Anniversary

Wedding Day, 7 August 1982

Is there a name for an anniversary that is no longer celebrated?

Today, while tending to my routine of posting deck logs to a Facebook group dedicated to the history of the USS Zircon (PY-16), one of the two ships my dad served on during World War II, I naturally had to look at the date on the log sheet. While the year was 1942, the day was the 7th of August, the date on which I would get married forty years later.

When I recall that day, my mind often refers back to the photographs that my then-bride Penny's sister Paula took using my Nikkormat FTN 35mm camera. The above photo is one that often sticks in my memory as it's one that years later—at the time we were going through our split up—Penny would point to (literally or figuratively, I can't recall) as proof that I didn't want to be married, or words to that effect. And because I am nothing if not a rehasher of the past, I've often thought about those remarks, picture or no picture.

Of course, those words, on their face, are not true. I did want to be married to her. But I just didn't know what that meant. At just over three years, our relationship had been my longest to date, and for most of that time we lived a little over two hours apart—I in Bowling Green, Ohio, and she in Lansing, Michigan. I lived with her for about three weeks while I commuted back and forth to Jackson, Michigan for a job I had as part of an internship, but by and large, we didn't spend a whole lot of time together until after I'd graduated. I recall living with her for a spell in which I took a piddly job with some kind of mail-order operation that didn't last long, but I eventually went back to Toledo to work with Lane Drug, a pharmacy-convenience store which had stores throughout northwestern Ohio, and owned an East Coast company, Peoples Drug, which was fairly massive.

While the relationship seemed to be heading toward marriage, we didn't talk about it much. As best as I can recall, we didn't talk about our aspirations as regards children or career goals, but we seemed compatible in so many ways. Penny's folks approved of me, and I got along well with her siblings. Her mom had been adopted as a young girl, and Penny had a pretty close relationship with her mom's adoptive parents, especially her grandmother, Laverne. If memory serves, sometime in 1981 Laverne took a fall or two and—as seems to be typical in such cases—developed pneumonia and/or other complications. During this time, Penny brought up marriage; she wanted to tell Laverne that we were getting married. It wasn't a proposal per se, it was more like a strong suggestion, but of course, I agreed. Laverne would die in September of that year.

We agreed that the wedding would be a simple one, and the plan was to hold it on the front lawn at her parents house just outside Laingsburg, Michigan proper. Penny had great affection for the large tree just outside the front door of the house, and that's where she wanted the ceremony to take place. We agreed to invite a very limited number of guests, which would bend the noses of a few of her life-long friends, but neither of us were big-time partiers, so something low-key was best served by inviting fewer than seventy people.

As I was in Ohio for most of the year leading up to the event, Penny took care of most of the details. She designed the invitations and had them printed, she made her own dress, she had the rings of silver made by a local artist. I think her dad took care of procuring a canopy or two to cover the food. My biggest contribution besides saying "OK" a lot was probably putting together the mix tape (which kicked off with this), and—on the day of the wedding—running speaker wire from her parents' living room to the outdoors and mounting speakers on the house's exterior. I also brought the camera and film for the pictures.

The pictures.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most marriages are a first time occasion for the couples involved. Getting married was absolutely new to me, but also, I have to admit, was making public displays of affection. On this particular day, I had no clue about what to do with my hands or my body. Why didn't I take Penny's hand? you might ask. Yeah, I wonder about that, too. Why didn't I stand closer to her? I have no answer, really, other than that maybe... MAYbe it had something to do with the fact that in all the weddings I'd ever seen, the couples actually only unite once the vows are spoken. I'm kind of grasping at straws, because I was totally enamoured with Penny and thrilled that I was the lucky one to be standing so awkwardly to her right.

Ultimately, though, the marriage didn't work out. I honestly feel as though Penny was ready to call it quits not long after our son Zachary was born in February of 1985. I was so ill-prepared to be a good husband or partner. For one, I spent more time at work than I did at home. Not because the job meant more to me than she did—far from it—I was just not good at what I was supposed to be doing, and I lived in constant fear of losing the job and the relatively good income that supported us. It was something that I kept to myself when I came home, as I wanted neither to burden her with my crap nor to admit to my weakness. A guy thing, I guess. This went on year after year after year until it came to a head ten years later and I felt compelled to resign. Whatever fine, scintilla of a thread that might have been holding the marriage together snapped that day. Yes, there was so much more to it than that, but that was a huge factor, and one which I think led to everything else.

We've now been divorced for over twice as long as we were married. It took a while but for several years now, the 7th of August has passed without notice (as has 22 June, the date we met), but as I still have four years worth of deck logs to post at Facebook, it'll probably be at least that long before the date doesn't bring back the best of the memories from that day and those times.

Penny and Me

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Exploitive A.I. Slop

I got blocked by a Facebook page called Historic Voices last night because I called it out for its exploitive use of A.I.-generated images to evoke emotional responses and hence create engagement (read: monetization).

I had come across this image—complete with fake dust artifacts—on a friend's Facebook page via my feed...

Exploitive A.I. Slop from Facebook page Historic Voices

...which is accompanied by this text:

The Bread Was Still Warm — Mauthausen, Austria, 1945

As American troops stormed the gates of Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945, they were met with silence—followed by the slow, trembling steps of starving prisoners emerging from the shadows. Among the supplies brought in was freshly baked bread. One survivor, skeletal and barely able to stand, took a piece into his hands and began to cry. Not because he was starving—though he was—but because the bread was still warm. "I forgot what warmth felt like," he whispered, "in hands or food."

That single moment—one man holding bread like it was life itself—was captured in a haunting photograph and sent home. It became a symbol of both suffering and survival, a reminder that sometimes, hope returns in the smallest of gestures. For many, that warm loaf wasn’t just food—it was the first sign that the nightmare was ending.

The page, of course, is full of these bullshit narratives, many of which—like the example above—suggest that the image is an actual photograph. The intent, of course, is to pull on the heart strings of people for the purpose of engagement, and it is remarkable how many people fall for this exploitive bullshit because... I don't know... they want to show that they're sensitive to Nazi war crimes? As of this writing, the image has over 46,000 reactions, 3800 comments, and 10,000 shares. One such comment:

Thank you for sharing such an incredible story and photo. My husband bakes bread and has found that fresh bread is one of the most emotionally intense experiences.

Another image, albeit this time without dust artifact...

Exploitive A.I. Slop from Facebook page Historic Voices

Note how there are no other human beings in the "photo" which ostensibly was "taken" while "American troops stormed the gates" to liberate the place. It looks like there's a whole lot of storming going on!

The bullshit text:

He Hugged the Fence Goodbye — Dachau, Germany, 1945

A young American soldier named Thomas Ray entered Dachau during its liberation and saw an emaciated man crawling toward the electrified fence. Thinking he was trying to die, Thomas ran to stop him—but the man simply embraced the cold wire and kissed it.

He turned and said, "I waited three years to say goodbye to this cage. Now I leave with my soul." Thomas wrote home that night, "I’ve seen freedom reborn through tears."

Comments:

• Probably lost his entire family 💔
• God bless his soul
• God Bless you 🙏 Both
• I pray he lived a long healthy happy life!

A second Facebook post—with basically the same narrative, but with a different image, and one in which the supposed American soldier, Thomas Ray, looks like a completely different person—popped up on the page as I was writing this.

Exploitive A.I. Slop from Facebook page Historic Voices

The text, modified a bit:

He Hugged the Fence Goodbye — Dachau, Germany, 1945

When American troops entered Dachau, young soldier Thomas Ray saw an emaciated prisoner crawl toward the electrified fence. Fearing the man meant to end his life, Thomas rushed forward—but instead watched him gently embrace the cold wire and kiss it. The man turned and said, "I waited three years to say goodbye to this cage. Now I leave with my soul."

That moment seared itself into Thomas’s memory. He wrote home that night: "I've never seen someone freer than him." In a place built to crush human dignity, a simple farewell to the fence became an act of spiritual liberation—proof that even after unspeakable suffering, the soul could still stand up and walk out.

One more, also with fake dust artifact...

Exploitive A.I. Slop from Facebook page Historic Voices

The bullshit text:

Dachau, Germany, 1945 – The Singing Man

In the last days before liberation, prisoners at Dachau described an older man who sang quietly every night.

He had no family left, no voice left, but still hummed old Yiddish lullabies. One survivor later said, "He sang so the silence wouldn't win."

His name was never known. But survivors say they still remember the tune — and still hum it, softly, when they need to feel human.

Comments:

• A truly wonderful human being! All so tragic!
• Your a hero
• Rest in peace you were certainly a gift from God
• Kept him sane enough each day

I found something interesting when I took a look at the page's About section (click to enlarge).

About page for Facebook's Historic Voices

The page used to be called Floral Fantasies, which is rather curious. I wonder if the page got hacked and was taken over by someone who knew they could boondoggle people with fake historical narratives, or if the Floral Fantasies thing wasn't getting the traffic or engagement originally hoped for or expected.

I honestly don't know how people can be so fucking gullible and malleable. First of all, and I suppose it's because I'm a photographer that I notice such things, but photographs taken in 1945 on the films available at that time, would be grainy as hell, especially if they had been taken with a 35mm camera, which in all likelihood, is what a World War II soldier would have been carrying, if he had a camera at all.

This is not the only group that this person or persons has created to spread the A.I. slop. Another is called Historical Life, and I'm pretty certain I've seen another one out there, one which I might have blocked myself already. I've also seen a number of pages dedicated to spreading false stories about athletes donating millions of dollars to individuals or causes. The posts often feature images of the athletes hugging people who are shedding tears of happiness.

There is no doubt that A.I. is here to stay. I'm certain that I unwittingly use it regularly each day when I open Photoshop. There are so many features within Photoshop that are probably built around the technology that I can't help but use it. That said, I have been avoiding it whenever I can. When I do web searches, for example, I include "-ai" along with the search terms. I'm not positive that that is a cure, but when I've done it, the A.I.-generated summaries disappear, so I assume that the function is skirted. I just searched ways to turn off A.I. in searches, and found this site, which has all kinds of suggestions, many of which are browser-specific.

Getting back to the impetus for this post, though, A.I. is turning Facebook into an even worse hellsite than it was just a couple of years ago, with unnecessary A.I.-generated garbage proliferating faster than I can block the sources. And since the crap is getting shared thousands and thousands of times each day, it's getting harder and harder to not have it sully my feed. How did a site ostensibly designed for people to stay in touch become such a hellscape of bullshit? That's rhetorical, by the way. The answer is that it's run by an evil, malicious prick.

 

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A Farewell to Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers by Robin Holland

When I think of the development of my political ideologies, I pretty much tie it to having grown up during the liberal presidencies of Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, the Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Presidential candidacies of Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern. But little would I have known back then that behind the scenes were the likes of Ted Sorenson, advisor and speechwriter to JFK, and Bill Moyers, who pulled the same duty for LBJ.

Bill Moyers died today, and I feel as though we've lost a giant. When he left politics as a full-time job, he took a bit of a sideways step into journalism, which is how I learned of him. While he would regularly give reports during the news, I primarily knew of him by way of his commentary which was a regular segment of the CBS Evening News.

On 8 December 1982, I was living in a tiny house on the corner of West Northgate Parkway and Bennett Road in Toledo, Ohio with my then-wife, Penny, and our cat, Cat. That day, Norman Mayer drove a utility van up a sidewalk leading to the Washington Monument and—claiming it was full of explosives—threatened to blow it up. He was protesting the nuclear arms build-up the only way he apparently knew how to, and maintained a standoff with law enforcement for the better part of the day. It got him killed. His threat, of course, was as empty as the the van was later found to be.

The following night, Moyers' segment was introduced by Dan Rather and he proceeded to deliver one of the most brilliant and memorable essays I've ever heard, one which has been etched in my brain ever since.

Maybe Norman Mayer never had a chance to be heard, given his criminal record: his arrests for drug dealing, assault and battery. Maybe he became a criminal because he couldn't be heard. We'll never know, and it doesn't really matter. What matters is that he wanted to tell us that humanity is drifting toward nuclear war. Perhaps this is a cry only lunatics and outlaws can hear. It would not be the first time truth had failed to get the establishment to listen, or the foolish had been chosen to confound the wise.

The wise yesterday were rattling their sabers in Moscow, or putting the finishing touches in the House of Representatives on a military budget of $231 billion for the coming year—$231 billion, including over $2 billion to continue research on the MX missile they had symbolically voted against the day before.

This is the wisdom of the world which proved too much for Norman Mayer, who wanted only to stop the arms race. Once you realize the futility of your cause, you can choose to live as a zombie, a martyr, a cynic or a saint—or today, a video terrorist. Norman Mayer chose to go out that way. It doesn't appear he really had the stomach for it. Those detonators had nothing to detonate. So he played Atari on the monument grounds and died when the game was over. Lunacy? Yes, but it is the lunacy of nations today who hold the world hostage, as he did Washington, with the threat of violence for the sake of peace. This sad little man had the superpowers for a role model. He died unheeded by them, but the star of his own television special. Such was the final lunacy. His pathetic charade received far more time from the media than we'll give the dialogue on nuclear issues which he was crazy enough to think we might honor.

Not much has really changed with this world in the last forty-three years as our military spending continues to rise with no compulsion on the part of our legislators to rein it in and put the money to better use than dropping billions of dollars of ultimately ineffective bombs on Iran. Day by day we step further and further away from anything even resembling sanity. And as shitty a place as this world is right now, it just got a little bit shittier.

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Worlds Colliding

These days, I spend most of my time on four research projects. I bounce from one to the next without much rhyme or reason, although I have to admit that for the last year or so, I've forsaken a couple of them. Three of the projects (two of which intermingle somewhat) are related to my dad's naval service during World War II, while the fourth is about the sixty-eight people with whom my mom graduated 8th Grade in the Bronx in 1940.

One of the projects, and probably the most massive of the bunch, involves researching all the men who served aboard the USS Zircon (PY-16). The initial scope of that project was very narrow, but the more I learned about the ship and its men, my interests fanned out into something way bigger. Probably too big. Nonetheless, I persist.

Out of the blue recently, I received an email from someone inquiring about one of the sailors of the Zircon, Stanley David Simon, who was the Medical Officer aboard the ship when my dad was one of its crew. Along with Dad, he was one of the key figures during the USS YF-415 disaster, treating the men rescued during that ordeal. In the initial days of my research ten years or so ago, I got in touch by email with Simon's children, and they shared some stories, but since then, I've not spent much time working on his story, so this inquiry nudged me to get back to him.

Simon went to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and graduated in 1937. There is a 1937 Cornellian, the school's student yearbook, available at Ancestry to peruse, and as I was flipping through the pages to find Simon's Senior portrait, another portrait and profile caught my eye, that of Henry Arnold Page, Jr., who just so happened to be from my hometown of Toledo, Ohio.

Because I am nothing if not curious, I did a newspaper search in the Toledo newspaper (The Blade) to see what might have become of him, and I found this mention of his impending degree at Cornell.

And what caught my eye about the article was that it included yet another Toledoan who was graduating from Cornell—Franklin Smith Macomber.

If you lived for any length of time in Toledo between 1938 and 1991, you would have heard the name Macomber. It was the name of the vocational high school in the city, its proper name being Irving E. Macomber Vocational Technical High School, and named for Irving Emerson Macomber, who died in June of 1935. According to Wikipedia, Macomber helped develop Toledo's schools and parks, and once lived on the property upon which the school was built. And... he was Franklin Smith Macomber's father. Also of note, one of Macomber's pallbearers was Wayne M. Canaday, President and Chairman of Willy-Overland Motors, Inc., which developed and produced the military jeep during World War II.

Beyond having friends who went to Macomber, I'd never given the place—much less its namesake—much thought. And because this post is about worlds colliding, my dad briefly attended Macomber before joining the Merchant Marines.

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Retouched

Retouching Dad ©2024 Patrick T. Power

NOTE: I've decided to abandon my Substack account because of that platform's decision to create a partnership with right-winger Bari Weiss's organization. I will migrate what few posts I've published there to this site. This post was originally published on 27 May 2024. I've since done some minor editing

Today we in the United States observe Memorial Day. It is also the thirty-second anniversary of my dad's death, so I'm veering a bit from writing about my own photographs.

Eleven years ago, I scanned virtually all of the old photographs I somehow managed to wriggle away from my mom years before, and at the time, this one struck me as one I'd either not seen or—more likely—hadn't paid much attention to. My guess is that it was taken sometime in the late 1940s—before I was born—and almost certainly in Staten Island, New York, where my parents had met during World War II, married (in 1945), and lived for several years before moving to Toledo, Ohio, where Dad had grown up. The cigarette in his hand was likely a Lucky Strike.

I didn't have a particularly close relationship with Dad. He was of the authoritarian ilk when I was growing up, so I paid more respect to his temper than I did to him, but he mellowed quite a bit after his youngest son Jim (I was the third of four¹) got into high school. Since his death, I have given a lot of thought to him, our relationship, and his life, which I honestly know so little about because he didn't talk all that much about it. Nor did my brothers and I prod him very much. I've written a lot about Dad over the course of the last twenty years, some of which has gotten people riled because despite that he was far and away a good person, he wasn't a saint, but it's worth remembering the bad stuff, too, in order to better appreciate the good stuff. I'm not going to rehash (much) my earlier writings, mostly just tell a few facts as I know them. I'll edit this if corrections or clarifications roll in.

Born in Chicago, Illinois on 29 January 1921 to Robert Elay Power and Olive Belle Cullison, Dad grew up in a fairly large family.

Grandma and her children

He had three brothers² and five sisters, with sixteen years separating them. Clara was the oldest, then came Georgetta, Dad, Rob, Virginia, Gertrude, Mary Belle, Lloyd, and Richard. His father—like my mom's mother—died before I was born. His mother had so many grandkids—sixteen—while I was growing up that I barely knew her nor she me.³ She lived with Mary Belle and her family, so most of our family gatherings would take place at their home, first on Pool Street in Toledo, and later "out in the country" on Curtice Road in Northwood. Grandma had grown up in Indiana and moved around a bit with her husband, who had been born either in Kentucky or Mount Vernon, Ohio depending upon which document you want to believe. Her kids were born in various locales in Indiana (Clara, Geor, Mary Belle, Lloyd), Illinois (Dad, Vir, Rob), Minnesota (Gert), and Toledo (Richard), where the family eventually settled. Just about the only thing I knew about Dad's dad was that he made candy.

What I know about my dad, though, was mostly learned from observation and experience. Although I don't believe he lived very long in Chicago, he was a White Sox fan his entire life going forward. There was little else I knew about his connection with the place, except that Rob, too, was born in or near Chicago. He played baseball and softball until he moved back to Toledo after getting married, and for a little while after that, but I never saw him play. He swung a bat left-handed while throwing right-handed (as did my younger brother Jim, whether by DNA or by emulation). We occasionally played catch in the backyard, but about the only advice I'd gotten from him that I recall was more of an admonishment for trying to throw curve balls.

Dad and team, circa 1946 to 1950

He never told stories about playing ball, although Mom told one in which he was on second base in a game when Rob came to bat. Rob got a hit and as Dad was rounding third base he slipped and fell at the same time Rob slipped and fell rounding first base. I can imagine Mom laughing at it and him being pissed off that she found it funny. At a gathering at the funeral home the night before his funeral mass and burial, the priest asked if anyone wanted to speak up about Dad, and after a silence of about ten seconds, his brother and best friend Rob stood up and claimed, "I was the better ball player!" getting the last word in on what was no doubt a long-running light-hearted debate.

Dad and Rob, circa 1973

Before enlisting in the Navy, and before meeting Mom, dad had joined the Merchant Marines, and he had to have been stationed on the east coast at the time as he enlisted in the Navy in New York. I have photos of him in his Navy blues that were taken on his wedding day—one of the few clues that he was in the Navy because, again, he never talked about his past. He occasionally mentioned little bits of biographical information, such as having attended Raymer Elementary School and, briefly, Macomber High School, but beyond that, not much—at least not to me.

He golfed. A lot. And, of course, he swung from the left side. He would golf nearly every Saturday and Sunday from early spring to late autumn, and I accompanied him but a couple of times to carry his bag. Only once did I golf with him, a day made even more memorable because one of our foursome, Rick Mitchell (Jim being the fourth), was hit on the head by a golf ball on the first green just as he missed a four- or five-foot putt. We all thought he was screwing around when he fell to the ground—an overly dramatic reaction to having missed the putt—only to find that he'd been knocked momentarily unconscious.

Dad worked as a refrigeration mechanic for Coca-Cola for twenty years of his life, and did a little freelance work at the same time (J. Power Service, Mom kept his books). Prior to that he'd worked on the railroad and at a Pure oil refinery, and possibly for a butcher before the Merchant Marines and the Navy. A butcher, Harry Gottesman, is listed as a reference on Dad's enlistment application but I doubt I'll ever know for sure if he worked for him. His work for Coke meant we drank a lot of Coke and Sprite (his preference) and Tab over the course of twenty years. It also meant frequent family trips to Inky's Italian restaurant not far from the Coke plant, as he provided service for their Coke machines and had developed a friendship with the proprietor, Frank Incorvaia, with whom he would become golf buddies. My first experience with tipping came at Inky's, when as we were getting up to leave one time, I noticed Dad had left money lying on the table. I grabbed it and gave it to him telling him he'd forgotten it.

Dad didn't read a lot, but I do recall he read the occasional Louis L'Amour novel and, I'm pretty sure, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, which seemed to sit on the bookshelf in our house for ages. He developed an affinity for the western United States, I think, after having worked either for the Civilian Conservation Corps or possibly the National Youth Administration before joining the Merchant Marines. But again, not having spoken to him about this stuff, I can only guess that happened when he was 18 or so. Jim says that he talked to him about it and that Dad and Rob were teens "14 15 or 16" but that seems pretty young to me. Dad was eighteen months older than Rob, so maybe Rob was 16.

I have photographs from trips Dad took to Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada, North Dakota… all with dates on them from 1986 to 1989 but I'm at a loss as to details. I recall clearly that he went with Rob once because they talked of driving with the windows up on hot days because open windows equaled lower gas mileage (that's what I recall anyway). This one I'm quite sure was taken right about here at Lake Lowell, just a little west of Boise, Idaho, but there's no date on the back of the print, so I don't know if it's from the trip with Rob or one (or more) that he took with my mom. One photo is of her sitting on this wall, but it's in black and white.

Dad at Lake Lowell

Whichever trip it was, that he made this detour from the main road suggests to me that he might have worked on the Deer Flat Embankments project. The date on the below cobblestone masonry corner post in a photo he took coincides with Dad being 18, so maybe.

1939 | CCC

Several times when I was a kid, Dad would make cartoon-like sketches, typically on scrap paper or the backs of envelopes, and talk about once being a pretty good artist. For the longest time, a framed coloured sketch he'd created of a duckling hung on our bedroom wall just below a light stanchion. Maybe he'd done it around the time one of us was born? I'm pretty sure it preceded me. Of course, I never asked about it. I don't know if it survived after Mom's eventual sale of the house.

But just before he retired from Coke, and while my then-wife Penny and I were still living in Toledo, he took up painting. Penny is a fantastic artist, and I wouldn't be surprised if Dad had made similar remarks to her about his potential as an artist and she said, "Do it, John!" and encouraged him. With my departure from the house in 1982, my room (the back bedroom, as it was known… an addition to the house prior to my arrival) would be used as his painting studio. At first, Dad's life transition was a bit humourous… the whole idea of "his studio"… because… Dad.

It took a while for him to get the hang of things, but Penny gave him guidance whenever she had the opportunity. She bought him a subscription to a painting magazine, suggested and probably bought him supplies. What he lacked in skill at the beginning, he made up for in enthusiasm. He was determined, and when he retired from Coke in March of 1986, it became his full-time gig, and his technique got better with each painting, most of which were landscapes.

One of Dad's paintings

I either bought or recommended a camera (Pentax K-1000) for him for Christmas one year so that he could take photographs for reference. One weekend in 1990, I think, while I was working for Michigan State University, I borrowed my department's Fuji Pan 617 (6cm x 17cm) panoramic camera and brought it to Toledo, and Dad and I spent a day together taking pictures along the Maumee River from Toledo to Sidecut Park in Maumee, probably the only day we'd ever spent together alone.

When he died on Wednesday, 27 May 1992, it had come after a rollercoaster week of good days and bad days, with the doctors seeming to struggle with what was going on with him. It could go on for days or weeks, they said, or months. It turned out to be days.

When Mom and my brothers and I met with the priest the day before his funeral, Mom pulled out a letter from the Navy that none of us had seen before. It was a citation signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the North Atlantic Fleet for an incident that occurred on 11 May 1944 just outside Boston Harbor, an incident during which he helped to save the lives of fourteen men from a burning, exploding, and ultimately sinking yard freighter. I recall Mom years before having alluded once to Dad pulling men out of the water but she gave no details, no description of what Dad actually would have experienced. It wasn't until the 70th anniversary of that incident that I got serious about learning what happened that day.

Dad never talked about it. He had talked about it with Mom's brother Skip way back when, and only recently did I learn that he talked about it one day with Jim's wife, Chris, when she stopped at the house for lunch one day while delivering mail in the neighbourhood.

It pains me that I didn't know the man all that well. It pains me that our relationship was contentious enough for so many years (I was the long-haired, free-thinking hippy of the family… I still am, I guess, but with much shorter, thinning grey hair) that heart-to-heart discussions weren't possible. As I noted, he'd mellowed once Jim was in high school. He was and is Jim's hero. "The greatest man that ever lived."

I wouldn't, for the life of me, try to take that away from him. But the more that I have thought about Dad since his death, and the more I have thought about my family, it's clear to me that we live so many lives within our "one and only life." The father that I knew before Jim came along or came of age was a different man than he knew. He was a different man than my older brothers Bob and Mike knew. He changed in ways I wouldn't have expected: quitting cigarettes (and cigars and pipes), for example; attending church weekly and eventually getting baptized Catholic. His worst aspects, for the most part, melted away as his children began to have children.

As humble a man as I believe my dad to have been, I also know that the incident for which he received his citation and medal⁴ occurred eleven years before I was born. It would be another ten years before I would be anything approaching conversational, which meant twenty-one years would have passed—ancient history for Dad… why would he care to talk about something that happened so long ago?

I've gone on too long, yet not really enough, I suppose, and I know I've meandered a bit, but I started this with a picture—the triptych of a 1940s picture of my dad, remember?

Eleven years ago, as I worked away at that image file, slowly, patiently, meticulously getting rid of as many imperfections to the image as I could find, it occurred to me that that is what we often do when it comes to the memory of those we lose once we've grown old enough to realize that it's not easy being a human being. Our parents' flaws, which we experience in our pre-adult years, become less important to us. We might not totally forget, we might not totally forgive, but we touch up the rips and folds and stains and wrinkles, and gloss them over so that the picture looks at least less flawed.

I miss Dad, but sometimes I think I miss him more for the relationship we could have had or should have had rather than for the one that we did have.

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¹Mom delivered a still born three years after I was born, a year before Jim came along. [back]

²Dad's mom's first child was a stillborn girl; his brother Lloyd died at little more than two months old. [back]

³Grandma babysat for me and Jim one time while Mom and Dad were in New York for Mom's brother's wedding. When they returned, Grandma told them, "Never again!" I have no clue as to why that was the case, unless Jim and I fought or argued a lot, which I don't recall. All I can recall of that occasion is that my older brother Mike got to stay with Dad's sister Mary Belle's family, with whom grandma lived, and I rode my bike there (a little under two miles) because I'd felt a little left out and wanted to hang out with my big brother. [back]

⁴In addition to the citation, Dad was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, the highest award a sailor could receive for valour in a non-combat situation. [back]

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