My Dad

 

When my father was born the world was a different place. Television did not exist. Radio was just a novelty; there were no broadcast networks or stations. Telephones were a rarity. If you wanted news, you had to read a newspaper. The peak of technology was the Model T Ford. The state of medicine was very different. This was before penicillin, even before sulfa drugs, so if you got an infection, it was bad news. My father’s father had a kidney problem. He went in for an operation which he survived, but later died of what the doctor called “ether pneumonia.” My father said his family never bought that explanation and thought the surgeon or staff made an error that cost him his life. I don’t know if there was anything to that. It is hard to second guess a diagnosis 100 years after the fact, but what little researching I did on the subject has shown that ether pneumonia was not a thing.

In any event at age six, my father became the man of the house. At that time, his mother was eight months pregnant, and she needed help. This was a poor family. If they wanted to go somewhere, they had to walk. His mother did what she could to keep the family afloat, took in laundry, took in boarders, and there was probably some form of public assistance, but I got the impression that they were always just scraping by. They lived in the Second Ward, which was the poor side of town. As a teenager he hitchhiked around the Midwest to see the places he wanted to see. When the depression hit and the New Deal that followed, my father joined the CCC’s. He worked at Crater Lake and sent money home to his mother. This started his love affair with the state of Oregon.

I am not exactly sure how he managed it, but somehow (scholarship?) he got into the University of Michigan. He finished at Michigan and then continued on to law school there. I wonder what kind of grit it takes to grow up in poverty and believe in yourself enough that you think you can become a lawyer. And why a lawyer? What was it that sparked the interest in the law? I never asked him.

He was just finishing up his law degree when America entered World War II and his draft number came up. He went to the army and told them that if they would wait until he took his Bar exam that then he would enlist. They agreed. The army needed officers, so they made him a 90-day wonder, joining the 36^th infantry Division as a second lieutenant. He fought in Italy and southern France where his military career came to a sudden end as two bullets shattered his left arm and he spent many months in surgeries and recovery. Kids of my era liked to hear stories of the war. But soldiers who actually saw action, tended not to speak much about it. Those kids grew up and gradually started to understand such things.

For Easter 1945 my dad was given a three-day pass. He went home to visit family. He took a bus from Galesburg Illinois to Peoria. The bus was full. He had a cast on his leg and a cast on his arm. There was a nice woman on the bus who tried to get someone to give up their seat so this wounded soldier could sit down. Nobody would. She was rather angry at that (This was the woman who would become my mother). They met on Easter Sunday 1945, and both had to stand all the way to Peoria.

He joined a law firm in Oregon and started a family. He did the civic thing, getting on the school board and joining the Rotary Club , the Red Cross, and various like organizations. I think because he had come from such humble beginnings and had come so far, he felt an obligation to give back. Giving back, is something he continued to do his whole life. He was elected to the state legislature three times (the third time as the nominee of both parties!). Then the governor (Tom McCall) asked him to be on the governor’s staff as legal counsel. Then he was appointed as a justice on the first Court of Appeals in Oregon.

He was a mover and shaker in Oregon politics of the time. He worked for one governor, advised another gubernatorial candidate, and had the experience of telling another future governor to “go to Hell,” when that man tried to bully him into doing something he disagreed with.

It was a different time. Women were expected to be housekeepers and men were breadwinners. Every man was expected to be chasing the American Dream. He was always working or on this board or that committee, so I didn’t see him as often as I would have liked, but he did make sure to make room for family. That was important to him. Time with family was sacrosanct, and it would take a pretty dire emergency to call him away. I only remember that happening once.

I have to say, I was petty fortunate to have been gifted such a father.

Star Liner