June 7, 2011 ~ Day 179 In Remembrance

June 7 marks the two year anniversary of my father's death, a passing that proved more devastating to me than I'd ever expected it would be, but which - thanks to the gentle kindness of Time - has grown easier to bear.

My father was a turtleneck and blazer type of guy, and once quite the ladies man I am told. He was a handsome, sensitive music professor who hooked up with beautiful violists, opera singers and graduate students... until he fell, at last, for a hot actress straight out of Hollywood and committed to making a go of happily ever after at the age of 49.

I'm so thankful that he DID find that lasting happiness he'd hoped for with my mother, in a 34 year marriage that lasted until his death two years ago on June 7, 2009.

I happened to be hospitalized with pregnancy complications at the time of his passing, and was therefore connected to the family vigil at Dad's bedside solely by technology and the incredibly good heart of my elder brother who sent me many photos of our father during the final hours of his life... so that I could see the luminescent glow that infused his skin as he began to transition into a beautiful unknown.

My brother also did me the infinite kindness of holding his cell phone up to my father's ear, so that I could tell him for myself one last time just how much I loved him - how truly I had appreciated having him as my dad - and how grateful I was for our years together. I promised him that I would take great care of my mother, and that he (always the king of overprotection) did not have to worry about me either.

I told him how much I looked forward to seeing him again, and that he would be a part of me forever.

And that was it. My father was already unable to communicate and had mostly lost awareness of where he was, so there was no possible way for him to reply. I hung up the cell phone and sat in my hospital bed, tensely, waiting for that final call telling me that his end had truly come.

A few hours later, with an extremely dear friend visiting me in my hospital room, the call came through. "He's gone," my brother wept, and I wept too. I got off of the telephone and my friend and I bawled, me for the loss of my father and my friend out of true compassion and sympathy for our family tragedy.

That evening, alone at the hospital attached to a million wires and waiting for imminent surgery, I channeled my grief by writing down every unique thing I could remember about my father before the nurses could interrupt to check my vital signs again.

Two years later on the anniversary of his death, I will remember and honor my Dad by sharing some excerpts from what I wrote that day in my private journal.

"June 7, 2009

My father, Theodore ****** *******, passed away today at the age of 83. I will never see or speak with him again, yet somehow I feel closer to him than ever. I believe he will be watching protectively over my daughter's birth tomorrow, June 8, 2009.

Somehow though I am locked in this bed of wires and tubes, and he is gone, I know that we are both exactly where we need to be. My child will enter the world safely tomorrow, and he will make sure of it.

There are so many things I remember about Dad. His long thin fingers and bony feet - hands strong from playing the violin for seventy years or so. The way he loved his own mother's apple and custard pies. How he used to joke with her, "I'm going to chain you to the stove the whole time you're visiting so that I'll have an entire freezer full of pie before you go!"

My dad always wore old fashioned buttoned down shirts with his trousers pulled up around his waist like Cary Grant. His turtlenecks and bolo ties... what was with that flair for the southwest?

I remember the chin-up bar he had on our back patio and how he exercised all of the time when I was a little girl, always doing sit-ups and push-ups and going jogging along the ocean. He was in his mid-fifties when he was doing these things and still seemed so spry. The more I think about it, the more I am impressed by how fit he was at his age.

Dad loved to watch sports on TV with the sound off while he practiced his violin... he LOVED sports. Biggest sports fan I ever met... basketball, football, baseball, and most of all the Nebraska Corn Huskers. I remember thinking to myself that if I ever wanted to really communicate with Dad I would need to learn how to speak "football".

What an interesting, complex character. My father hated working with his hands, except to play music. He read voraciously - politics, satire, history, current events, sports columns, comic books. Loved Woody Allen films, Rodney Dangerfield and Art Buchwald. Took me and my Mom to see 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' when I was eleven and absolutely loved it.

He was the funny guy at the dinner party who set everyone off into peals of laughter; yet strangely, he was also the misanthrope who consistently called the cops on our next door neighbor's teenage son when he threw parties. (Funny how Dad could have an outstanding sense of humor AND be a total curmudgeon at once!)

Dad used to eat a huge bowl of cereal while watching Ted Koppel on Nightline every night before he went to bed. He was the king of Late-Night, getting his second wind around 10pm and usually not retiring for the evening before 1am. (This is where I get it from.) He spent much of that time thinking, and much of it chuckling over the things he read.

He was a pacifist and a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal, yet believed in the death penalty and kept a large wooden club-like thing next to his side of the bed, in case he ever needed to use it to defend our family at night. Guns were not allowed in the house but the club was. Go figure. My dad was not a coward in any way - he was a trained Naval officer who grew up in Nebraska farm country. He knew how to fight.

He loved Japanese sports cars and had incredible respect for the Japanese people, having visited the country numerous times in his professional career. He traveled as much as he could, and often considered the allure of moving overseas ~ to Adelaide or New Zealand, for example. In the end though, he was deeply attached to our beachside city and could never actually bring himself to leave it.

In the 34 years of my parents marriage, my father never wore a wedding ring. Yet, he was the most faithful man I ever heard of, before meeting my own husband. He was so incredibly kind to my mother and he loved her so much - with vast devotion and concern. I was lucky to be raised in a house with a love like that. My father ~ the man who liked to joke he'd "Never met a pretty lady that he didn't like" ~ told us constantly that he had married the prettiest one of them all and that nobody else could hold a candle to her.

But it wasn't just Mom. Dad adored his family. He cherished his parents, his brother and sister - and most of all, his kids. He talked about his boys (my brothers) who lived on the other side of the country incessantly as I was growing up and took such tremendous pride in them. He loved my mom's kids too and thought of them as his own... caring for them and their families, believing in them. He worried about all of us, probably more than was healthy for him.

Beyond my mother and his family, the greatest loves of my father's life were as follows: Ravel, Grieg, Prokofiev, Horowitz. Percy Granger. Joshua Bell. The Kronos Quartet... and Opera. All opera.

My father loved his life and clung to it ferociously - even as it slowly slipped through his clutching fingers. In his rare moments of lucidity during the final years, he wept over what was happening to him... and during the majority of time when he had no idea who we were or where he was, he took on such a sweetness. So much love. He would light up like Christmas just to see us walk into the room, even when he wasn't quite sure how he knew us. Somehow, despite the loss of names and diminished understanding of relationships, he knew that we were people that made him happy.

Dad I do not know how to say goodbye to you.

I hope you know... hope you knew... just how much you mean to me. I am so glad you lived long enough to meet your grandsons, and wish with all my heart that you could have met my daughter who will be born by c-section tomorrow. I promise that I will keep your memory alive for my children, and that they will know forever more that they are descended from a great and good man."

May 30, 2011 ~ Day 171 Saluting My Father, Lieutenant Junior Grade

Memorial Day was originally created as a time to pause, remember, and give thanks for all those brave souls who have died in the service of our country.

My children, like many of their friends, are the descendants of veterans who enlisted to help protect and defend the United States of America during conflicts all the way back to the Revolutionary War.

Today I will share the story of my own father's service to our country, as he recounted it to me in 2007, two years before his death at the age of 83.

I hope that in so doing I will not only keep his memories alive but also inspire his grandchildren - our sons and daughter - to appreciate the valor and courage of all who serve in the United States Military... and the infinite sacrifices they make on our behalf.

* * * * *

"Louisville, Nebraska was about forty miles from Lincoln and twenty miles from Omaha. [As a child] I spent a lot of time at a swimming hole right on the river with my friends, and if we had a good rainy season the rain would crawl right up your sleeves. We loved it.

I played basketball in high school, as it was the only sport offered. (Later they tried to get 'uppity' and made a larger K-12 school with more teams.) I was sort of the prince - the golden boy - for my high school. I'd gotten to be one of the best violin players in the area for my age; they used to run competitions and stuff. My mother was very pushy with the music because she was so thrilled. She couldn't play so she did things like take me to national contests... she would drive me to them and my father let her do it.

While I was in high school, the war exploded on us... or at least, that was when it went full force. My parents wanted me to join the military - I couldn't get out of it. By that time, everyone was joining. My brother was very insistent that I get an officer's situation and there were Army ROTC camps everywhere. So, I missed my senior year of high school and he drug me in with him to the ROTC. When my high school had their graduation, I went home and they had me stand up with them on the condition I would play a violin solo.

By the time that happened I was already enrolled at the University of Lincoln, NE. My brother was Army and I expected to be Army. I trained as an Army ROTC cadet.

The Navy had put together a better program though to get the best recruits and they offered really good incentives. To enlist with the Navy though you had to go to Omaha, so I hopped on a train and spent the entire day being examined, taking tests and so forth. I figured I hadn't passed too well, but lo and behold they picked me!

(The program my father entered was called the V-12 Navy College Training Program. Initiated in 1943, the V-12 was meant to fulfill the Navy's immediate and long-range needs for commissioned officers to man ships, fly planes and command troops.

In 1942 the draft age had been lowered to 18. Foreseeing a coming shortage of college-educated officers for its operations, the US Navy began to collaborate with hundreds of national colleges and universities facing economic collapse without young people to fill their classrooms.

The Federal government stepped in to create the V-12 Navy College Training program, which accepted students already enrolled in Navy and Marine Corps college reserve programs, enlisted men who were recommended by their Commanding Officers and even high school seniors who could pass the national qualifying exam.)

Said my dad, "The new program I'd entered was all over the country. The Navy was creaming - taking the best people from all over the country, even the ones right out of high school who were about to graduate. I ended up at a small college that had turned themselves into a Naval Training Center. However, not long after that, the Navy pulled me out of there and sent me to the University of Minnesota because they wanted people that were well educated. They were training me to be a line officer."

(From 1943 through 1946, more than 125,000 young men were enrolled in the V-12 program at 131 colleges and universities around the United States. All V-12 students were on active duty, in uniform, and subject to 'very strict' forms of military discipline. Approximately 60,000 V-12 students were ultimately commissioned as Navy ensigns or Marine Corps 2nd lieutenants. My father was one of these.)

"I stayed in that program for five tours and then graduated and got my glittering uniform. My degree read "Naval Tactics and Science". The war was still on, but it wouldn't be for much longer.

My brother, the poor devil - poor man - poor brother, he was just about to get his Lieutenant's stripes in the Army but as he was running the final training course maze he fell, smashing his eye into a log. That was the end of his military career. He didn't see anything but hospitals for many years after that. I sure do feel badly about that - it was terrible. He probably saved my life by pushing me to become an officer.

By the time I got to look at a real ship, the shooting was over on the European front but it wasn't over for the people fighting the Japanese. A lot of people in the army were transferred over to that seat of battle. Some in our program were ready to go, but my friends and I weren't. So we were assigned to a cruiser division and they put us on a ship and rode us hard.

There was a lot of training - it was quite an experience. Our ship was stationed at first in New England. The first time I saw a real ship I was so impressed. They crammed all kinds of money stuff at us - knowledge, you know - about what we were supposed to learn. Since we didn't have anything else to do, we learned pretty quick.

One thing I'll never forget, was just as it was time for our ship to leave a Southern dock we got caught in a hurricane. Boy, that was the worst thing I ever experienced. We were out there, it was dark, and there was a terrible roaring, howling sound. I didn't think we were going to make it. Everything above decks was lost, and I think we may have lost more than one person. They had ropes there to catch you if you were going toward the sea, and I almost went overboard. It was really scary.

If you dared to take a bite to eat, you'd vomit - it would make you so sick! Finally the storm blew on and we continued our training about how the ship worked.

The war was over and I could have gotten out but I had spent years training to become a Naval officer and I chose to stay in. I wanted to stay! We did gunnery practice into the water - shooting into open water, and the Navy was fencing off areas so we could do live gunnery practice and not hurt anybody. We were all young Ensigns - all officers - although for that cruise they did not treat us like officers. So, we trained during the day and learned how to be nice people at night.

At the next stop we went to where the Navy trained folks to fight out of submarines. It was the US Navy's place to train and that was the only time I got to go somewhere in a submarine. It wasn't much fun. They gave us a tour and explained things, but I preferred to be on a ship."

* * * * *

Although this is where the tape recording of my father ends, I know parts of the rest of his story. As a Naval officer my dad was on a ship that passed through the Bikini Atoll in 1946 right after the detonation of an atomic bomb there.

Dad and his friends helped hoist the surviving target boats (that had been drenched in radioactive water spray at the time of testing) and load them onto their ship ~ so that they could be returned to the mainland for testing.

One of those target boats was located just feet away from his sleeping quarters on the ship and my father always maintained that it was his exposure to the nuclear radiation that predisposed him to the cancer he developed later in his life.

Though he returned to Minnesota at age 19 to marry his then-sweetheart, Dad was recalled to active duty during the Korean War ("Korean Police Action", per my mom) where he served first as a cryptographer (code-breaker) in Washington, D.C. but was later transferred to become Assistant to the Head of the Naval School of Music in Washington, D.C. in the early 1950s.

All told, my father served in the US Navy and the US Naval Reserve for at least a decade, ending his duty with the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade. He was truly dedicated to the Navy and loved his work, believing in both the cause and his country. When he chose the city where he would put down roots and work as a professor of music until his death, Dad chose a "big Navy town" where he made friends with many veterans and was able to gaze upon his beloved ocean every day.

Over time, my father grew more liberal in his political beliefs and often questioned the dropping of atomic bombs upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

However, when he attended his 50 year reunion for the University of Minnesota V-12 program, my father learned for the first time that he and his classmates had been trained to go as a second wave of officers to the Pacific theater of battle due to the Navy's privately-held belief that their first wave of officers faced possible decimation.

"If it hadn't been for the dropping of that bomb," he confided in me, "The Japanese would surely have fought until the last man - and I am convinced that I would have ended up in the thick of war. Who knows if my friends and I would have made it. Maybe," he admitted, "dropping the bomb WAS the right thing to do after all."

Up to the end of his life, Dad felt so proud to have been selected as a member of the elite V-12 program, whose members included senators, ambassadors, famous athletes, journalists and two of his personal heroes - Robert F. Kennedy and Johnny Carson.


My father's unusual Naval career reminds us that there are many different ways of serving your country with honor; and that the US Military has played a profound role in shaping our national education system, our citizens AND our future.

On this Memorial Day 2011, God bless and protect our brave and women in uniform... and all of those who have served and sacrificed for over two hundred years in the name of our shared values.

April 17, 2011 ~ Day 129 A Man From Nebraska

Somewhere out there, my father is looking down on me today. Or maybe he's right here by my side. Either way, I'm thinking of him and I believe that he can sense my thoughts and love.

Our house was feeling a little bit too chaotic earlier this evening and, recognizing this, my husband encouraged me to take a break and go find some peace and quiet.

I grabbed my laptop computer and a novel, put the keys in the ignition of the truck and turned it on - but I had no real idea of where to go.

I've been tired this afternoon and less decisive than usual, so I decided just to let the car lead. I know that sounds odd, but somehow I knew that it would take me wherever I needed to be.

For about fifteen minutes I wound around various main streets and side streets, toward the oceanfront and then way from it. I passed through areas we haven't really explored yet since moving into this new part of town. Without the kids in the car I was able to notice more of my surroundings and saw a lot of little places I'd like to try out someday - a reasonable looking hair salon, a burger joint, a small corner market.

Finally I looked up and realized that without meaning to, I'd headed to the street where my parents lived together when they were first married in 1974. Amazing to think that was nearly 40 years ago now.

Today would have been my father's 85th birthday, had he lived long enough to see and celebrate it.

It feels important then, to be here on this road overlooking the beach he loved so well - near to the home where he married my mother that sunny December day long ago. They married in their back yard surrounded by their children and dogs, two once-broken romantics daring to believe that *this time* marriage would last.

I'm so glad for them both that it did.

If my dad was sitting here in the truck with me I wonder what he would say about their life in this neighborhood. How did it feel to combine families like that? To become the step-father to two pre-teens? To dive into such a full life after enduring multiple previous heartbreaks?

I imagine that he would tell me, "It was hard… but your mother was worth it, and your brother and sister became my kids too."

I've got an inkling that my parents were happy here on this street, in this neighborhood, because this is the place where my mother fell pregnant with me, completely out of left field. Surprise!

In a way, I've journeyed this evening to a place that was special for my father... and also for me! This is the spot where I first became a twinkle in my mother's eye, so to speak.

~

That said, it's mainly my fault that my family moved away from this area in 1975.

Five children felt like A LOT of children to my folks at the time, and they were anxious to find a large enough house to accommodate us all. They purchased a four bedroom place just a few beach towns away, where they stayed and built a sturdy life. My mother lives there to this day, still nurturing the trees that they planted together.

I didn't grow up in this neighborhood where my folks lived for the first year of their nearly 35 year marriage… but sitting here now in the truck in the peaceful eventide, I can see why they were so happy here. There are birds singing from tall trees at dusk on a hill overlooking the vast Pacific. It's nice.

I know that my Dad must have felt really proud while living here, like he'd made it and was finally living the California dream. Since his stint in the Navy during World War II and Korea, my father had hoped to return to this beautiful beach town to live and work by the seashore.

It took thirty years and living in three other states to get here but at the age of 49 he had finally done it ~ earned the tenured faculty position at our local University, found the beautiful Hollywood starlet to marry, chosen a home and begun to fully live, surrounded by a cheerful menagerie of loving wife, four children and their many pets.

My dad called himself a late bloomer but actually, now that I'm 35, I think he was a survivor - someone to admire. He'd managed to spring back from a devastating divorce where he'd lost everything including his best friend (who ran off with Dad's wife, so I'm told). After a bitter, protracted struggle he was granted custody of my brothers and ultimately he did his very best as a single dad.

I don't think any of us would argue that his 'best' was perfect, but he loved us and we loved him. We still do. That says something about the kind of man he was.

In the late '60s and early '70s Dad managed to earn his doctorate in music and become a professor, which was truly impressive for someone also working full time as a music teacher to support the two sons that he was raising on his own.

The older I get, the more I appreciate how many fine qualities my father possessed. As a teenager I saw only the things I had problems with, like his paranoia and overprotection of me.

Now that I'm a parent, I feel sad about all of the raging fights I had with him while growing up. "You promised that she would be a comfort to me in my old age," he would gently tease my mother. "How old, exactly, do I have to be?"

Here are some of the MANY amazing things I see now about my father that I did not appreciate twenty years ago. He was...

-Chivalrous to a fault.
-Treated my mother like a queen
-Honest, steady, loyal
-A dependable provider who went the extra mile to take care of us financially, working three jobs for most of my childhood
-Intelligent
-A true artist - pursued his dreams and built a life around his deepest love: performing classical music
-Passionate about Prokofiev and Grieg!
-Athletic
-LOVED the beach. Loved boogie boarding, ocean swimming with flippers, collecting shells, bird watching and whale sighting
-Uber-liberal
-The kind of guy who really talking over the merits of European vs. Japanese cars with our local mechanic
-Loved to watch football with the sound off while practicing his violin
-A man of enormous privacy
-Innovative and driven to create
-Funny. He had a tremendous sense of humor, and loved reading humor writing and satire
-A huge fan of Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Art Buchwald and Ted Koppel
-Cried when Magic Johnson announced he was HIV+. Dad was a huge sports fan. Magic was his hero
-An optimist. He used to tell me that someday our 'ship would come in'... right on the beach in front of our house, loaded with treasure. I now know that my dad himself was the real treasure
-Respectful
-Generous
-Proud of his children
-Proud of his Nebraska roots

It's not easy to support a large family on a single salary while staying true to your artistic vision. I give my dad so much credit for working as hard as he did. He worked for two universities, gave private lessons on evenings and weekends and most of our summer 'vacations' were road trips to different college towns where he led music workshops. He was a devoted musician and a dedicated provider. Dad took good care of us.

I'm not sure if all of my father's dreams came true before he died. I do believe though that he was happy that he'd married my mother and that he was still adoringly devoted to her until the end, even in the throes of his disease.

We don't choose our parents, and there were honestly a lot of years in my early life where I wondered why my father was old enough to be my grandfather. I longed for a young, strong dad who could teach me how to camp and fish and hike and do things that I had only read about in books.

They say that God doesn't always give us what we want; but somehow we are given what we need. Now that I've grown up, I can see that Dad was the father I needed - someone uniquely capable of understanding me, since I turned out to be so insanely similar to him... from my temperament and hobbies right down to my bony feet!

I thank God every day for giving me such a wonderful father. I remember all of his qualities and know now how lucky I was to have such a complex, brilliant, interesting and artistic parent.

Happy Birthday, Dad. Wherever you are, I love you!