When I was 13 years old, I read Andre Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just, whose premise was God refrains from destroying the earth because of the virtuous lives led by twelve humans scattered about the face of the earth. I was really taken with this concept, and used to play a game with myself as to who I would nominate: I could usually come up with 6 completely good people: Pope John XXIII, Mother Teresa, Pete Seeger, Dorothy Day, Ralph Nader, but first and foremost, my dad. I have never known Dad to perform an unjust or unkind act. He's not a canonized saint, but he's a completely good person.
A great deal of what makes up Dad comes from where and how he was raised: as a Catholic in Boone, Iowa in the 1920's and '30's. Boone is a little town in central Iowa, in the center of corn and hog country. Grandfather worked for the railroad, and Grandmother kept an immaculate Catholic home. Dad was raised to be thrifty and compassionate, upright and loway stubborn, in a Norman Rockwell/Depression world. Dad worked as a youngster-- paper route, detasselling corn, waiting tables at Bishop's Cafeteria, selling shoes, on the railroad. He played baseball and football, swam on his school team, rode, worked on old cars, went to Friday night dances, and Saturday matinees. (To this day he knows every Hollywood bit player and '30's jazz musician you can name.) He worked his way through engineering school at the University of South Dakota, and when he finished, in the summer of 1941, he and his best friend Bill Powers took an old beat-up jalopy and drove from Iowa to the West Coast, visiting Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Sequoia, camping out on their own great adventure. After that trip, they drove back and joined the Navy.
Even before Lindbergh, Dad had loved the barnstorming pilots who came through the Midwest in those days in their old jennys. He became a brownshoe, a naval aviator, and served through the entire Pacific conflict. In later years, he would never talk about it, except once, he told how his closest friend in the squadron had to bail out, but his chute didn't open, and Dad followed him down until he hit the water. As a boy, he had dreamed of travel to exotic places--National Geographic places. When I was growing up, and Mother would mention somewhere exotic she'd like to go--Kyoto, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Maui--Dad would dismissively remark, "I've been there."
When the War ended, Dad was tired of flying. He tried California for a year, then returned to the Midwest and went to work as a sales engineer for the Signode Steel Strapping Corporation of Chicago. His territory covered eight states in the Upper Midwest, so he was lucky to get home every third weekend. He would wear out a company car a year, and the old dreams of travel died. Dad's idea of vacation was to stay home!
Dad married Mother in 1959, after a four-year courtship. He took a long time deciding--he was Catholic, so he was choosing between her and the Church, but he chose. He adopted my brother, my sister and me, and when he and Mother built a house, he even added a bedroom for my maternal grandmother, As I've said, Dad is a totally good person. Nana lived with us for 13 years, and I never heard an unkind word from him. When my brother Mark was born, he never differentiated. but loved and treated us all equally. He wasn't home a lot, but he made his presence felt. I always found myself, at a time of choice, thinking, what would Dad say?
The only time I can ever remember Dad losing his temper with me was once, when he took us fishing. I was a new teenager, squeamish and feeling sassy, and actually told Dad to his face, 'I won't touch that damn worm!' I spent the afternoon on the front seat of the car while Dad, Michael and Debbie fished.
Growing up, Dad had been a scout, and he never lost that attitude of helpfulness. Whenever, driving along, we would see someone in difficulty, be it a flat tire, an old lady with a heavy bag of groceries, or whatever, we would stop and help--no question. It was just something you did.
Dad was very quiet, unobtrusive--the sort of person you could lose in a crowd. He was 5'8', and never varied from his Navy weight of 130 until he quit smoking when he was 70--then he gained 20 pounds! But he was the sort of person you cherished. He and my father had served together in the Pacific--that's how Dad met Mother--and when Father would come to see us he and Dad would sit on the couch and reminisce about the old days until Mother was climbing the walls! But they were good friends, and stayed so until Father died.
The only time I ever knew Dad to quit on anything was when it was time for me to learn to drive. I attended a convent high school, which didn't offer driver's ed, so Dad volunteered. Previously he had always praised my keen eye--saying I would have made a great bombadier--but after testing my depth perception on parallel parking, we returned home and Dad abandoned the driving lessons. never to try again. His nerves were shot. Michael, Debbie & Mark subsequently attended public high school, which offered driver's ed. And my husband taught me--not Dad.
Dad and Mother live in Florida now, and I only get to see him at the holidays--Thanksgiving or Christmas. But when I phone on Sundays, and get that slow, reassuring voice, I know the world is safe--at least for one more week. Dad's in it, preserving it by being himself.