Memories of Dad

This past Christmas, my daughter, Jenny, gave me as a gift, a thing called My Life In A Book Platform. It's a chance for us older folk to pass on our life stories in the form of a book that can be printed and treasured by our kids and grandkids. Of course, I've kind of been doing this with this website. Will a physical book be more permanent? The jury is still out on that one. But the platform does do something that has proven helpful: It asks questions, once a week, and most of these questions, so far, have actually made me think. Because they aren't always comfortable. This week, for example, the question was, What are your favorite memories of your father? And it's uncomfortable, because I have so few memories of him a all. Fortunately, the memories I have are good. So here goes!

Although I have a lot of photos of dad from when I was a baby, I don't actually remember any of those occasions.

In fact, I'm going to say I don't remember him at all until the death of my baby sister, Dorothy Gene. I mean, I kind of do; I remember him and his adult son Walter, Jr. and son-in-law Tommy Westinberger doing construction on our house, which had previously been a small factory. But the earliest occasion I truly remember, was memorialized in the next photo: Dad playing with all three of us (surviving) kids. I actually remember my mom taking the picture!

It was the fifties, after all. Mom didn't work. (It was a decade later before anyone pointed out that housekeeping and raising kids is work; the most important work, at that.) And, except for a few hours a day in school, she and I (and my sisters) were home together. So I spent a lot of time with her.

Dad was an engineer (self-taught, as was common in those days) who worked the afternoon/evening shift at the Bendix facility at Teterboro, New Jersey. That was just a little over 5 miles away and only took about 10 minutes to drive, but Dad didn't get home until a few minutes past 11 PM. (I think I remember Mom saying his shift ran from 3-10 PM, but I guess he often stopped at the corner bar for a beer on the way home.

I was already asleep, of course. But the door to my room was always open; and it opened onto the living room. So when dad collapsed into his easy chair and turned on the little black-and-white Bendix television while Mom, in the adjacent kitchen with its super-bright fluorescent tube light, made late-night sandwiches. And of course all this sudden noise and light in what had been a darkened tomb (Mom took a shower and went to bed just after she put me to bed; I'm guessing she read or napped while waiting for Dad to come home) was bound to wake me up, at least sometimes.

And, when I did, I would toddle out to Dad in his chair and crawl into his lap. He would watch the TV, but I mostly remember just looking at him with great contentment, so happy he was home.

I'm happy to say we were not a hitting household. I think I got spanked (by Mom) once or twice. Dad never touched me directly in anger; Mom said he was afraid he might hurt me by accident. But he did use a strap on me once. (I have no idea what I was being punished for, which tells you how effective corporal punishment actually is.) I was five or six, and quite affronted, so I hit him back. Obviously, this had no effect, other than to increase my feeling of guilt.

So, after we had moved to Vermont and I was preparing for my First Communion, I also had my first Confession. And I couldn't wait. When I entered the confessional and told Father Dimassi to Bless me father, for I have sinned! I'm sure he was smiling in the dark at the idea that a 7-year-old could sin. But I had been carrying that guilt around for a year or two, and eagerly confessed and awaited forgiveness.

Which I never really felt. As an adult, I understand that the only one who can usefully forgive us our transactions, is ourself. Which is why, some 70 years later, I still recall it all so vividly. (We tend to forget things we've resolved.)

Even before we moved from New Jersey, Dad seemed to run a little slow. Mom told us it was just because of his being on the late shift. Most of the time he was home, I remember him lying down. He often had headaches, and let my sister, Louise, give him head massages.

Other than their having made our TV set, we didn't really know anything about Dad's work other than it being an engineering job. (Certainly we kids did not, but in conversations with my mom in later years, it seemed like she didn't, either.) Dad's company, Bendix, had been involved in manufacturing electronic components for the Manhattan Engineering District (MED) during the 1940s and 1950s and handled materials such as thorium. The facility was operational until about 1966 and was later considered for cleanup under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). It was not, after all, designated for remedial action. However, the plant was closed and eventually remodeled into a shopping mall.

Exposure to thorium is associated with an increased risk of certain types of cancer, although there is no direct evidence linking it specifically to brain tumors. Still, it was the '50s; only the gods can imagine to what other toxic and radioactive substances he may have been exposed, to eventually develop one. (In reality, he almost certainly had it when we moved.)

Remember, this was an era when pretty much everyone had a radioactive alarm clock next to their heads while they slept. Yes, during the early to mid-20th century, it was common for alarm clocks and wristwatches to have dials painted with a luminous paint that contained radium-226. This allowed the dials to glow in the dark, making them readable at night.

Radium dials emit a small amount of radiation, and while they were generally considered safe for users, the workers who painted these dials, often referred to as the Radium Girls, suffered serious health effects due to radium ingestion from a practice known as lip-pointing, where they would shape the paintbrushes with their mouths. By the 1970s, radium-based luminous material was replaced by tritium-based paints, and later by non-radioactive, non-toxic photoluminescent materials.

When we moved to Victory, Vermont, he retained his job (for awhile), which meant he spent the weekdays in New Jersey, driving to the house in Victory just for the weekends. By December, he had died.

But maybe some good came of it all. His early departure forced my early maturity, as everyone expected (and told me) that I was now the man of the house. This seems tragic, and for years I thought it was. But it did contribute in a major way to my becoming the man I am today, and I like that man.

Plus, when I had kids of my own, despite my incubator lesson that the job of a dad is to work and support his family, because I felt deprived I went out of my way to spend as much quality time with them as I could. Yes, in order to support them I sometimes had to work and commute far from home…just like Dad.

I guess it's true what they say about apples not falling far from the trees that bore them.