My dad passed away many years ago, so I cannot spend this Father’s Day with him. But I am thinking about him today. I keep recalling the last time I saw him.
It was years ago, on Saturday, October 21, 1989. The kids and I drove to Killbuck for the afternoon to visit Mom and Dad. I took Dad the apple pie I had baked for him that morning. He liked all the pies I baked, except for lemon meringue, which he always said tasted like soap. His favorite by far was apple, and that was the kind he usually requested when I asked him if he wanted me to bake a pie. It was fall then, the peak of apple season. He always reminded me, when we discussed the pie question, to make sure I made that pie thick, really thick, with way more apples than were called for in the recipe. He liked his apple pies mile high.
I remember it was a warm and sunny fall day and we had an enjoyable visit with Mom and Dad, but by late afternoon the kids were anxious to head home. Drue was a freshman in high school and Erin was a sixth grader, and they had things to do and people to see. Two days later, on the evening of October 23, my brother called to tell me that Dad had died of a massive heart attack.
I adored my dad. If he had walked on water in front of me, I would not have been a bit surprised. And I always felt loved and adored by him. I’m so happy, to this day, that I told Dad and Mom that I loved them as frequently as I did.
My Dad had two mottoes. One motto was: Peace at any price. The other was: Turn the other cheek. I know that I mentioned in an earlier blog that those particular mottoes were kind of double-edged swords for me. But my dad tried very hard to live those maxims.
My Dad’s childhood was far from comfortable. He was a master storyteller and he told me a story every night of my childhood… at least until I decided that I was no longer a child, and the stories mostly ended. Many of those tales of his childhood, which I called his “three boy stories”, and some of his war stories made me laugh. However, some of the stories he told me, about his childhood and the Great War, made me wince and sometimes even cry. If I ever wondered aloud about the veracity of his war stories, he had the photos he took on Guam to prove the story’s validity.
I could never get the sad stories of his childhood out of my head. I did not doubt these stories were true. His twin brother, my Uncle Fred, and his younger brother, my Uncle Bob, told them the same way, whenever you could get them to, which wasn’t often. They mostly wanted to forget their youth.
My Dad and his brothers lost their mom to tuberculosis two weeks before he and Fred turned 7 and their brother Bob was 3. Within a year, their dad, Carl, remarried their mother’s best friend, Mildred. Four years after his second marriage, ten days before Frank and Fred turned twelve, and Bob was eight, their father died of tuberculosis. This was in late January 1925. A month earlier, Mildred and Carl had lost their two-year-old daughter to tuberculosis. Mildred was five months pregnant with their second daughter. She lost her first child and her husband within a month.
So, she did what most would consider unthinkable. She told her three young stepsons to pack a few things and get out. She told them she did not care where they went, but they were never to return home, for it was no longer their home, but hers. With the clothes on their back, each carrying a small box with a few pitiful items in each, they left the home where they had been born. They walked a few miles to their grandmother Louise’s house. Their grandfather, Fred, their father’s father, had died the summer before. Louise had quit farming after her husband passed. But when those three boys showed up on her doorstep, she resumed farming and raised them with love and very little money.
As a result of his childhood, my dad acquired those mottoes I referred to earlier. He never wanted to fight with anyone. He couldn’t stand to hear voices raised in anger.
Dad always said that I would go to college. He never had the opportunity, and so he was determined that I would. He dearly wanted me to become a teacher, which was probably the main reason I majored in English and entered the field of education. I always wanted to please my dad.
Today is Father’s Day, and although it’s been more than thirty years since I saw my dad, I still miss him, and always will. Happy Father’s Day to dads everywhere. If you’re lucky enough to have your dad, don’t let the day pass without calling or visiting him. I can’t do either, so I think I will bake a mile high pie.
As Todd just said of my dad, “He grew up hard, but he always had boundless optimism. He always had that smile on his face.”
Yes, he did.
Skinner Road Almanac 