I can say about my dad is that he was the kind of man that I did not want to be.That and I exist because of him. That’s it.

    Having said that, my wife and kids buried me in t-shirts today because I love t-shirts that have funny shit on them. I’m quite happy to say that I’m not the man my dad was.

    Happy Father’s Day!

  93. 93.

    brantl

    June 18, 2023 at 5:09 pm

    I had a father of the disciplinarian, cold-hearted, socially inept, condescending, thought the sun shown out of his ass variety. Taught my logic, by cutting apart everything I ever said, had seven kids (raised Catholic) that he considered an inconvenience.  Five of his seven kids dis-owned him when he decided to cut our mother’s alimony off without bothering to notify him, after she had cared for all his children through every trial of their lives.

    I wish I could say I miss him, but I only miss the man he could have been.

  94. 94.

    patrick II

    June 18, 2023 at 5:11 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    Most of the stories my Uncle told me when my Dad was still alive.  It made me wish I had been a much better kid.  He was a good father, but had a type of ptsd where everything had to be perfect — he had spent years of his life where just one small mistake could kill you, and it’s very tough for a kid to be that perfect.

    Towards the end of his life while he was fighting cancer, we would stay up late, and only then, when I was older and he was near the end of his life did I hear some of his stories firsthand.  Most are too horrible to repeat here.  War creates immeasurable harm that goes on for generations.

    Once when I was a little boy at a picnic ground I raced my sister and brother back to our picnic table, yelling “Last one there is a dirty rotten n*$@!.  ( I had no idea what the word meant.  My dad stopped me and very gently told me to look at the people at the next table over.  A black family was there, pretending not to hear me.  He told me to never use that word again because it would hurt their feelings. He had me go over and apologize.  It was about 1957, my dad was an Irish working-class guy who had seen what he had seen, but still had a generosity of spirit that, as I am sure you can tell, makes me very proud to be his son.

  95. 95.

    raven

    June 18, 2023 at 5:16 pm

    @Steeplejack: Do it now. I’ll never forgive myself for not getting more from my old man about WW2. I have a few pages that he wrote and the stories he told (mostly after I came home from Vietnam). I knew how to do having done a qual dissertation but still didn’t.

  96. 96.

    raven

    June 18, 2023 at 5:17 pm

    @patrick II: Have you read “A Drinking Life” by Pete Hamill? Sounds like his story.

  97. 97.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 5:25 pm

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: I know it’s not the same, but i learned how to be a good boss at the University from a combination of learning from the best and the worst bosses I ever had.

    So in that way, your dad taught you how to be a good dad, just not in the way we would all have hoped! :-)

  98. 98.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    June 18, 2023 at 5:28 pm

    @brantl:

    Sounds similar to my conservative truck-driving raging alcoholic Catholic dad. Six kids and left our Mom for another woman that he had one kid with. At least he stayed the fuck out of our lives, which we were grateful for.

    I learned from him and did not repeat his mistakes in life.

    @WaterGirl:

    Yup, and I take it to heart like that. Thanks… :)

  99. 99.

    patrick II

    June 18, 2023 at 5:33 pm

    @raven:

    No.  But I have read and enjoyed Hamill, so I will give it a look. Thank you.

  100. 100.

    peter

    June 18, 2023 at 5:35 pm

    My dad died in 2010 but he would have been 100 this July. Like many fathers described here he was a WWII veteran (pharmacist’s mate 2nd class in the navy) and got his PhD in chemistry on the G.I. Bill when he returned from the war. He was quiet and stoic, but solid and reliable and always supportive. He and my mom were a good team. They hated Nixon: I can still hear the sneering contempt in my dad’s voice when he uttered the words “Tricky Dick.” My first memories of politics are from that era, and I think my political outlook was shaped as much by my parents’ quiet Democratic views as by the counterculture of my adolescence. I miss them both but they live on in me and my sons. All of us carry on what mattered to them.

  101. 101.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 5:39 pm

    @raven:

    Yeah, I know, but it has gotten hard with my mom. She’s 94, in (gradually) declining health, and she has edited herself down to a collection of grievances (mostly against my late father) and the regularly stated wish that she would die and it would all be over. Quite a change from the dynamic, loving, creative—and, okay, bipolar—mother I grew up with.

    I used to have success talking with her when I went out to Las Vegas to do my multi-week house-, dog- and mom-sitting sessions when my RWNJ brother went on his motorcycle expeditions. But COVID happened, the dog died, and our mom went into assisted living, so there’s no need for me to go out there, even if my brother did an expedition (which he hasn’t so far).

    Anyway, I would get some sandwiches and drinks and Mom and I would drive out into the desert or up to Mount Charleston and just be outside and sniff the breezes. Then it was much easier to get her to open up about her background—born on a Tennessee farm in 1930, really poor (in a way that I didn’t understand until just recently), and cut off from a lot of society. I don’t think they got electricity and a radio until sometime in the 1940s. She went to nursing school in Nashville after high school, and that was her entry into modern life.

    But I should still make the effort. Once she’s gone there is a tremendous body of knowledge that will be gone forever.

  102. 102.

    Eunicecycle

    June 18, 2023 at 5:55 pm

    @raven: my dad wrote about his experiences in the war as part of his treatment for PTSD. He gave copies to my brother and me, but for some reason it took me a long time to read it. He saw some horrible things and had to do some things that he regretted for the rest of his life. His hospice chaplain said he had a huge amount of guilt.

  103. 103.

    Carlo Graziani

    June 18, 2023 at 6:04 pm

    @WaterGirl: This is one of the best threads that I’ve read on BJ. Thanks.

  104. 104.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    June 18, 2023 at 6:06 pm

    I still have my father’s fedora.  My father was a conventional 1950s man, but I and my mother were not, so he accepted us as we are.  I owe so much to him as he decided just because I was a girl he would still teach me the same things as my brother.  So I can shoot a basketball one handed, hit a baseball, kill at badminton, put on roof shingles, pour concrete, make a fieldstone wall, drive a motorcycle, drive a stick, change oil, and paint a room.  Thank you, Dad.

  105. 105.

    Betty Cracker

    June 18, 2023 at 6:08 pm

    @Steeplejack: Is she still physically able to do a picnic like you described? Sounds like the perfect opportunity if so, even if you don’t have a dog/house-sitting gig.

  106. 106.

    jackmac

    June 18, 2023 at 6:20 pm

    I was afraid of my dad.

    He had a bad temper, drank far too much, there was violence in the household and he couldn’t hold onto a job. Then his wife (my mom) unexpectedly died in 1963 and it broke him. My brother and I (ages 8 and 7) were taken away from him and we were ultimately raised in a group home.

    He died three years later in 1966.

    My dad fought in World War II and I suspect something bad happened while on duty. Today he might have been diagnosed with untreated PTSD. All I can do is speculate.

    But I am certain about this. I vowed to never be like him.

    I’ve had a sometimes rocky road (another story entirely), but I didn’t want my kids (now ages 31 and 24) to deal with the same. So the disrupted home life, lack of support and violence did not continue into a new generation.

    I love my kids dearly. And on this Father’s Day as they express their love, I know they mean it too.

  107. 107.

    Albatrossity

    June 18, 2023 at 6:33 pm

    I lost my dad to esophageal cancer in 1985; he would have turned 65 in December of that year and was planning to retire. My eldest was three at the time; my other two kids were not yet born and would never know their paternal grandpa. Which is a shame, because he loved his kids and grandkids immensely.

    My memories of him are that he was empathetic, artistic, and hard-working. He never had much success in business, and photography studios are a business, even if you are at heart an artist. But he provided us (I have 5 siblings) with every non-monetary thing we needed to be successful. A love of learning, a solid work ethic, an appreciation for reading, and the understanding that family and community were important if any of our individual efforts were going to succeed. As well as a sense of humor that honored the ability to laugh, even at oneself,

    That latter quality is seen in this picture, taken by my mom sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Dad was wearing his WWII issue Army Air Corps trench coat, and had just come in from the porch where he was watching the clouds, aka doing what all Kansans do when there is a tornado watch. I look at this picture and I can hear him chuckling at himself.

    And my son still has the trench coat, which is holding up very well some 80 years after it was issued to my dad!

  108. 108.

    raven

    June 18, 2023 at 6:39 pm

    @Eunicecycle: Guilt is widespread among vets.

  109. 109.

    raven

    June 18, 2023 at 6:41 pm

    @Steeplejack: I know it’s not easy.

  110. 110.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 6:46 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    I don’t know how mobile she is, but I could probably trundle her down the street to the little playground/​park that is near her facility in Boulder City (just outside Las Vegas). There is a small herd of bighorn sheep that occasionally ambles in to mingle with the playground kids. She gets a kick out of that.

    The last time I was out there for an expedition was the autumn of 2019, and her big negative slide happened after that. It’s hard to judge the overall picture, because phone calls are somewhat inadequate (and depressing!).

    I am tentatively planning to go out there later this year. First I have to get through my stint as estate manager at Sighthound Hall while the mob is in Europe this summer. That starts next week! Just (non-sighthound) Chipley von Chippendale and me puttering around the cavernous chambers.

  111. 111.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 6:47 pm

    @jackmac: 💕

  112. 112.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 6:49 pm

    @Steeplejack: I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get more out of my father about his acquaintance with Frank Lloyd Wright. And I actually have memoirs he wrote, but they are pretty repetitive and don’t really get to the good stuff. He was a kind of Zelig, having encountered everyone from Franz Josef to Nikita Khrushchev. (And it’s all true!)

  113. 113.

    WaterGirl

    June 18, 2023 at 6:49 pm

    @Albatrossity: I saw that photo and I laughed out loud.  Your dad’s sense of humor memorialized for all time.  What a special photo.

  114. 114.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 6:49 pm

    @jackmac: That’s so sweet.

  115. 115.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 6:51 pm

    @Albatrossity:

    A love of learning, a solid work ethic, an appreciation for reading, and the understanding that family and community were important if any of our individual efforts were going to succeed. As well as a sense of humor that honored the ability to laugh, even at oneself,

    That sounds like my parents.

  116. 116.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 7:00 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    Occasionally I kick myself for not “interviewing” my father to untangle and make sense of all of his disconnected anecdotes and family memories. I went to J-school and was a shoe-leather newspaper reporter for seven years! Ugh. He died 12 years ago, so that opportunity is gone.

  117. 117.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 7:07 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    Glad to see you! I consider you my Endeavour sherpa, so maybe you can help me out. (But no pressure!)

    I won’t be watching the new season tonight, because I am way, way behind and need to get caught up (on PBS Passport). I need help figuring out where to go back to. I look at the thumbnail episode descriptions on IMDB and I’m lost.

    I think I want to go back and start again at the point right after Thursday beats up the guy his daughter was living with and Endeavour has a bit of closure with her in a meeting at a bar. (Perhaps I’m conflating two different episodes.) My memory is that the next case was Endeavour getting involved with a rich couple, the wife of whom was coming on to him.

    Hope this makes sense. Question is, can you (or anyone) give me a clue which season that was?

  118. 118.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 7:17 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    It’s amazing the little nuggets that get lost, or could be. My mom once mentioned in passing that she got hit on by Tennessee Ernie Ford (“Sixteen Tons”) at some formal social event. Whut?

  119. 119.

    Another Scott

    June 18, 2023 at 7:21 pm

    @Steeplejack:

    WGBH summary of Endeavour seasons. It looks like you’re in Season 4.

    Thursday takes the next best action: roughing up her boyfriend, which only results in worse repercussions for his daughter.

    HTH!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  120. 120.

    oldgold

    June 18, 2023 at 7:37 pm

    I had a very good dad. He loved and took very good care of his family. Not that he was perfect. Particularly, early on, his untreated PTSD following WW II, where he was badly wounded twice, first in Bastogne and later in Colditz, presented some challenges. But, at some point, that seemed to abate, and thereafter, with rare exception, he was everything one could hope for as a dad.

    Here is an example of the kind of dad he was. In May of ‘70 my college closed during the Days of Rage following Kent State. A few days after I got home there was an anti war protest scheduled in the town square of my home town. That morning I quietly and somewhat tentatively told my parents I was going to attend. Dad said, “Good, we’ll go together.” That night, with his Purple Heart and Cluster pinned to his crisp white business shirt,  down the street we marched. 

     

  121. 121.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 7:38 pm

    @Another Scott:

    Thanks! I got behind, and knew I was behind, so I quit watching to avoid cumulative spoilers. Now I’m ready to binge into the great beyond.

    ETA: Thanks again! I started reading that WGBH article, and it is much better than the IMDB thumbnails. I think I know where to start now.

  122. 122.

    brantl

    June 18, 2023 at 7:39 pm

    Sorry, that was “bother to notify her”, not “him”.

  123. 123.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 7:39 pm

    @oldgold:

    Awesome story!

  124. 124.

    Spadizzly

    June 18, 2023 at 7:42 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    He was a kind of Zelig, having encountered everyone from Franz Josef to Nikita Khrushchev. (And it’s all true!)

    You must have some really amazing stories! (I can relate, somewhat)

  125. 125.

    brantl

    June 18, 2023 at 7:44 pm

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: The biggest damage he did was that he made all his kids feel as though they were an infestation that he would be best rid of.

  126. 126.

    Manyakitty

    June 18, 2023 at 7:45 pm

    My dad is still kicking and about to be 80. He tells great stories about working at NASA Lewis (now Glenn) in Cleveland while on summer break from undergrad at Case. He met my mom while working on his PhD in theoretical physics at Pitt, sharing research (via their advisors) with the likes of Kip Thorne and Stephen Hawking.

    That eventually evolved into a career in optometry which took him from Ohio to Florida, which is currently the only place I go when I take time off work. He and my mom have been married 54 years.

    My brother and I are planning a big birthday party for him in August. He’s a good guy.

  127. 127.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 8:06 pm

    @Steeplejack: it’s hard to do

  128. 128.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 8:07 pm

    @Steeplejack: There was a whole season I didn’t watch the one with the rich guy and his wife and Venice etc. thinking back I think that was season seven because I did watch season eight and this is going to be season nine

  129. 129.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 8:08 pm

    @Steeplejack: oh gawd don’t tell me he was a me too. I loved him

  130. 130.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 8:09 pm

    @Spadizzly: yes he was amazing

  131. 131.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 8:17 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    LOL. It was the late ’50s or early ’60s, and it was some Air Force event. (My father was an Air Force doctor, and Ford was an Army Air Corps veteran from World War II.) I think it was more like a Joey from Friends “How you doin’?” thing. No trauma involved.

  132. 132.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 8:30 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    That’s about the point where I definitely know I lost the thread, but, thanks to Another Scott’s link above to the WGBH summary, I’m going to start with the last episode of Season 4.

    . . . Hmm, checking that article against the IMDB thumbnail descriptions, I actually remember most or all of the episodes of seasons 5 and 6. So I think I’ll watch all of that Season 4 ender to get closure on Joan, then lightly skip through to get to the decadent rich couple and Venice in Season 7.

    On a related note, my local Brit-centric PBS station has been running early episodes of Lewis, and I have been mildly surprised to see that I like them better than later ones. Lewis’s relationship with Hathaway is pricklier but also deeper, and there are some nice callbacks to Morse. In one episode Lewis runs into a German woman who dated Morse in the past, which turns out to be a significant plot point.

  133. 133.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 8:31 pm

    @Steeplejack: good!

  134. 134.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 8:33 pm

    @Steeplejack: yes I like it before he and Laura got involved, much as I like her

  135. 135.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 8:35 pm

    @Steeplejack: we just saw the ur-Lewis. Whately played the sidekick detective on a Joan Hickson Marple, A Murder Is Announced

  136. 136.

    Eduardo

    June 18, 2023 at 8:36 pm

    @WaterGirl: Yes, thank you.  And thank you for your memories and this thread.

  137. 137.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 8:50 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    I remember that! Have you come around to “Joan Hickson is the best Marple” yet? (No pressure.)

  138. 138.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 9:00 pm

    @Steeplejack: Well . . . she is undeniably very good. But we did an experiment — we watched the same mystery first with Hickson and then with the much-maligned Geraldine McEwan. We really thought McEwan had her own quite valid interpretation of the character, and more warmth. I have to admit I haven’t read very many Marples (more Poirots for some reason), so I’m not sure if the coldness is supposed to be there or not. I enjoy both women’s performances. Julia McKenzie, on the other hand, doesn’t really work, although she tries hard.

  139. 139.

    Lyrebird

    June 18, 2023 at 9:05 pm

    @jackmac: Your story really inspired me.  I don’t know about your rocky spots, and my kids who are old enough to care don’t like for me to say anything about their hard times, even anonymously, so I don’t know what else I can really say.  Big respect heading your way for your persistence and what you did as a parent.

     

    @WaterGirl: Thanks for the thread and the awesome photo.  My father has been a huge presence in my life.  He hasn’t done as well post-stroke as Tamara’s dad, from what I gather.  It hurts to admit it.  I did make sure to send him a note today.

  140. 140.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    June 18, 2023 at 9:11 pm

    @brantl:

    Our dad actually kidnapped us to avoid child support. He was able to hide us for a couple of months until our Mom showed up with the cops. I will never forget that day. I do everything I can to not remember that time. He never wanted us and never wanted to have to pay for us.

    I can relate…

  141. 141.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 9:17 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    Pretty much agree with you. I don’t malign Geraldine McEwan; she does have a valid interpretation of the character. Even Julia McKenzie works for me, to a certain extent. I think I blame the writing or maybe the direction to make it “cozier”? I think I prefer Hickson because she gives you a glimpse of the steely intellect beneath the surface. With the other two there is too often a feeling of “I’m a nice old lady and look at these facts I stumbled upon.” Maybe the cozy factor. And I’m overemphasizing it as I write about it. I watch them all when they come on.

    I’ve only read the first Marple so far (The Murder at the Vicarage). The narrator is the vicar, and he relays (and sort of agrees with) the general impression that Marple is one of the nosy “old cats” in the village who monitor everything. But—unlike the police inspector, of course—he realizes that she is exact in her observations and almost always correct in her conclusions. Haven’t started The Body in the Library yet, partly because I’ve seen the TV adaptations and know what the big spoiler is.

  142. 142.

    zhena gogolia

    June 18, 2023 at 9:22 pm

    @Steeplejack: I think The Murder in the Vicarage is the only one I’ve read too! Somehow it’s always been the Poirots that have come my way to read.

  143. 143.

    HinTN

    June 18, 2023 at 9:27 pm

    @Ruckus: Most wonderfully eloquent exposition of this human condition. Thank you.

  144. 144.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 9:34 pm

    @zhena gogolia:

    Yeah, I bounced back to The Murder on the Links for my second Poirot. Again, I know what the big plot twist is from TV, but it feels less spoiler-ed.

  145. 145.

    Omnes Omnibus

    June 18, 2023 at 10:24 pm

    I just got back from spending the weekend with my parents.  My dad went to the local butcher and got a big pile of ribeyes for the the family.  At 80, his favorite role is pater familias, and it would have been useless for my brother or I to have suggested that we buy or cook them (I did get to saute the mushrooms).  It was a good weekend.

    My dad was only 21 when I was born and finished his education while I was a young child.  We weren’t well off when I was small, but our home was always full of books, music, and art.  Almost any place my parents went, they took me because they couldn’t afford babysitters.  I went to artists’ parties in Old Town, I went hiking and camping, and I went to the 1968 Democratic Convention (I had just turned four).  I wouldn’t trade the childhood my parents gave me for anything.

    For better or worse, my dad was my model for how to be a man.  I still rescue spiders and lose my patience in traffic jams because he taught me that that was how it was done.  I hope the irritable, old son of a bitch is around for many years to come.

  146. 146.

    Steeplejack

    June 18, 2023 at 11:25 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    👍 🥂

  147. 147.

    Racer X

    June 19, 2023 at 6:58 am

    Thank you for this.

  148. 148.

    Paul in KY

    June 19, 2023 at 9:56 am

    My dad is 98 years and 9 months old. He’s still hanging in there. Has dementia, though it hasn’t robbed him of his kind & funny personality. He’s in hospice care right now and I doubt he will last the Winter. He’s been a great father to me & my sister & a wonderful husband to his wife. He grew up in Eastern KY and enlisted in Army. Fought across Europe with Patton’s 3rd. He summed up his experiences in the war with: ‘A lot of people shot at me, Paul. They all missed’.

    He went on to a 20 year career in USAF. Had a couple more careers after that. The hardest worker I have ever met.

  149. 149.

    jackmac

    June 19, 2023 at 3:34 pm

    @Lyrebird: Belated response. Sorry. But thank you so much for your kind comments!

  150. 150.

    WaterGirl

    June 19, 2023 at 9:51 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: I love every word you wrote.

  151. 151.

    WaterGirl

    June 19, 2023 at 9:52 pm

    So many wonderful stories in this thread.  Thank you.

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