Dad

I’m aware that biologically, all my readers – not just my brother and sister – have fathers, some living, some deceased.  As my brother has children, he is also a father.  Me?  Not yet – to my knowledge.   This is my tribute to my dad.  Rest in Peace.

Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1928.  He grew up during the Great Depression.   His first job as a teenager was working in a mortuary.  He was too young to fight in WWII, and by the Korean War he was in the seminary.  He said our grandfather was a chauffeur for the Mayor of NYC.   He went to Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School in Brooklyn.  Strangely, he's the only one of his siblings without a Brooklyn accent.  Moreover, he didn't seem to share my uncles' typical pride in being from Brooklyn.

Priest.  He became a Catholic priest.  In Brooklyn this was a big deal.  Major big shot.  He talked of giving last rites, especially at the scene of grisly auto accidents.   Eventually he transferred to Canada, eh, then to the DC area.  Remarkably, my Mom went to his parish but only recalls seeing him once – at a donut function.

’55 Chevy.   When still a priest, he bought one of the first ’55 Belairs, with the new small block Chevy V8 (nope, not a 327).  It was jet black.  Bad ass.  Unfortunately that was the first year for all of that, so the Chevy engineers hadn’t worked out all the bugs yet, and the dealership gave him a hard time about fixing it.  A car dealer ripping off a PRIEST?  Come on, you really have to be a hardcore scumbag to rip off a priest.  That was it for muscle cars for him.

Dept of Commerce.  At some point in the mid-60s, he decided he wanted out of the priesthood.  He applied for, and received, a release from his vows.  Mind you, he was (and always was) very handsome, so I’m sure his female congregation felt, “what a waste”.  Not only that, I have lots of cousins, most of whom are older than me (all my first cousins are) and some of whom were even baptized by him.  While Dad never expressly confided his reasons for leaving the priesthood, we can speculate with some degree of plausibility that wanting to start a family was probably the #1 reason.  

My Dad met my Mom when they were both working in the Lyndon Johnson White House.  He worked for the Bureau of the Budget, she was the Big Guy’s personal nurse.  [By the way, this business of LBJ whipping out his Johnson was BS, she said.  The worst he’d do was continue a conversation while he was on the toilet, without closing the door.]

His civilian job with the Dept. of Commerce involved tourism and lots of travel.   He brought back lots of cool stuff.  The ultimate perk was getting a position at the US Embassy in Paris, so we moved there in January 1979 and lived there until August 1990.   Needless to say, living in Paris was interesting.  I’ve covered my travels in earlier blogs, here I’ll just give him the richly deserved credit for making those travels possible. 

Hard work.   To say he was hardworking would be an understatement.  I think he deliberately took as much as he could, and felt that anything less than maximum effort was being a lazy bum. 

Sense of humor.   Despite this, he had a strong sense of humor.  Both his brothers, my Uncle Buddy and Uncle Raymond, were also huge jokers.  The one I remember most was his claim whenever we wanted to go somewhere he wasn’t thrilled about taking us, usually Toys R Us:  “didn’t you hear?  There was a huge fire, it all burned down.”  Oddly, none of his jokes ever got dull.

Warmth.   Also very carinhoso, as the Brazilians would say.   Usually hardworking people are dour and serious, with little compassion.  He was as warm as a person could be.  He’d get angry, but not easily, and if you pissed him off you’d really screwed up.

 

Better Call Saul.  I’m proud that I managed to finish law school and pass the bar well before he passed away.  He took immense pride that I was a practicing attorney, representing ordinary people and appearing in court as a trial lawyer.  

Demise.  In December 2004, I was due to meet up with him and my mom around 2 p.m. to work on my apartment.  I had a traffic case that morning, but the client knew he was guilty and I had a reasonable expectation of pleading the case out, as most such cases do, thus I’d be back at home in time to meet up with him.  On this day, the Commonwealth’s Attorney (prosecutor) was late, and although I did successfully plead out the case, I was back to the office by 2 instead of noon.  I called him to tell him that, and he said no big deal, we’d meet up on a different day.

That evening, I was on my way to the gym, when my sister called.  My father had collapsed in the kitchen in our parents’ apartment in Frederick, Maryland.  My brother and I drove with my Mom to the hospital in Hagerstown, Maryland, just about 30 minutes west of Frederick, where we discovered the awful truth:  my dad had a stroke.   This was not the kind where he wakes up half-asleep and can’t use half his body.  This was the kind where your brain explodes from the inside out and you’re effectively brain-dead forever.  He never woke up or regained consciousness.  It was GAME OVER.  And it was sudden, out of the blue.  I’ll never forget it.  

Dad is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, due to my Mom being a former LCDR (Sturmbannfuhrerin) in the US Navy (during Vietnam, not WWII - she's not that old).  My uncle, a former WWII B24 pilot (his older brother) is also buried nearby.   Oddly, his parents' tombstone in the Brooklyn cemetery has his name on it (1928- ) presumably because they purchased the stone when he was still a priest.

Fortunately my Mom is still around, and she’s older now than he was when he died.  We try to take care of her as best we can.  But we’ll never forget Dad.