Dad, Uncle Wiggly And A Penguin

On November 4th, 2013 my dad will be 121. Of course, he is gone since he was 72 and 6 days, an untimely death. I believe there was an error when he had his operation. We could never prove it and in those days of 1964, people did not have Google to look up things and to investigate procedures and medical happenings. You accepted the doctor coming out to you after the operation and saying something. In this particular case, the doctor was extremely obnoxious. He said to Mom and me, brother was down the hall getting some coffee, “There is good news and there is bad news. The good news, it was not cancer, the bad news he just passed away.” I started to cry, I was pregnant with my son, and he said “Girl go down the hall to a room, the whole floor does not need to hear your grief.” He was lucky my brother was not there to hear this, he would have probably punched him down and he would not have been able to operate any longer. Such a mean conversation is extremely ugly. He could have presented his speech with softness or some kindness. He was known to be a hard doctor, but competent. He was known for having no bedside manner and being harsh. Harsh does not even begin to convey his cruel attitude.

The funny thing, the man he was talking about, my Dad was the opposite, he always had something nice to see in someone and he was an extremely old fashioned individual who was very polite and proper. He always dressed up in a bow tie or a regular tie and even though his clothes were not expensive, he was neat, clean and properly attired, even if he visited the supermarket, he wore his tie. He sat with his tie on to the minute it was time to go to sleep for the night.

I will always remember him at age 72 when he died. That is an interesting thought of what he would have looked like if he lived to say maybe 90. He was kind, smart, caring and devoted to my mom and me and my brother.

On his birthday, he would give mom a gift because he thought himself fortunate to have her and so thereby gifted her. That too is an interesting thought on someone from the past.

He always thought me to be beautiful and smart and he was devoted to my daughter when she was born and was his 3rd grandchild. My son was born after he was gone about 6 months and thereby was named in his remembrance as we do in our religion. So he was Joseph and my son is Jeffrey since at that time Joseph was too old fashioned to give a small baby. Now Joseph, Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel are all popular names again.

So to dad I know you are in heaven Happy Birthday in a few months when you will be 121. I have written before on how you loved to write letters commenting on the activities of the city, state and country and you wrote them weekly to the Baltimore Morning Sunpapers. They had in those days an evening version called the Evening Sunpapers, he never wrote to them, just the morning version. He felt that the evening one was almost a duplicate of the morning one and that by evening, people were too tired from working to read it. When he died, they called us and asked for some facts on his life to write a nice obituary on him because they recognized his name from the hundreds of letters he wrote to them. We gave them the information and they spelled his name right. He had this thing that he always wanted his name spelled correctly, it must have been spelled wrong somewhere once and thus his desire for a correct spelling. That was cute, I thought.

He did not have lots of material items in his life because things were constantly tight financially. When he had a birthday of about sixty-five in about 1957, I was working in the downtown area and I walked up to a jewelry store the boss dealt with and I bought him a Gruen watch with a leather strap. It cost 90 dollars then which was a lot of money. Oh how he loved that watch, I guess he never owned a piece of jewelry costing so much. He wore it lovingly until the day he passed on November 10th, 1964 and we gave it to my son since he was named for him. Of course, it is very old fashioned now days, what with fancy watches with batteries running them, no hand winding like the Gruen. I think the day I gave it to him was probably one of the happiest days of his life.

He knew I loved him, respected him and how he cared for his baby girl all her life until she married and then he still loved her now that she was an adult and made him a grandfather again. He had three grand kids before he passed on and oh how proud he was with all of them.

So to Joseph who lives on in my heart, I guess I miss him lots on Father’s Day, though I am too old to have a living father, I never ever will forget you reading me Uncle Wiggly stories from the newspaper every day after dinner until I was old enough to read them myself.

I remember when you went grocery shopping and one night at the bottom of the paper bag (no plastic ones then) he pulls out a gift for me and it wasn’t my birthday or December holiday time, it was a paperback book all about penguins. It must have cost all of fifty-nine cents which was a lot of money in 1940 and I could read it myself, but he insisted on reading it to me.

Penguins became my favorite birds or animals, in their black and white tuxedos, all prim and proper. They were always dressed up as Dad was every day in his modest outfits.

I guess Dad in Heaven is wearing his necktie or bow tie before retiring for the night and as he looks down on me his baby girl, he is proud that now I have my own grandchildren and the one named for him is following in his footsteps being smart, kind, extra intelligent and dear and he himself has now his own two kids, one who will be eight tomorrow the 2nd of August and the other one six on the 22nd of August and he surely would have loved to read to both of them from the Uncle Wiggly books I bought them a few years ago in Dad’s honor.