My Dear Old Dad

This story is not designed to be funny, so if you laugh, I hope it's at your own memories of childhood.  Maybe, it will make you think fondly of your own father and how he impacted you for good.  May your memories of him be as great as mine of my "dear old dad."   This is for my three grown sons...

My best work.....

This past Memorial Day got me to thinking about my own veteran father.  He served in two World Wars and was also in the Army Reserves, for a total lifetime service of 35 years to his country.  For my three grown sons, I want to tell them about the MAN I knew, not the soldier.  I wrote about that and they all have copies.  Dad told his own story because I recorded it on tape in 1978, and practically transcribed it in 2010 for a book my cousins are writing about our family and ancestors. He led an amazing life and certainly left his mark!

As I write about my father, his spirit seems to surround me.  I can feel his presence. He was the dearest man in my life and always will be.  He was a legendary story teller and speaker; he could charm his listeners with hilarious true accounts of his incredible, unique life experiences.  Now, you see from whence I get my own storytelling talents, if I have any.

 He was very tall, lean, graceful, very handsome, and stately.  I danced with him a few times at parties.  He was light on his feet for such a giant of a man, a great partner.  He made a quiet impression on everyone who met him – he truly was a born leader, but not cocky.  He loved doing things for people, giving years and years of community service.  He had a strong sense of right and wrong; he had tremendous respect for others, their property, and their rights.  He was the embodiment of the word HONOR.  Whether or not he liked what he had to do, if he felt it was his duty, he did it well and with honor.

Dad in his uniform

He had the most surprisingly, startling blue eyes.  Waitresses always commented on those eyes when we went out to dinner.  His bright, clear blue eyes were kind, intelligent, mischievous eyes, full of insight and yet, shy at times.  He was always a bit embarrassed at the fuss made over those eyes by strangers.  He was ruggedly handsome, a man who exuded confidence, which was lost on no one.  He loved to laugh and to make others laugh.  He always saw the funny side of life. His sense of humor clothed him with a broad smile.

There are so many things I remember about him: integrity was of highest value to him; if he gave his word on something, he’d about kill himself to keep it.  Lies were not tolerated. He did like pulling jokes on people, especially my mother, who had no sense of humor at all.  He seemed pretty happy most of the time.  Hard work was his byword, and he believed in always giving an employer an honest day’s work.  He was almost laughably frugal, very practical, and a very good financial manager.

Although it seemed we were always pinching pennies, we always lived well. Looking back, I realize we were probably better off than most because of his frugality and practicality.  If we didn’t need it, we did without.

 If he didn’t know how to repair something, he’d take it apart and figure it out. He was a practical packrat:  he collected string, rubber bands, old car parts, screws and nails, anything which could be pressed into service later, and often was.  He had a workshop that was his KINGDOM: a comfortable stool, all his tools, a workbench and an old radio completed HIS territory. It was off limits to MOTHER.   I was allowed in there because we worked on projects together quite often, which he enjoyed greatly.  He missed not having a son.

Maybe that’s why his first child, a girl, he named “Robert Ann”, and the last (me) has the middle name of Charles.  Both named after him.  He taught me lots of “man” skills which helped me survive hard times as a single mother years later.  His knowledge that he passed down to me “saved my bacon” more than once.  I passed a lot of it onto my sons.

You can see how laid back and handsome Dad was

Thanks to my father, I could competently change a car tire, car oil, fuel and air filters, spark plugs and even an engine thermostat.  He taught me how to buy a used car, what to look for, how to evaluate a good car buy. Since he probably always wanted a son, I became his tomboy and did things with my dad no girl usually would.   We used to go together to wrestling matches, baseball games, went fishing, and to lumber and equipment sales. Whenever he worked on his cars, I was glued to his side, learning like a dry sponge soaking up water.  Mother objected that I was NOT learning how to behave like a lady.

He said on the taped 1978 interview, “I’m sorry I didn’t have a boy to grow up in our family, but I had enough girls that acted like boys; you were about the worst of the bunch!”  I am actually proud of that!  I am a tomboy at heart still.

I had the shocking education of having to change all four tires on Mom’s car, four times each, for my 16^th (That was because my first tire change went very wrong.  I got it back on backward!  The gas station attendant, where I stopped to call Dad, ratted on me.  Dad drove out to the station, and I really got a chewing out!)  Let me tell you, I LEARNED. 

As an older divorced mom years later, (raising three boys on my own, going to college and working three part time jobs), those skills sure helped me a lot, since there was no husband around.  

  Once I temporarily fixed a leak in a radiator hose exactly as my dad had taught me: chewed bubblegum, scraps of panty hose and pieces of folded aluminum foil!  (When we stopped for water, the mechanic at the gas station yelled to his partner, “George, Good Gawd! Come over here and lookee at this... Gol Dang, ‘hit looks like there’s panty hose on this here hose and ‘hit’s got a huge bubble in it!!”)  I was the talk of that place for a long time – thanks to Dad’s emergency repair instructions.

I always carried my own well-stocked tool kit as well, and knew how to use everything in it.  That tool kit was my pride and joy.  It represented my personal badge of independence.

Creativity bubbled up from within my dad, strange for the military, old-fashioned man I thought him to be.  When I was a kid, he was always helping me make “things” out of Popular Mechanics Magazine: like a ring radio (during which I managed to burn a hole in his thumb nail with the soldering iron!)  It was OUR time together and I loved it.  If I wanted to build something in his shop, he could turn scraps of wood and nails into my favorite thing in seconds.

When he finally built his own real “dream house” he incorporated many of his unique designs into it.  It still stands today, a testament of his ability.

Dad's dream house built almost by himself

When my older cousin Bill donated his HO electric train set to me, Dad and I huddled in the dark in my “playroom” down stairs watching the train’s engine light glow, as it snaked around the track on a huge sheet of plywood.  We’d love making smoke puff out of the train’s smokestack and blowing the whistle.  It was like two kids in that room in those days.  I was 12.  Dad never had a train set when he was growing up.

One year he decided to start collecting our used orange juice can lids; he wouldn’t say why, but two years later at the Christmas season, he mounted a ladder in the front yard and patiently hung his several hundred silver and gold, swinging can lids on a bare tree.  He put a spotlight on the tree, and white tree lights too. He won a $2,000 Asheville Christmas Yard Decoration Contest prize for that feat!!  (He also cut his hands to pieces trying to remove the tightly clamped ornament hooks to take down all those orange juice lids!  That tree was the talk of the neighborhood for years.)

The tree right in front of the red azalea is the one he decorated.

I fondly remember the years that he cut small donkeys and carts out of plywood with his jigsaw, to make flower planters as gifts; he also liked to make furniture.  He made fancy hanging wall shelves, coffee tables, an end table with folding leaves, and many items of furniture for his pleasure as well as for family. My son Austin has the coffee table which Dad made.  It used to sit in our living room in his dream home that he built in NC. 

His best achievement was an 7 ft long, solid cherry, drop-leaf dining room table.  He had hand-rubbed the finish on that for two years before it was deemed perfect.  Many of my stories here on my blog contain tales we all loved about him and my mother, and pictures of that table. You have to read the "Ham Story."  It's a riot!!!

His best table in the back and a coffee table by the sofa: his creations

My dad taught me how to garden: he’d patiently make a mound in the warm dirt for planting each corn hill.  Into each hill, he’d place a pinch of dry fish bone meal and three kernels of corn. They never failed to come up.  We’d plant green beans, squash, tomatoes, spinach, green onions horseradishes, cucumbers, and such.  I loved working beside my dad in the warm earth and harvesting our produce.  

 He also loved flowers, flowering trees and shrubs. Our yard was a profusion of beauty each spring and summer. He was a master landscaper!  In a quarter acre of land at our “dream home” we had 27 pink flowering Dogwood trees, 40 azaleas, and over 100 Mountain Rhododendron bushes, which he planted.  To build his "dream house", he only cut down 3 trees on a fully wooded hill!   In the spring, our yard blazed with color.

Our yard blazed with color each spring!

Another thing my dad loved: CHEESE! That love has been passed down to at least two generations of us!  Once, when I lived in Scotland,  I mailed a gigantic Edam cheese from Scotland to him, wrapped in a Shetland wool wrap for my mom. The pretty wool wrap smelled so bad that she washed it and that ruined it, but Dad LOVED that huge cheese!!

Thirty-five years in the Army showed in his personal neatness. He even liked his boxers ironed – I know, I ironed them when I was living at home!  Everything in his bedroom and workshop was meticulously organized as if for inspection.  Still he managed to "squirrel away" his hoard of candy, which I loved to poach.  Mom almost never went in his bedroom. She had her own and that was HER territory.

He also did ALL the family grocery shopping, though Mother did the cooking.  (I never saw that women in a supermarket!) He did like to barbecue steaks on the grill, however.  He helped Mom freeze and wrap garden vegetables during the summer, too.  It surprised me that they liked working on such joint projects; when united on a project, they flowed harmoniously like a singing mountain brook.  Other times they argued vigorously, as couples do. (Well, "vigorously" is probably an understatement....)

Mom getting in some "Jaw" time.....

Oh and did you know that he liked to do the family laundry?  Yep, that was my dad.  He didn’t believe a woman should do hard work, so we always had a maid or a hired man a couple times a week, to clean, as far back as I can remember.  Mom did some hand-washing of her delicate things, but he was the laundry washer and very competent at it. When I was older, I took over some of that work. My mom was spoiled, I realize now.

He was a good amateur photographer and loved taking photos of roses. He had a huge collection of close-up color slides of the breathtaking beauty of his favorite roses growing on the chain link fence across the yard from our home. He knew the name of every rose that grew on that vast fence surrounding the huge property grounds. That was when we lived across from the Veterans Administration Hospital in Oteen, N.C.   Dad was the cameraman in the family.  I inherited his love of photography, probably blooming at just about the same age he did in his life.   

One of my best shots. Dad would have loved it!

From my dear old Dad I learned many valuable lessons, developed skills no daughter usually had:

 

 He taught me how to pour concrete in wood forms, and to do bricklaying; (I actually built the walls on a bridge at our Dream Home.)  He taught me how to weld, to solder electrical connections, how to make a simple radio;  how to use a handsaw, hammer, a table vice; how to stain woods, sand and finish carpentry projects, and how to use all his tools (except his electrical saws.)  Somehow, I instinctively inherited an ability to draft small construction projects of mine.  Seems I may have inherited an innate spatial ability that engineers like him learn to develop.  (I designed a wooden deck and stairs my husband and I built for a manufactured home we once owned.) 

Every time my mom would serve chicken at our table while I was growing up, my daddy would always laugh and say that he ”never knew a chicken had anything but the back until he grew up”; (with his two sisters, his mother and the rest of his extended family, that was all that was ever left “by the time the chicken platter got passed down to me”, he used to say.  He loved chicken backs!)  Mom was a great Southern cook and Dad loved her cooking!

He also loved “to devil” my mother anytime she made her delicious gravy.  He’d try to drop a biscuit in the gravy pitcher (which would splash her tablecloth) because he adored biscuits and gravy.   That aggravated her.  She’d always move the gravy boat pitcher as far away from him as she could, and never let him pour gravy over her homemade biscuits.  It became a game with them. She thought it was “unmannerly” for him to pour gravy on biscuits, which she believed were to be eaten properly with butter and jam.  Mom liked to put on airs, as she grew up poor.  Dad liked to “rile” her up on such occasions!

Dad's usual demeanor.

 Although he always treated her with great respect, and spoiled her with material possessions, he did love to “get her goat” as often as he could.  I enjoyed the “dance” that went on at these times, as he pestered her and she got mad. Sometimes she deserved it because she was a nag at times, and pretty sour most of the time.  (Well, being stuck with me all the time, probably ruined her sense of humor.)  Dad was never out right mean.  He didn’t believe in mistreating women. Mom got away with a lot of verbal abuse because of that.

Pretty on his arm, sharp-tongued at times: my Mom!

Faith was really important to him.  Even if he didn’t go, he made sure I got to church every Sunday when I was young.   I remember being transported from our rural area, back and forth into church in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, over many years.  That meant nearly 110 miles round trip total in ONE day, just for me to go to church and Sunday school at the Presbyterian Church there.  Sometimes he’d even drive me in to the youth activities on Sunday evenings, meaning another 110 miles for him.  Later a church was built right in our neighborhood and both my parents attended regularly then, not just me. Daddy was a Deacon and generous.

Every summer I was sent off to Presbyterian Church Youth Camp, up in the beautiful Carolina Mountains.  I am sure for my mom, it was a way to get relief from my unceasing chatter for a week or two;  for me, it was when I developed a love of the scriptures and God.  It was my father who drove me to and from these distant camps, and his devotion to me is still moving today when I think back on those times  - he was my transportation everywhere!  (He taught me to drive, too).   He regularly read the Bible and I know he prayed because I saw him.  I don’t think Mom prayed.  Dad made up for the both of them, though.

His life was so amazing!  Boy, did he travel a lot for the State Department!  No wonder my mother told me I screamed like a banshee when he returned from overseas – he left when I was 2 weeks old and returned when I was just over two years old!  I didn’t know who he was!

Me about the age that I screamed like a banshee at my dad

My father had lots of different jobs in his lifetime, and therefore moved frequently. He worked for the Army and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as well as for the US State Department, both nationally and overseas. 

Dad built the Charlotte NC National Airport, an anti-submarine seaplane base in Uruguay, South America, and remodeled many other US facilities, and built the Ft Bragg, NC paratrooper drop zones and many facilities there for the military.   Toward the end of his life, he worked for 25 years as a Chief Engineer of a Veterans Administration Hospital and actually got to stay put in one place.  When he retired, he was busier than ever as a Consultant to the State of North Carolina for Civil Defense Logistics, and a consultant contractor.

 Dad belonged to tons of civic organizations who did lots of good for our town:  

 He was a member (twice President, often the Tail Twister) of the Lions Club for nearly 30 years.  He was a Mason of the highest degree, belonged to Rotary, Civitan, and the Elks Lodge.  He was active in the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and at one time in his late 70’s, he was the Second National Vice Commander, and Quartermaster of the whole United States VFW.   

 He was gone to club meetings almost every week day night, and often busy on weekends doing community service in one or the other of the organizations he belonged to. Sometimes I went along as a child, like to the annual Lion's Club Charity Turkey Shoot. That's where I usually got in trouble, but he still let me go.

Dad in the foreground as National Vice Commander

Christmas time was when Mom joined us at the many parties held by the clubs. That’s when I got to dance with my handsome, tall father! Mother had her way, eventually, and sent me to six years of Ballroom dance.  It paid off.

 My own long list of jobs is similar to his; I also traveled and moved a lot (65 times).  Besides being a college grad like Dad, I was a Certified Elementary, Bilingual Education and ESL teacher, and have another two degrees besides.  My long list includes: registered Histology Technician for 20 years, Certified Medical Transcriptionist, Personal Injury Legal Assistant, Medical Insurance Claims Processor, successful young artist, retail sales, and building/maintaining databases for government and private sector; at one point, I started a business as a licensed Manicurist/Pedicurist, and also ran my own retail produce business to support my way through college.

 

 I learned to work hard from my father.  In the past I also worked for a year as a doctor’s “nurse,” later was a creative writer/photographer for a newspaper (with my own columns and features, and wrote for two magazines; I sold and published two short stories while there.)  Other jobs in my younger lifetime were: geochemical technician, hostess at a restaurant, interior painting designer, secretary, live-in maid and cook, dishwasher and babysitter.  My favorite job of all was creative writing.  That job didn't seem like work at all!

All three of my sons follow my dad’s and my example, even though only one of them remembers him.  The youngest two boys never got to know him because he passed away when they were very young.  He lived nearly 3,000 miles away from us.   I was only able to make one trip there with the oldest two kids.  I so wished they had known him.

If I walked a little on the wild side when I was young, maybe some of it came from my dad.  His sisters said he was a “bit of a young rascal”, and as a young man he even ran away from home and was missing for a while.  He had three marriages in his life. Two wives died.  He had five daughters.

 I am in my fourth marriage, married to a real keeper of a man, William.   His fine character, sense of humor and personality are a lot like my dad’s;  that’s probably why I was attracted to him and love him dearly.  Like my dad, he was career Army and is very smart. Like my father, William knows how to fix just about anything; if he doesn’t, he figures it out.  Doesn’t every girl want to “marry” their dad?   I adored my father!  I adore William.

My dad would love William!

 My dad, without a doubt, molded my thinking, work ethic, compassion and personal values;  therefore, I can only believe that he was equally influenced by his good Christian parents, and his Christian, influential grandparents.  These were loving people of great character: hard working, a sense of humor, charitable, with impeccable morals, and quiet personal sacrifice. 

Dad's generosity and compassion knew no bounds, apparently. 

 

My dad was no respecter of persons; he could “hob knob” just as sincerely with politicians, (he got a personal Invitation to Pres. John Kennedy’s Inauguration) as easily as he could with a humble worker.  He was a generous and caring employer. His employees were as fiercely loyal to him as he was to them. He would do anything for the good people who worked for him.

When our black maid’s husband had a heart attack, my father drove into town and paid for the man’s medical care and supported the family until the ill man could return to work months later.  The local hospital had refused the black man medical care because he had no insurance and couldn’t pay.  My dad was also the ONLY white man in attendance at their son’s graduation from high school, too.  They were truly treated as friends.

He and Mother, on their way into town one day, observed a raggedly-dressed young couple walking a long distance along the side of the road.  The young man was limping and the woman was very pregnant.  After seeing this pair coming and going into town, as they drove by, my dad stopped and inquired about their circumstances. He was shocked into action when he heard their pathetic story.

It turned out they were homeless, unemployed, and living out of their car, in the chilly fall weather!  That about broke my parent’s hearts.  As was typical of both of them, they speedily set out to remedy the problem for this sad young couple.  This was one of many lifetime good deeds they did.

  My mom and dad secured an apartment for them, paid for medical care for them both, furnished their apartment, bought groceries as needed, and found a job for the man;  Dad kept tabs on them until they were able to live by their own means, never failing to drop by with food and cash, paying for all medical expenses for the whole family.  Mom rounded up baby clothes, diapers and bedding for the baby; plus she found clothes for the man and woman.  She and Dad bought a used crib, which she repainted and outfitted. That couple lacked for nothing, as long as my parents knew them.

That was like my folks, remembering their own hardships in early life and spreading what little wealth they had to help the needy.  I have tried to do what I can in my own life, and tried to teach my sons to be generous to those in need.  They have made me proud, giving selflessly of their time and service.  I've seen and heard of it.  Dad is proud of them, I know.

My father was incredibly loyal to his employees: 

If one was laid off, injured or too sick to work, my dad helped to support that family and tried to get the worker re-hired or found another job for him.  Dad was so beloved by his workers, that when it came time for him to build his “dream house” by hand, many of his workers just showed up after work or on weekends to help him out for free. This never stopped when the home was done.

 During harvest time, we often had Dad’s workers drop off bushels of their own garden produce for us, and they'd stop in to visit a bit. When we no longer had a garden, then living at the new house, we seldom had to buy produce because of the generosity of these men and women who respected and loved my dad.

Dad always had a saying” What comes round, goes round,”  Meaning, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Certainly he lived that!  We would call that today, "Paying it Forward."

To know my father is in many ways to “see” and know those who raised and influenced him.  I seldom got to see my dad’s mother or my mom’s mother as they lived out of state, far away.  Both my grandfathers died before I was born.  I missed not having grandparents around.  Dad told lots of happy stories about his parents and grandparents.   I learned that they were educated people of character, loyalty, hard work and solid principles.  They loved their grandchildren, though they seldom got to see me.

So, paying honor to my dear father’s memory is paying honor to them all.    I know he is smiling close by somewhere on the "other side" as I write this.

                         I am truly my father’s daughter.

My very favorite photo of my dad smiling at me!