I saw that people wrote quite a bit about Father’s Day and their own father. And I had purposely not written about my own story so as not to bore anyone. We all have our stories of growing up with a dad, or not, and how we felt about that. How it might have impacted our own lives. Some can tell extensive tales, others grew up absent a dad and therefore have little to offer, theirs a mix of sadness and pain over a day meant to honor having a Dad in your life.
But since so many opined and wrote missives about their own fathers, I began to think of my own small toddler grandchildren. Who one day might wonder about their lineage, and who the great grandfather they never got the chance to meet might have been.
As many can tell you, stories passed on from generation to generation are not always correct, and tidbits of lost conversation, or a story here and there can color the idea of exactly who these people were, what they were really like, and how their own lives might have been reflected in people long since passed.
And so I decided to write this little homage to my own father here, not so much to bore the general readership, but to inform any future generations who might come of age, find out their grandfather or relative wrote an almost daily blog on Substack, and who might find these in the future and gain some greater understanding of people from the past in their lives who they never met, were never meant to encounter, and yet whose presence and actions led to their very existence. So please forgive me if I bore you with some measure of family lore, I don’t mean to be overly personal here. But then again if you stay, and read, you might discover some parallel in your own life, some connection, and realize just how universal our own circumstances might be.
I don’t mean to begin with a cliche, but my own father was simply the greatest man who ever lived.
I know, I know, everyone says the same thing. But here is the rub, I don’t only mean that, it is the absolute and unvarnished truth. My father was a stoic man of extreme virtue, stronger in duty, obligation, and perseverance than any man I’ve ever encountered, or ever will encounter. My father was a very, very quiet man of absolute conviction, wha rarely spoke, a man who allowed his actions to demonstrate how he felt, what he thought, and lived his life by example.
My dad was born to a Hispanic woman, and who-knows-what ethnicity of man, on the California border of Mexico, in Calexico, California, to a Navy man stationed in California before WWI, and a very young Hispanic girl he’d met. The small family of three children, my dad, his sister and brother, were spirited back to the hometown of the sailor at some point, whereupon the family took one look at the Hispanic wife and said “absolutely not”. And so the sailor divorced my Hispanic grandmother, kicked her to the curb as it were, with three small children in tow, and she retreated to California and to the resources of relatives to be a single mother raising three children in Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
Thrown away by the Anglo “Herman” family of Baltimore, discarded, never to be associated again.
So dad grew up absent a father. His entire life he never associated with his father. Ever. Having the dad turn his back so forcefully on the family, dad and our entire family took the tact that we wanted nothing to do with whoever these people were. And so as far as anyone in our family is concerned, we are “The Hermans”, and we have no others, no connection to any other existing family from that side. They didn’t want us then, so forget it, we are “out”. At least that is the way it seemed my father chose to act.
We were a family unto our own.
I heard stories of dad working in the vineyards as a small child. To help support a single mother. He had an arm injury on his wrist, badly sewn back up, a “flap” on the inside of his wrist area. He’d never talk of how it happened, or where the odd looking injury came from, but one evening sitting out back on the patio he finally said he’d been working in the vineyard picking some form of fruits in California at the age of about six, and jumped the small “train” trolley type device that would take the pickers from the field to where you dumped the fruits of your labor, literally, into the bin to be counted as a “picked bin” that contributed to your pay. When for some reason the train lurched, he fell off and a part of the wooden basket went through his wrist. They found some town doctor to sew him back up on the cheap out near the fruit fields outside Los Angeles, and sent him back to work. The wound was never healed properly.
Eventually the small family made their way from California back to Baltimore, I’d guess seeking some alimony or child support, and settled there permanently. My dad, who had never graduated past ninth grade found himself enlisting in the Navy, becoming a Diver Dan going under ships to weld plate steel to ships hit by mines so they could limp back to port for repair. Not an easy task putting on that big bell helmet, being lowered over the side of ship, and welding underwater.
But it provided a career, and upon exit from the service dad married, worked an entire career as a welder, and had six children, me the youngest. He worked two jobs so as to put us all through private schools, Catholic schools. Both the boys and girls went to the finest private high schools in Baltimore. And if you know anything about Baltimore, that meant something. In Smalltimore it is more important where you went to high school when you apply for a job, than where you went to college. It defines you.
So this man who grew up absent a father, who had to work like a migrant in the fields outside of Los Angeles, who lived his entire life absent a father, somehow settled down after the War and raised six children, stayed married to the same woman all his life, worked constantly at a full-time job, and then a part-time job from 4-8 each Tuesday and Thursday, and from 8-12 on Saturday and Sunday, to make sure we all had new shoes when we needed them, had tuition when that was required, and that we never has any real “want” in life.
We took a week, or two week’s vacation later after a few kid’s grew, married and moved out. Went to the sea shore each August. Dad took us down, left on Monday to go back to work, and came back to pick us up three hours away. He didn’t vacation, not until the later years. He worked. To provide.
When he spoke, at least to me, I have no idea what the experience was of my brothers and sisters, two now deceased, he was curt, direct, and forceful. Very, very moral, there was alway a lesson, or directive about concern for the future.
A typical conversation going somewhere in the car alone with the man might include some admonition to work harder on my grades, to look into getting a “good government job” because that held job security, and to work harder on whatever I was doing at the time. There was never any casual conversation. Oh, perhaps there was a comment on the local baseball or football team, but those were brief and few and far between. Just about every conversation was some life advice about preparing for my own future. “look at your brother-in-law, he is a CPA and makes very good money, maybe you could do better at math, get a good job like he has”. Forget that I was averaging a “D” in math at the time. And in every other subject. All of his life advice to me, though practical, was practically worthless when given to an ADHD headed talkative idiot, whose only talent was being able to talk.
We could sit for hours together and he’d never say a word. And as for “correction”, all he had to do was shoot a glance, and once you saw that glare you knew playtime was over. He never beat me, not once. Never raised a hand to me.
Somehow with the quiet ones you know that when they speak at all, and in “that tone of voice”, or give you “that glare”, it is beyond time to straighten up and fly right. They don’t need to dole out corporal punishment, the look is enough.
One of the great disasters of my life is that his own life was cut short. I got married to a girl he just loved and was so pleased I married, which happened to coincide with his sixty-fifth birthday. He retired, signed up for Social Security, and had plans to retire to a beach house he bought together with my oldest sister. He had a massive heart attack only two weeks later, after my marriage, the week after I got home from my honeymoon, and was gone.
He literally worked himself into the grave.
Working two jobs his entire life to add that extra, so his children might do better in life than himself. He dedicated his entire life to his children. To see to it that they had a greater chance at advancement than himself.
And that is the main lesson I learned from the man.
I considered it my duty in raising my own to place them into a position to succeed at a higher level than myself. We sacrificed to put them into the very finest schools in town, and onto the best colleges possible. So that they could rise up and out, and fulfill my own dad’s legacy. From shirtsleeves and name patch shirts to the boardroom in two generations. It is what I owed him, and a debt I have made certain each of my own children understand they owe to their own children.
I know few stories of dad’s actual life. He said he wandered through the wrong neighborhood as a young man and was beaten and called a “Spic”, only a neighbor driving by stopped him from taking a real beating.
He told stories of selling programs at an air show in the early days of planes, and getting a ride in a bi-plane after the show was over, when he was about eight.
He said that very early on he won a local Los Angeles “Most beautiful baby” contest, the prize being to be a baby in a movie during the silent motion picture days. Dad was born in 1918. We could never really figure out if this was a true story, or some embellishment of family lore, but to the end he insisted that he’d appeared in a movie as a baby from winning the contest. Given the movies of those days were made with a silver plating, and pretty much all early silent movies have disintegrated, and didn’t have the end credits of today, there is no way for us to go back and check on the veracity of the story.
He was fleet-of-foot and took pride all his life that he ran in the junior Olympics in 1932 or so, as a high school freshman, and ran at the Coliseum in Los Angeles. I believe they may have held the actual Olympics there that year, in Los Angeles, with the Coliseum in use for the actual Olympics. He took some measure of pride in that.
He claimed he lived very near where USC and the Coliseum sits today. In support of the truth of this claim I can only say my brother got all that speed, ran against Kip Keino and Jim Ryan in an exhibition in Baltimore in the 1960’s at the 5TH Regiment Armory. So it must be true he had the gift of speed and endurance in the mile as claimed, it was certainly passed down to my sibling. I got not an ounce of that talent.
Although he died when I was twenty-six that is all I really know about his actual life, the rest is gleaned from observation.
He was the kind of man that would come home from the weekend four hours of employment, eat, change, and go to paint the inside of our Catholic Church as my mother had volunteered his services. He didn’t complain. He gathered up his painting gear, overalls, buckets, and ladder, and drove to the church without saying a word.
Me? After working two jobs? Going to “help out” at the church already exhausted?
Not a chance in Hell. But that spoke volumes about the man to me.
He never wanted for himself, drove a Volkswagen for years out of necessity, not preference. Rarely purchased anything for himself, and wore clothes until threadbare. From what I could tell his greatest joy was sitting in cooler shoulder season weather and listening to a game on the radio, a cold beer nearby.
I always found it humorous that he could either sit and watch television in the evenings and eat an entire box of cheez its and drink a few beers, or drink beer and eat an entire pint of Lady Borden French Vanilla. And it had to be Lady Borden and no other. Ice cream and beer. I had no idea they went together, and still don’t believe they actually do.
The man could do anything. He could build a house from scratch. Put in a foundation, make walls from two-by-four, build a roof and shingle it, run electric, do plumbing. Anything. I always marveled as I can’t change a light bulb. I am a complete and utter klutz, incapable of working with my hands. There was nothing he couldn’t do.
I tried to get into “Field of Dreams” when it came out, but if truth be known my dad was a bit tired by the time I came round, he was thirty-nine when I was born. So I can only remember playing catch once. And I was such a bad athlete the experience didn’t go so well. So no tears for me when Kevin Costner uttered “Hey Dad, want a catch”?
The man experienced pretty much everything you could go through as one of the “Greatest Generation”. He was in WWII in the Pacific. Came out, married, bought a home, raised a large family. Had a son survive Vietnam. Saw another son graduate college, the first in the family. Wasn’t me. Married all of the kids off.
At the end he’d worked his body too damn hard, and only got a sixty-five year term.
He never actually uttered the words “I love you”, ever, not once. But showed me everyday by being up early, and headed out to work every day of his life that he did. He demonstrated by example and action, not words. Words are cheap.
He never showed favoritism. I do believe every one of us six felt an equal measure of care, concern, and yes, love. The only difference was one of age. My oldest sister, seventeen years older than myself, got a younger version of the man. I got a more tired, more elderly version. The one that had to be woken up after Carson’s monologue, and sent to bed.
How the man grew up with no father, and yet dedicated himself so fully to being a father, I’ll never know, or understand. He had no role model, he had no foundation. Except to build one on his own. Which he did.
In my younger years working for a brewery I’ll admit I could be a bit of a mess. Drinking far, far too much, out carousing, and sometimes doing the wrong thing. If I had the misfortune to come home and see him immediately upon entry, after a bout of carousing too hard, I can tell you, just that look over the cheater glasses while reading the paper sent a shame running through to my soul. The man was so damn moral, and lived so exemplary a life, as to make me feel weak, and see my failings more clearly.
The man was just the greatest individual I’ve ever encountered and I know that I could never measure up. I do strive to uphold the ideals he worked so hard to inculcate. Sacrificing for my own children in every way was always an homage to him. Always due to him. Telling my own children they had an obligation to improve their lives, to strive for better, to strive to do better, to instill in them they had a debt that was owed to prior generations, that was paramount in our home. From him.
My own are now all grown, and doing well, and I remind each of them regularly that “they stand on the shoulder of giants”, and when I say that I mean my dad.
Whatever they become, whatever their children become, they owe to him. Absolutely.
I was merely a conduit for the lessons he worked so damn hard to instill.
“You never get more than you can handle in life” he would say.
And by example he taught you deal with the hand you are dealt. No excuses.
He never complained about his existence, not once. Ever. He just did. One foot in front of the other as best he could. And gave to us no matter what. He’d find a way.
It isn’t one day I try to honor my father, but every damn day. I try to see to it that his grandchildren succeed, and exceed expectations. And to work as hard as possible to elevate their own.
I told my own son early, I don’t care if you want to sell hot dogs on the boardwalk, that can be a fine life. But first get a law degree. Because if you graduate high school and sell hot dogs on the boardwalk at the beach, and it goes south, well, the fallback position isn’t pretty. But if you get a law degree and the hot dog business goes bad, well, being a practicing attorney can always pay the bills. That wasn’t me talking, it was my father.
And I hope that his legacy is in the fact each of my children, his grandchildren, understand clearly they owe a debt to their children. To provide the very best in education, the very best in upbringing, the very best exposure to culture, travel, the world. So that they are the fullest individuals possible, with all the tools they will need to succeed in life. And to live a better life than either their great grandfather welder, or their grandfather salesman.
To misquote “The Godfather” “Senator Herman, Governor Herman.”
His legacy will be in offspring well into the future, who don’t have to weld metals together in the August heat, then leave to go to a second job, returning home around 9PM, having left the house at 6AM.
His legacy will be in producing future generations attempting to be as moral, as good, and as successful as possible.
I’ll never repay the debt I owe the man. Ever.
Thanks for sharing!!
Thanks for sharing your dad.