Daddy and the Titanic

My father was born in Everett, MA in April 1912, at about the same time the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank to the seafloor. When he was 3, his mother died, but I have no idea what caused her death. My grandfather decided to relocate, so he packed up his sons and moved to Santa Barbara, CA where he opened a woodworking shop. Somewhere along the line, he met a prominent local woman, whom he married and with whom he had a couple more children. During my father’s youth, his step-mother made it abundantly clear that he was not her child and treated him with disdain that we would call abuse today. He was turned out of the house after breakfast each morning and allowed to return for dinner, a meal that did little to put meat on his bones, as they say, because Kate’s forte was neither mothering nor cooking.

Dad met my mom on State Street one early evening, according to the story I was told. He saw her glowing crown of blonde hair blowing freely in the window of another car and told his best friend, Chesley, who became my godfather, that he was going to marry her. Chesley laughed and told him that he had to meet her first. They did marry, in 1939, and began a life of struggle together that probably seemed like paradise after the lives they had lived as children. Back then, the Great Depression was beginning to fade, but no one had it easy, and adding 6 children to a couple’s financial burden strained the most bonded couples. Daddy drank; Mom was strung out with stress; and life became an endurance contest for all of us, a struggle not solved when Daddy died a short 3 months’ after celebrating his 50th birthday with his best friend, Chesley, and a motorcycle. The cause of death was leukemia, but my Mom always believed that Daddy developed that disease after a series of blood transfusions following the motorcycle accident. Regardless of the cause, Daddy’s death imploded our family, creating schisms that exacerbated with my mother’s death 40 years’ later.

My Dad was not a handsome man, with protruding teeth and a large, beaked nose, but he was a good man who earned the best living he could. When I began attending the local Lutheran church in my early teens, Dad joined a men’s group. He became part of the men’s effort to build a retreat in the mountains surrounding what is called The Grapevine, the highway between the Los Angeles area and Bakersfield. He was proud of his contributions to that effort and often told me that he found God on the mountaintops, a hold-over from his youth spent hiking endless hours in the foothills surrounding Santa Barbara.

Daddy also built a family home for his wife and 6 children, a home that he never completely finished and which became the biggest bone of contention after Mom’s death. He paneled the huge living room with heavy slabs of natural wood that he sanded and then varnished until they reflected the sunlight coming through the large plate-glass windows. He installed wood floors in the entire upstairs of the two-story house, one small piece at a time, without a nail head showing anywhere. He again sanded and varnished the floors to a mirror finish that didn’t last long with 8 people living in the house. After Daddy died, the family died, along with the house. It was an unhappy place to be for all of us, but rather than sharing our sorrow, we each fled from the scene of such sadness, leaving behind Mom and the youngest, a little boy who had just celebrated his 7th birthday before his Daddy died.

Mom had never worked a day outside the home because she had a full-time job caring for her growing family, as well as her invalid mother and alcoholic father. It should have been a kind of relief when both of them died, but my father’s father had also passed away, and then my father, so the people to whom my mother could have turned for help were not there to help her. Her 2 brothers, both of whom were married and had their own families, were of limited help, with one refusing any assistance and the other offering $20 a month. My father’s life insurance, $5,000, could have helped until my mother found a job, but the evil step-mother came calling, claiming that my father owed her … $5000 … for a car she loaned him the money to purchase, a coincidence that could not be proven with paperwork. Back then, however, there was no choice, so Mom signed over the insurance check and we had to figure out a way to pay the bills and hang onto life, such as it was.

Mom did find a job working the lunch counter at a local pharmacy, a job she opened and I closed, riding the bus from my high school to my job during the week and working all day Saturday, too. It took a while for Mom to hire on with the local library, where she worked at what today is called an administrative secretary position. When I became able to help her financially later in my life, I contributed what she had always asked: if each of my 6 children would send me $100 a month, I’d be able to make it. I was the only one to send the checks, and I raised the amount to $150 when I could afford to do so, but she struggled to keep her home.

People who claim they have no regrets do, and I am no different. My father was my protector, keeping me safe not just from life, but from my Mom, who seemed to dislike me more than my siblings, and from my siblings, who delighted in taunting me and making my life miserable. It is what it is, but I have few recollections of my childhood because it was painful to be unattractive, awkward, and unliked by the one group of people who have to love you, like it or not: family.

Robert Frost claimed that “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” but home was the last place I ever wanted to be once I left it. I’ve always wished that my father had lived because he would have welcomed me home with a comforting hug each and every time I visited, but he died. I think he would be happy with what my life has become, and I need to believe that he would have supported me much better than anyone else because he accepted me, warts and all.

I have little bits and pieces, two of which are painful, including the day I broke my leg riding my bike down the driveway at the house he was building. He didn’t have time for that, so he carried me upstairs after he realized I could not walk, set me down on the bare hardwood floors of the living room, finished his day’s work, and then took me home. When he carried me inside the tiny cottage where we all lived at the time, he set me on my feet, but my legs gave out and I fell, alerting my Mom to the reality that something was wrong. She took me to the hospital where it was discovered I had fractured my leg over a dozen times, perhaps creating additional injury when I was forced to my feet, rather than taken to the hospital. I did not have surgery to repair my leg, but wore a hip-high cast for what seemed like forever.

The other time was leaving the house across the street after babysitting, mis-stepping on a step not more than 2” high and shredding the insides of my left foot, but hobbling home crying all the way. God, that hurt!! Daddy told me to ice it, which I did, but it did not get better, so I was finally taken several days later to see a doctor who explained that it was the ligament and tissues in my foot that stretched and, thankfully, did not tear, so no surgery was required, but I was back onto crutches for 2 months.

However, the most painful experience of my life happened 6 weeks before my father died, two weeks before he was diagnosed with leukemia. It was my 17th birthday and my girlfriends from the neighborhood wanted to give me a birthday party, unheard of in my family. There was a performance at the high school that night, so the girls wanted to take me to dinner (I had never eaten in a restaurant before this day) before the concert and then stay overnight at one girls’ house. I was thrilled beyond words to be asked to do all of this, but also to have permission to enjoy this special party. The next morning, however, all hell broke loose when I returned home. My father accused me of not being where I said I was and would not listen to me when I told him I was at Ellen’s house, there were no boys involved in the party or sleep-over, and he could call Ellen’s mother to verify I was telling the truth. My father was out of his mind with anger and accusations and completely ruined not just my birthday, but my friendship with the neighborhood girls when he told me I could have nothing to do with any of them again.

My mother always said that he was already sick, but somehow that doesn’t change what he did. I was homely, socially awkward, continually berated by my mother, and struggled just to make it through my miserable days, but I always had my Daddy when I returned home from the cold, cruel world. Once he turned on me and, in my mind, became my mother, I was devastated and could hardly function. I told him he could believe me, but he chose not to do so, and that was that.

Yes, he died 6 weeks later, but I was already numb from losing my Daddy on my birthday, so it barely registered that he was gone for good. One foot in front of the other, I kept making it through the days, but my life has been clouded with grey since 1962, when life as I knew it, imperfect as it was, came to an end. I’ve missed my Daddy every single day since he died, but, to tell the truth, I cannot recall when my mother died.

This year, my Dad would have been 100; every time I see the images of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean, giving way to nature’s forces, I see my Dad at the bottom of a cemetery plot, nothing left of the man I remember and miss so much. Recently, while I was in Santa Barbara with a friend, she asked me if I was going to visit my parents’ grave. I told her no, excusing myself with the busyness of our visit, but truthfully, the last place I ever want to set foot is at my parents’ gravesite (my mother, who was cremated after her death, is inurned with my father's remains). I miss my Daddy for the love lost, but it’s harder to miss my Mom.

Contrary to those who had to find the Titanic, who had to explore what's left of the once majestic ship, I don’t need to see the grave to remember how short life’s journey can be for some and how powerful the impact of death can be on so many levels of a survivor’s life.