During the course of any calendar year we as a nation commemorate the lives of our forefathers as a way of remembering the many contributions they’ve made in making our country what it is today. These celebrations take many forms from family get-togethers, parades and most recently, shopping.
In a likewise fashion, my sister Barbara and I made our annual sisters’ road trip down to Hiawassee, GA to visit our parents and celebrate the eightieth birthday of the most important man in our lives; our dad.
Like many important men, a legend surrounds our father’s birth. According to family lore, my grandmother, Ina, was planking peas in the garden when she went into labor. Setting down her how and casually wiping a loose lock of hair from her brow, she calmly walked back to the house and delivered my father. (I added the hair part for added drama). I can only imagine what that would have been like. I don’t know if there were any other women with her. I all do know is that she went into the house and gave birth to her fourth son, John, who would become my father.
The legend continues of little John growing in age and wisdom on the family farm. Most of the stories Dad has shared recall happy times with his friends, piling on the back of their mule, Fanny and riding out into the fields until they got to giggling so much they rolled off. Fanny would stop in her tracks and wait for them to climb back on. To us kids, whose youths were spent in suburbia for the most part, stories of cow-tipping, toad popping and skinny dipping made Dad’s childhood seem like Huck Finn adventures as we pictured our dad as a barefooted young boy running freely through the fields with a dog by his side.
Like most legends, real life was not so easy. The country was still in the midst of the Great Depression when Dad was born and workdays on a farm are long, physically taxing and relentless. Milk cows do not take days off or vacations, fields need continued tending and there is always something to repair or prepare for. It was a DIY world. As a result of this hands-on training, my father is capable of fixing anything with a coat hanger and electrical tape (today we substitute duck tape).
In school, Dad was a math whiz and student athlete, lettering in football, basketball and baseball. As children, we used to love to look through both Dad and Mom’s high school yearbooks, with great reverence as we scanned the black and white glossy photos for glimpses of our parents as young people. Since they were both active in school, they weren’t hard to find. Our favorite photo was of Dad and Mom as prom king and queen. After high-school, Dad studied poultry farming for a year at Alfred State University before enlisting in the Army and a year later, marrying my mother.
Dad’s Army photo album as our second favorite artifact illustrating our dad as a person, not our father. Inside that album we saw small brownie snap shots of our dad “fighting the battle of Waikiki” from his time posted at Schofield Barracks on Oahu. There were photos of Dad in fatigues and cammies climbing out of the hatch of a tank, but the ones I liked the best showed Dad in his swim trunks, lazing on the beach under palm trees. As a child it was so exotic to see Dad dressed like that when I mostly saw him in his work clothes which were anything but exotic.
This is where the legend ends for me and real life begins. I was born on my parents’ first wedding anniversary while Dad was in Hawaii and Mom was living with her folks in Springville, NY. I met my dad for the first time when I was seven months old. He was just shy of his twenty-second birthday.
In the fifty-eight years I’ve actually known my dad, I have come to know that reality outweighs legend. Dad is the most loving, nurturing, strong, loyal, smart, witty, creative, clever and dare I say, handsomest men I’ve ever known. Since girls tend to look for someone like their fathers to marry, it was a daunting task to find my prince charming. (I did pretty well, although how I could tell at the time is a mystery to me. )
As I look back at my childhood with an adult perspective, and the knowledge from experience of what it takes to raise a family and successfully launch children into the world, I am in awe that my dad and mom were able to keep six of us clothed, feed, in eye glasses for three of us, braces for me, and own their own home all at an age younger than my own children are now. This is not legend, it is fact. There is no way adequate to fully express my love and gratitude for my father. He has been my hero for as long as I can remember.
So, in keeping with the custom of celebrating the birthdays of important men in our country, Barb and I drove to Georgia for our family dinner and did some shopping. We spent a week with our parents laughing as we shared old memories and created new ones. It was sad to leave and head home after our visit but like last year, as we could look forward to Maggie and Jan’s wedding, this year we look forward to the end of June when the six of us will gather in Hiawassee to celebrate our parents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary. It will be such a joy to have us all together again, even if it’s just for a weekend.
Happy Birthday Dad. I love you!
Wonderful tribute.