Born in 1911, my dad was one of eight children. The oldest, twin brothers, died in infancy and their only sister died at age eight. My dad grew up as second to oldest of five living brothers.
The family’s favorite tale about him as a child occurred in 1919, when Tyler Street Methodist Church began construction on a large facility in Dallas. With summer, the eight-year-old, wanting to help build “his” church, pulled his red wagon a couple of blocks to the construction site. A foreman put him to work hauling bricks to the masons at work. For a week, all day every day, he showed up and hauled bricks. On Friday, the foreman paid him. Just imagine a child working on a construction site, but that’s the way things were back then.
Shaking his head all the way home, he couldn’t belief the money in his hand. He took it to his mother; and with tears in his eyes, he said, “I thought we were all working together to build the church. I didn’t want to be paid.” His mother told him if that was the way he felt, he could put the money in the collection plate Sunday. And so that’s how he spent the summer of that year, hauling bricks every day and putting his wages in the collection plate each Sunday.
For his entire life, Tyler Street was his church. When he was 16, his mom died. Fortunately, he was in the Sunday School Class of a teacher, who, along with her husband, took this teen under their wing. It was a friendship that lasted a lifetime. As an adult, my dad taught a couple’s Sunday School Class, but he would always substitute for his friend, who taught a class for teenage boys for over a half century... if she had to be away.
Not only did he literally help build his church, the church helped shape this man who taught Sunday School, served as a Steward for years, sponsored, with my mother, the evening MYF group and heeded daily the message of Jesus, “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
The Depression prevented my dad from following his dream of becoming a geologist; therefore, he joined most of his brothers following their dad into the food business. All of the brothers were storytellers extraordinaire. And when they were together, tales, both serious and humorous, were spun. While they were quick to come to one another’s aid, they, in the stories they wove, teased one another mercilessly.
My dad used these word skills, honed with his brothers, in working at the church, in serving as emcee time and again for numerous civic and professional organizations, in amusing customers at his store. However his stories, no matter how funny, always carried a moral, often embedded deep in the good, clean humor. More than one listener would comment that after listening to my dad, the true meaning of his yarns would prick the conscience hours later, and they never forgot. His favorite saying was, “Things don’t always happen for the best, but we are known by the way we make the best of what happens.”
Growing up, I knew my daddy dearly loved me, his only child. I knew this with all of my heart from his smiles, his hugs, his stories, his gentle reminders. And I loved him back with tight squeezes around his neck whenever he held me. He was so attentive especially during the two bouts of pneumonia I suffered.
During the early years of my life, we were poor by monetary standards, but I never felt poor. One of our favorite family tales during these times revolved around the Coca Cola signs he turned backwards and glued over the peeling wallpaper in our rental house. He and my mother taped the boards, spackled this “new” wall covering and painted them. My dad always wished that he could have been around when a contractor tore them away to add new wallpaper. He saw the humor in most everything.
In 1922, at age 11, my dad smoked his first cigarette, a bad habit he practiced daily until four months before his death. Of course, that’s the way things were back then. A lot of people, children included, smoked. As much as I loved my dad, I didn’t like the yellow tobacco stains on his hands or teeth. I didn’t like the smell of cigarette smoke. At a very early age, I promised myself that I would never smoke, and I was never tempted to break that promise.
Four months before my dad’s 50th birthday, he survived a severe heart attack. Minding doctor’s orders without complaint, he stopped smoking and drinking caffeinated coffee. He lost 20 pounds. We all felt that he had been given a second chance and we were beginning to breathe a little easier.
Four days after his 50th birthday, Bob and I were playing bridge with my folks when my dad put his head on the card table and died from a massive coronary thrombosis. Three short years later, the Surgeon General released this warning to appear on packages of cigarettes: “Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and may complicate pregnancy.”
Years later after fighting a respiratory infection for almost a year, the doctors determined that I, the reporter, who had regularly covered a governing board meeting in a smoked filled room prior to this infection, have a severe allergic reaction to second hand smoke. I know, without a doubt, that if my dad had known this one fact that he would have quit smoking cold turkey the day I was born and would have lived a much longer life. He loved me that much. Of that I’m sure. Every child should always feel as loved as I did.
Happy Father’s Day.
2017
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