My Old Man

My parents gave me and my brother a pretty great childhood. They provided a loving, supportive home; taught us the value of work and determination; put us through college; and were extremely generous. We lived a short walk to the neighborhood pool; a massive park with fields for baseball and football, tennis and basketball courts, swing sets, walking paths and sledding trails; and woods with paths that led to a lake with an abandoned car, our elementary school, even downtown Rockville.

I remember Saturday mornings in the winter my dad would sometimes take us duckpin bowling or to the pool hall on Rockville Pike to give my mom a brief break from us. A treat, believe it or not, was to go to the car wash afterward and watch through the windshield as the soapy water sprayed and the brushes spun while we sat inside dry but accosted by the noise.

Sometimes dad would pull into the gas station and fill ‘er up, meticulously recording in a little green book with lined paper the mileage, amount of fuel taken on (and figuring in his head and recording the miles per gallon), and the cost – he was, after all, an engineer. Then we would stop at McDonald’s and bring home lunch.

One time he took us fishing in a rented rowboat on the Potomac River. I flipped my new Zebco rod back to ready the cast that would send the lure flying into the brown water but instead hooked my dad’s fishing hat and received a good chewing out.

He loved to golf and tried to teach me, but the golf gene didn’t carry over to me. My brother, on the other hand, was a natural. He also was inclined to math and science like our dad. They did things together, like building a short wave radio and rebuilding the engine of an MG-B GT.

My dad also loved the latest electronic gadgets and cars. We were among the first families in our neighborhood to have pushbutton phones and a color TV. He had a massive stereo to play his LPs – Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, Patty Paige – for the three-table bridge parties he and my mom hosted. He had a long-term goal of owning a new Cadillac: He first bought a used 1961 Caddie that was three years old, then a two-year-old 1967 model, and eventually bought his treasured new one.

He also loved to go on cruises that my mom organized. They traveled the globe and probably went on 20 or more cruises. There’s almost nowhere on earth they didn’t go. My dad, the garrulous extrovert of the family, was in his element. He loved meeting new people and striking up friendships.

While my dad couldn’t instill in me golf skills, he did teach me humility, respect, dignity and courage when faced with adversity, love, and humor.

My dad married my mom when he was 20 (and she just 17), served in the Navy and then went to George Washington University on the G.I. Bill. Upon graduation with an electrical engineering degree, he had a job lined up with Westinghouse, but his job offer was rescinded when the company learned he had been diagnosed with epilepsy, an illness that shadowed him throughout his life. He instead went to work for the federal government.

I was present for a few of his grand mal seizures – not pretty sights for a son. He endured them and the stigma of his disease throughout his life, and it was a series of seizures when he was in acute care at the retirement community where he and my mom lived that ultimately took him.

I have a few mementos: his leather-top desk, a pair or two of his cufflinks, a ring, the 18-inch bamboo slide rule that he used to make trigonometric calculations. I wish I had that little green book with his mileage notations.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads!