Reflections on your Dad

[Anthony]

With all the talk about Mother's Day I got to thinking about my Dad. We had a strange relationship in many ways, but I miss talking to him and about the history and people that he touched during his life.

My Dad was a dentist and a U.S. Army medical officer in the Army of liberation and occupation of Germany. He liberated some of the concentration camps and personally witnessed the Holocaust. Later he was assigned to the Nuremburg War Trials and medically treated and yes befriended people like Rudolf Hess and Admiral Karl Donitz, the father of the Wolf Pack. I miss my talks with him about this part of history. He hated what the Nazis had done, especially to the Jews and would always get upset at people that denied the Holocaust. He would quietly explain that he was there. However, almost paradoxically he told me about the nice dinners he had with people like Hess and Donitz. Hess had tried to make peace with England and sat out the war for the most part. Donitz was Kriegsmarine, a Navy guy, and not the Nazi in many respects that others of Hitler's underlings were. I have to admit, my Dad considered them friends. He was very much an American, hated the Nazis and was a patriot.

When talking about the Germans of WWII, my Dad would always say that they were evil, but boy did they have nice uniforms. :smile:

What unusual things do you remember about your Dad?

 

[rottydaddy]

Interesting. I was just watching a documentary the other day about the capture and incarceration of the top Nazis at Nuremburg. Goering definitely could be a charmer, even though he was possibly the most sincere (and most vile)Nazi of the bunch that was captured. That may have made it possible for him to get ahold of his cyanide so that he could "check out" just before he was scheduled to hang (a remarkable story).

I was never close to my old man, even estranged for a long time, but I did find out some interesting stuff about him after his death (he never spoke much about his past):

-My surname is actually his mother's maiden name- he was adopted (for reasons which are unclear) by his mother's brother and his wife. My paternal grandpa was actually Polish, not Irish... just adds to my typically American mongrel pedigree (1/4 Polish, 1/2 Irish, 1/4 Russian Jew).

-Unhappy in that home, my father thought he'd found an out when he elisted in the Army just after the Pearl Harbor attack... but they discharged him the next day when they discovered he was 16.
He had to wait 1(?) year, at which point he was drafted and ended up in the Coast Guard. I knew he'd been in the USCG, but did not know until after he died that he'd been discharged from that outfit during the war with a "nervous condition" (which could mean any number of things).

Good chance I wouldn't be here if he'd made it into the first wave of Army recruits, but I guess he was also at some risk on patrol off the eastern seaboard (although the only "action" he ever described was "I think we saw another ship once").

-I also found out he'd suffered a nasty head injury around that time (car accident), and had a steel plate put in his skull. Not sure if that had anything to do with his discharge, but it definitely explains his mood swings... all those years I though he was just grouchy by nature, nobody ever told me he suffered brutal migraines for most of his life, or how his childhood conributed to a lifelong bitterness and insecurity.


-I'd advise anyone with a tight-lipped Dad to try harder to get to know him, before it's too late.

 

[Pilawt]

I posted the following here in November 2005:

I’ve had almost nine weeks now, since the onset of my father’s illness, to think of an appropriate tribute to him. During much of that time I feared with good reason that the tribute would be posthumous. I can gladly spare you the suspense, however, and tell you that he has pulled through and he will be all right. But the story still needs to be told.

He grew up in central Florida, spending long hours lying on his back in the grass, watching the Martin B-26 bombers (”one a day in Tampa Bay”) and other wartime craft take off and land at his hometown field. At age 15, shortly after his mother died, he took a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles to live with his older sister. He married young, a child (yours truly) came along, and he had to set his love of airplanes aside for a long time. A young policeman’s salary in those days was hardly enough to satisfy a craving for flight.

The flying bug is hereditary, and I was hooked at a young age. As I got into the awkward teen years, my dad seized the opportunity to forge a lasting bond between us. We both started flying lessons. As it happened I got my private license first, on my seventeenth birthday, in August 1968. He passed his checkride about three weeks later, and soon he bought a used Cessna 150 in which we both took our advanced training. We haven’t flown together often (the few trips we did fly together were memorable), but for nearly four decades we’ve never lacked for exciting things to talk about, and we always look forward to the next chance to share our flying experiences.

In 1988 he bought a ten-year-old Skyhawk, and since then he has turned it into a real showpiece. Now it has a 180-hp Lycoming, Power-Flo exhaust, Lasar ignition, gap seals, new interior, etc., etc. The original exterior paint looks factory new.

When my mother became ill in the early 1990s, he didn’t fly much. He was too busy taking care of her. After she died in 1995, the airplane and his airport pals became the focus of his life. Often he flew from his home in southern Oregon to airshows and fly-ins around the western states. In 1998 the Skyhawk took him to his 50th high school reunion, which was held in Laughlin, Nevada. There he met up with an old school flame. Three years later my airplane carried my wife and me to Southern California for their wedding. The wedding was performed by his grandson — my son — an ordained pastor, who himself had soloed a Cessna 152 the year before.

My dad and his new bride have two homes — his Oregon property, and a condominium in San Diego County. Naturally the Skyhawk has been the primary mode of transportation between the two.

On September 30, 2005, at the San Diego condo, my dad suffered a ruptured thoracic aneurysm. He was airlifted by helicopter to a hospital in Escondido. It was almost his last flight. The helicopter crew did not expect to deliver a living patient. He was rushed into 3-1/2 hours of surgery, taking ten units of blood. The doctor told us he had a 5 to 10 percent chance of survival that night.

My wife and I bought tickets on the first airline flight from Portland to San Diego the next morning. I had a window seat. Weather was clear. As we flew over I couldn’t help but stare at places that had been important to my dad and me over the years — Yosemite National Park, where he took me camping; Columbia Airport, where he loved to go for fly-ins; places where we used to live; the college where he helped pay my tuition, and so on, all the way to San Diego.

He was comatose and on a respirator for three weeks. Circulatory complications forced amputation of his left lower leg. As late as October 20 the doctors were saying things looked bad and we should prepare for the worst. But he rallied and came out of it. He was finally transferred out of critical care, and spent a couple of weeks in rehab. Two days before Thanksgiving he was discharged to go home to the condo. He is receiving outpatient therapy and is looking forward to getting the leg prosthesis. He and his droll sense of humor (”Well, I don’t have to worry about that bunion any more”) are both alive and well.

We had much to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving holiday. Amid the feelings of relief for his recovery I am so grateful for what he did to bring us together as a family, through the magic of flight. I am grateful to my lovely step-mother for selflessly caring for him. I am grateful to my dad’s mechanic and fellow “airport bums” for being such loyal friends.

Whether or not he will ever regain his medical certificate, I’m certain that he will someday soon fly that Skyhawk again, with another pilot — maybe me — alongside.

Y’know, there are some people who have this funny idea that airplanes are inanimate objects, just manufactured assemblies of metal, rubber and cloth. Uh-uh, can’t fool me. I know better.


​

UPDATE: I flew with him in his Skyhawk, with my son in the back seat, on June 24, 2006 (photos below). He flew like he hadn’t missed a day. He remained hopeful of regaining his medical certificate until the onset of kidney cancer in the summer of 2008. He left us as he lived, with quiet dignity and grace, on November 9, 2008.

 

[RogerT]

My dad died of throat cancer 21 yrs ago. Cigars and pipe smoking is
bad for you. What a waste.

He was in WW II (95th Infantry Division), but would never talk about
it. A few years ago my daughter was asking about it because of history
class in school. So I wrote to one of his old buddies who went thru it
with him. My mother still had his address.

I was floored. This guy wrote me back about a 4 page letter detailing
every where they'd been and what they did. I had no idea what they'd
done and gone through. My dad was a squad leader, earned a Bronze
Star. Knowing him, you'd just have never even thought about anything
like that. He went, did his duty, got back and tucked away in the back of
his mind and went on about living his life and making a family. What
amazes me is these guys didn't think they did anything special, they
were just serving their country and doing their duty.

When I enlisted in the Army in 69, I could tell that spark was still
there though and he was proud I was doing that. He was always
interested in what we were doing and how we were training and
stuff.

Something's definitely been missing from my life for these years and
it would have been nice to have him to hang around with.

RT

 

[markb5900]

The things I remember most about my dad are the talks we would have since I moved away. When I lived 10 miles away, we would see each other maybe once every 3 or 4 months. Once I moved 400 miles away, we saw each other every month or so.
We would talk on the phone at least once a week and email back and forth daily.
Dad could be mean at times. When I enlisted in the Marines, he told me I would never make it out of boot camp. When I graduated from boot camp, he bought tickets to fly out and be there for it though.
The thing I remember the most about him though was the work ethic that he had. He would tell me for as long as I can remember "if you can't be there when they need you, they don't need you". I guess that was his way of coping at times. I can't remember him ever "calling in". When I was growing up, he worked 7 days a week on second shift. The plant he worked at only shut down on Christmas day.
But I can say that I have told my kids that same line more times than I could ever count.
We were lucky that he did get to see his first Great grandchild born and had some time to play with him before he passed.
My father passed away on June 22, 2008. ( http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22417 )

It seems we all can and do write the niceties about our mothers (as we should!!!) but it is not often that we get to write about our fathers. Thanks for starting this thread, it was nice to do this.

Mark B

 

[Ghery]

This thread hurts. My Dad is lying in a hospital bed in the living room of their condo. He isn't going to get better. The only question is when, not if. And he's been there 4 weeks longer than the doctors thought. They gave him about 48 hours to live, 4 weeks ago. I might make a run across the state this weekend to see him one last time.

I've been preparing something to say at his service when the time comes. My brother needs to get his input on it as well. But I want to share the last few lines I have written. I'm talking about unintended consequences of actions, specifically of an action he took in 1961 when we moved to Pullman. That being my meeting the girl who would become my wife.

"... but that unintended consequence is that Marilyn and I have been married for 35 years and counting. But we had good role models. That is probably the most important thing my dad taught me. Not by lecture. Simply by setting an example. Work hard, love your family and take care of them. I hope that I can live up to that example. He made it look so easy. He was that good."

I'm not looking forward to getting up and reading this paper.


Follow-up - Dad passed away the evening of the 17th. My wife drove over the next day. She and mom insisted that I participate in planned meetings in Philadelphia. I got to Pullman Friday afternoon after flying back to Seattle and driving across the state. His memorial service will be this coming Friday. That paper has been edited a bit, but I'm still not looking forward to getting up and making some remarks. Dad was a damned hard act to follow, and I'm going to miss him very much.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

I still am blessed to have my dad. He is 83 and going strong. He is headed down from Vancouver on Monday, to paint around the property. He was here in Dec to paint the guest room, and the house last May. I cannot stop him. He is blessed, so far, with amazing health. Like how many of these relationships turn out, I have come to appreciate him more and more through the years, he has really gotten smart.
We really enjoy our visits now......and a part of me wonders if he really is coming to 'paint'.
Dads are special.
Yes we will fly...something....when he comes; he got me started.

 

[SCCutler]

Dave, there is a great deal of painting and general maintenance we have been deferring on our house here in Dallas.

Oh, by the way, has your dad ever visited Dallas? (chuckle)

 

[AuntPeggy]

He didn't give his life. He spent his life in service to his country.
Dad and his older brother were kicked out of the house by their stepfather when Dad turned 16. It was the depression and their 5-acre farm just couldn't support all six children, so the two oldest boys, who could fend for themselves, had to go. Both went west from Chicago. My dad turned to the lush green country of the northwest to pan for gold. His brother wound up in the Arizona desert.

Needless to say, the gold strike in Washington just didn't happen and a series of jobs building highways in the CCCs and other work efforts during the depression kept him alive until he joined the Army. Since he was still too young to volunteer, and since he had seen his friends who tried to join get caught when they added a year to their ages, he came across one of his profound discoveries, "When you have to lie, lie big." So, he added five years to his age and entered the service of our nation as a beardless, pimply, gangly "twenty-two-year-old" in the late fall of 1941.

His knowledge of farming got him a job in the mule stables, where he became much too familiar with wide-bladed shovels. He wanted to learn everything and soon he was leaving the shovel behind and looking over the shoulders of the guys in the radio shack who were working on communications for the fledgling Army Air Corps. Eventually the muleteers lost their unwilling worker as he was transferred to wield a soldering iron when he wasn't training to handle a machine gun. Dad passed along another of his axioms, "Never get good at the s**t jobs."

He was part of the Army Air Corps effort to capture and build an airport on a Japanese-occupied island. Dad walked the perimeter of that camp with a rifle slung on his shoulder often enough to know exactly how many steps it took in the winter and how many more steps it took in the summer. Dad would tell me that the life expectancy of a machine-gunner in combat was measured in minutes. He never spoke directly of fear except when he told the story of challenging an unseen enemy in the dark one night when he heard them rustling outside the barbed wire. The noise subsided, only to return several minutes later. His second challenge stopped a second indistinct sound. There was no third as he lobbed a grenade into what became visible at daybreak as a family of wild pigs. He never spoke of the injury he received on that island or of the trophies of war he brought home: a torn and bloody Japanese flag; a Japanese sword; and a Japanese explosives timer. The troops on his island and the surrounding islands were preparing for an invasion of Japan similar to D-Day in Europe when the war abruptly ended with two atomic explosions.

My father left the Army for a short period, but returned after a year in college where he began a pursuit of his dream to be a surgeon. It was not to be because military service was the only way he could afford the medical care my mother needed following the birth of my younger brother. A few years later, Dad was on temporary assignment to Georgia when Mom nearly died. Free military medical care and military access to the rare and expensive miracle drug penicillin saved her. Dad hitch-hiked to Washington and gathered his family and our belongings into the back of a sedan and drove us to a new home 3,000 miles from any friends or family to be in Georgia with him. The day before we arrived, his unit shipped out to be part of the occupying forces in Japan. The next day, he dropped us off at Family Services and then he joined his unit on the other side of the world. It would become a recurrent theme in his 29 years of service.

Expediency may have caused his initial entry into the Army and Air Force, but patriotism soon became an essential part of my father's life. He was a "radio repairman" during peacetime. I would not know what an essential service and demanding job it was until I became a pilot and realized how much I depend upon avionics and mechanics. Dad fostered my interest in physics. He taught me electronics and introduced me to computer theory at a time when no one knew there would be a future there. Sometimes I think he would have been proud, but not surprised, to find his little girl flies an airplane.