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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