Father's Day

This is my seventh Father's Day without a father.
My dad died a few days before Thanksgiving, 1997. There hasn't been a day since then that I haven't thought about him. Usually, it's something I'd like to phone him to tell him about, but of course, I don't have the number.
I grew up in a small town of about 2,500 people. My parents were active participants in the community - not high-profile ego-involved leaders, but solid citizens who instinctively were drawn to community service.
I was an only child, so I got most of my parents' attention. One of my earliest memories of my dad - I was probably 4 or 5 - was that he liked to take after-lunch naps on the big (to me, anyway) burgundy couch in the living room. I liked to snuggle in next to him and pretend to doze. He'd give me a hug and say, "You're my buddy." It felt good and secure.
A creek that was as big as a small river ran through our town. My dad bought a pair of bamboo fishing poles with red-and-white plastic bobbers down at the hardware store, dug up some worms from the back yard and took me for my first fishing excursion. Mostly, we pulled up crawdads, but I remember his excitement and mine the first time I hooked and landed a little sunfish. We took it home and mom cleaned and cooked it for me for dinner. It didn't make much of a meal, but it was the cap to a great little adventure.
My dad born in 1910, one of nine kids. His father had been raised in the German Baptist faith - we call them Dunkards in our part of the country, but you might call them Mennonite or Amish. Some folks have traced the lineage all the way back to Switzerland and the first of our line to come to the New World arrived on these shores around 1730 - decades before there was a United States of America. They settled in Pennsylvania and some, including my branch of the family, were part of the pioneer movement that settled the Midwest. One of my ancestors was the first white settler in my home county and there's a town there that bears our family name.
My granddad wasn't a good fit with the Dunkard scene - he was musically inclined and, by all reports, was a helluva baritone player. When he was still in his teens, a scout for John Phillip Sousa's band heard him play and tried to recruit him, but granddad's religiously conservative parents forbade it. He eventually left the German Baptist Church for the less-restrictive life of a Presbyterian.
He got involved in Democrat politics, served as township trustee and was elected county treasurer in the 1930s.
My dad had just finished high school when his father became county treasurer. Granddad needed a deputy in the treasurer's office and wanted dad for the position. So dad gave his college savings to his brother John and went to work in the courthouse. Uncle John went on to become a high school math teacher.
My parents were married in 1939. My mom was a student nurse at a time when nursing students were supposed to be single, so they eloped and were married in secret. In retrospect, it seems like an incredibly rebellious and daring thing and completely out of character for my parents, but it just illustrates how much of our parents' thoughts and lives we never know or understand.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, dad volunteered for the Army. They turned him down because he was too old (31) and had a heart murmur. If he had been accepted, he would have been the first of his line to wear a military uniform in recorded history. That honor fell to me in 1965, but that's another story.
My dad got into the insurance business - not like the smarmy hustlers who push life insurance, but as an independent agent selling homeowner's and auto and crop hail insurance from an office on the courthouse square. He and the other downtown businessmen - lawyers, shopkeepers and the like - gathered at the drugstore coffee counter at midmorning every day and he usually came home for lunch. He didn't make a ton of money, but we were comfortable and belonged to the country club where dad enjoyed a few weekly rounds of golf when the weather permitted.
Dad enjoyed the occasional beer, but I can never recall seeing him drunk. That's something my two sons will not be able to say if they ever write a Father's Day memoir.
My father was also scrupulously honest. I never knew him to lie, misrepresent, cheat, cut corners or take unfair advantage of anyone.
(A friend once told me a story about conscience and honor: we all have a golden star inside our chest that spins parallel to our heart. Whenever we think or do something we know is wrong, the spinning star tilts and the whirling points nick the heart, causing pain. If we ignore the pain and harden our heart, the points of the star wear down until this warning mechanism no longer works and we lose our sense of right and wrong. I'm confident that dad's star was gleaming and razor-sharp when he died.)
He served a couple of terms on the school board and was president of the board during the planning and construction of the present high school building.
He was very shy when it came to public speaking and I remember how nervous he was about speaking to a gymnasium full of people at the dedication of the new building. But he was understandably proud of what he and the board had accomplished.
In their later years, he and mom made a couple of trips to Europe, but mostly they were stay-at-home types and his idea of a good time either involved hitting a golf ball or watching his Chicago White Sox struggle on TV.
He was a cigarette smoker most of his adult life, but quit in the early 1960s. Even so, about 10 years later he was diagnosed with a cancerous nodule on one of his vocal cords. Laser surgery was available, but new, so he opted for the traditional scalpel, which left him unable to speak above a whisper for the rest of his life. I remember when they wheeled him off to surgery, he clasped my hand in his, saying the last words I ever heard him say with his full voice: "You're my buddy."
By the time he abandoned his body in a nursing home bed that November afternoon in 1997, he had weathered prostate and heart surgery, a broken hip and a couple of strokes. But even though there were long periods toward the end when it appeared he wasn't really there, I could still see the occasional twinkle in his eyes that assured me his personality and sense of humor were intact.
Mom was at home, planning to visit the nursing home in a few minutes, when she got the phone call telling her he had just died.
Mom's memory was pretty wobbly by this time, so her recollection was that he was still alive when she arrived at the nursing home. Her version is that he looked at her, stuck out his tongue in a joking manner and then died.
The nursing home staff says it didn't happen that way, but maybe they just didn't have the eyes to see it.
Happy Father's Day, Dad.
Your buddy