Remembering fathers and sons

The Dead Dads Club

It is 1990. I am driving east, at high speed. The sun is shining, and the V-8 engine is humming at 2,000 RPM. We are somewhere in Canada.

Most other engines would be revving around 3,000 RPM at this speed, but not my Mustang. You barely tax her at 80 MPH. As a Ford coworker once said, quoting a magazine story, it has “gobs and gobs of torque.” And my good friend Ron Vesche, no doubt, would agree.

The top is down, and the wind is whistling by. Miles of pavement vanish beneath my tires, and farmland slips past my field of vision, at an astonishing pace. The vista is cooled by my cheap sunglasses.

To my right is my son Matthew, who is 11. He is my sole partner on this trip to NY, unusual for a nuclear family like mine that visits its extended family en masse, with wife and daughter in tow.

Our music of choice, volume turned way up to enable listening in a convertible, is Dire Straits’ rock epic titled “Telegraph Road.”

It is written by a musician whose name is Mark Knopfler, someone whose music I’ve listened to for years, someone at whom I still marvel at the artistry, the talent and the ability to touch my soul.

Knopfler’s songs cover a spectacular variety of subjects, and often feature wry commentary on our times. He once wrote a song about heavyweight boxer Sonny Liston, and another about Ray Kroc, the businessman who developed McDonald’s and the fast food business into what we know today.

Knopfler depicts Kroc as a ruthless businessman who discovers the burgeoning hamburger stand run by the McDonald brothers in southern California, recognizes a good thing when he sees it, and pushes relentlessly to achieve his dream:

My name’s not Crock, it’s Kroc with a “K,”

Like Crocodile, but not spelled that way

It’s dog eat dog, and rat eat rat

Kroc-style, Boom! Like that

The story in “Telegraph Road,” on the other hand, is about the birth, life and decay of a community. It consumes over 14 minutes, telling the tale of a young man who came to an area with land that was rich and fertile, and decided to put down roots and farm the land there, in the manner I suppose that most communities get started.

A community forms around the farm, the Industrial Revolution takes over, workers are enlisted in the service of the company, which begins to struggle, closes its doors and lays off its workers.

The workers, who have enjoyed the benefits the company provides, are surprised by the bad turn. They know their livelihood is at risk, but they’re not sure why, in a poignant lament:

I wanna go to work, but they shut it down

I gotta right to go to work, but there’s no work here to be found

And they say we’re gonna have to pay what’s owed

We’re gonna have to reap from some seed that’s been sowed

And the birds up on the wires

And the telegraph poles

They can always fly away from this rain and this cold

You can hear them singin’ out the telegraph code

All the way…down the Telegraph Road

Despite the subject, which often reminds me of conditions in SE MI, it is great traveling music, with powerful, driving instrumental riffs.

As it plays back to us on cassette tape, Matthew and the Mustang and I will set the family record for a trip to NY – 7.5 hours. The record still stands, a lasting testament to two “busy men” on a mission.

This is an unusual trip for just the two of us. My father, a lifelong resident of Syracuse, NY, has had a heart attack. After a short recovery in a hospital, he was released and has returned home.

He lives by himself, after he and my mother divorced years ago. He has a girl friend, and I think he’s happy. But I want to see him. It was a close call, and I need a visit.

And it’s a good visit with my Dad. We spend a few days with each other, three men of all ages, in an unusual situation.

You would think, given our different stations in life, we’d get on each others’ nerves. But love, mutual affection and the easygoing tolerance common to most men prevail, and we enjoy each others’ company. Matthew and I return to MI a few days later, and things get back to normal.

But, like John Lennon said, life is something that happens when you’re busy making other plans.

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It is March 1991, a few months after my previous trip. I am once again traveling east, but this is different. My world has changed, forever.

It is nighttime. The darkness is illuminated by the moon hanging in the sky high above us, and by the snow that lies on the ground. My wife and daughter are with Matthew and me as we plow steadily eastward.

I am not driving, and I no longer have my Mustang. I have a new Explorer, and my wife is driving, bless her soul, ever my helpmate. She offered to drive, knowing I’d be distracted during the long ride.

In the passenger seat, I stare out the window, lost in thought and pain and sorrow, struggling with tears and a sadness that is unlike anything I have experienced.

Staring at the moon on my right, I am silent, although sighs punctuate the cadence of my thoughts as we slice through the darkness.

My music of choice? “Winter Solstice II,” a compilation of New Age instrumental music selections that is at turns reflective, at turns melancholy, like me. I have my first car CD player in the Explorer, and the fidelity is amazing, just like they say.

My dad has died, suddenly. He had another heart attack in his apartment, and didn’t survive this one. And I will never, ever forget the circumstances in which I learned this. It is burned indelibly in a memory that forgets much, but not this:

I was playing basketball in the driveway with Matthew, at the house in Belleville in which I lived for twenty years, across from St. Anthony Church.

It was an unusually nice day in March, and spring, I thought, couldn’t be far off.

Life was good. I’d left work early, having completed a project to select a new V6 engine for the all-new Ford F150 pickup truck, to be introduced in 1995.

It was and remains one of the high points in my career. The Controller of Truck Operations sent me a congratulatory e-mail that I retain to this day. And he was right – I’d done a great job on the assignment. My cost analysis and the presentation of the results was thorough and clear, leading to a high-confidence decision.

My wife was preparing dinner in the kitchen, and came to the door, saying I should come, quickly. My sister Kathy was on the phone, and she didn’t sound good.

I ran across the lawn to the house, took the phone from my wife, and listened to Kathy, on the other end, scream, helplessly, emotions ripped and raw, “Dad’s dead! Dad’s dead!”

Whew. You just don’t forget that. The shock stunned me, a condition that lasted several days. There’s nothing with which to compare it.

I return to NY to mourn my Dad’s passing. The child in me wishes to be comforted, and my wife rises to the task. But I have responsibilities as well to shoulder: my Dad has made me the co-executor of his estate, and I am responsible for funeral arrangements.

I do reasonably well, with the help of several people. I return to MI a few days later, and spend another year or so dealing with lawyers, Probate Court and the distribution of his estate.

It is hard, losing a parent. And the first one is especially difficult, because you can’t prepare for it. You lose one of your key anchors in life, a moral and attitudinal grounding that is temporarily stolen.

And the reality of actuarial tables suggests that the first parent to be lost will be your father. So the loss of a father is, for many like me, a very difficult loss.

A recent episode of the TV show “Gray’s Anatomy” focused on such a loss. A character’s father died in the hospital after a struggle with cancer. This Dad had meant a great deal to his family. They gathered around his hospital bed, and his wife and three sons touched him tenderly and said their goodbyes.

The character, a young intern, walked away to be alone. Another intern, a woman, left the room to find him outside the hospital, standing quietly alone.

She approached him, observed a few polite moments of silence, and welcomed him as a new member of what she called “The Dead Dads Club,” a club that no one chooses to join, but in which membership is inevitable. She felt his pain, it was clear, and was sad to have a new member in the club, but she wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. Other members of this club were available to help.

Your dad and mom, after all, are life for you for so many years. And when the physical support you need becomes less and less necessary, sometimes even resented as you grow older, the emotional support continues to nurture and sustain.

And, despite a loving family that surrounds you as you become an adult, including a knowing spouse and sympathetic children, this emotional support has no direct substitute. It is not replaceable.

The essence of this loss is simply this: You don’t know life without your parents. So when one exits the scene, permanently, your world gets whacked, and it requires all the maturity you can muster, and the support of loved ones, simply to get past it.

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It is late 1991, a few months after I joined the Dead Dads Club. Dire Straits has released a new album, titled “On Every Street. “ I buy the CD.

The title song is about dealing with loss, in which the person who has survived struggles to remember and to recover someone who’s been lost to them.

I listen, and I listen again. The song is poignant, well-written, melancholy. It is written for me, I think, and I’m happy to know that someone understands how I feel about this loss, as I search, unsuccessfully, for answers:

The streetcar symphony crashes into space

The moon is hangin’ upside down

I don’t know why it is I’m still on the case

It’s a ravenous town

And every victory has a taste that’s bittersweet

And it’s your face I’m lookin’ for

On every street

Reflect for a moment on the verse above: The moon is hangin’ upside down. That’s what it was like the evening we went back to NY, after I learned my father had died. The world had changed, forever, and no longer made as much sense. Things, including the natural order of things, were indeed upside down. Knopfler had nailed my mood, again.

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It is 2005. Matthew has scored tickets to an outdoor summer concert with Mark Knopfler at Meadowbrook. Knopfler runs through a few songs, and he pauses momentarily.

Alone on stage, Knopfler begins to play his guitar. The notes are barely audible at first, but soon the strain of music familiar to Matthew and me from years earlier begins to float across the summer evening.

And Matthew, to my right, elbows me excitedly and says, “Telegraph Road, Dad – Telegraph Road.”

And Matthew is right. And once again, my son and I share an unbreakable bond, an unbeatable moment that began with a wild ride east to visit my Dad. Together, for a few days, the three of us shared time w/ each other, loved each other, just as I was doing with Matthew that evening at Meadowbrook.

This year, it will be 16 years since my Dad died. And I will spend another Father’s Day in which my kids focus on me, but I’m unable to pay practical tribute to a man to whom I owe much, and who I am beginning to resemble, in physical appearance and personal habits, in startling ways.

I still miss my Dad - always will. But, in a recent task driven by an almost-unconscious need, I burned a couple CD’s with Mark Knopfler’s music, using an iTunes gift card my kids gave me on Father’s Day 2005, and I plan to give it to Matthew the next time I see him.

At a superficial level, I do this because I know Matthew will enjoy it, and I want to enhance this common interest with him.

But at a deeper level, one that will go unspoken between Matthew and me, I guess it’s my way of completing the circle – my Dad would be pleased to see the person that Matthew has become.

And although I can no longer honor my Dad in ways in which he can respond in a practical way, I can sure as heck honor his grandson, and in so doing make my Dad happy. I know this, for a fact.

Happy anniversary, Jan

I married the most amazing woman almost 37 years ago. She is possessed of an inexhaustible wellspring of love, of which I am the principal but by no means the only beneficiary; kindness, thoughtfulness, good judgment informed by common sense, often superior to mine.

Together, we raised two fine children, and she did most of the heavy lifting. With respect to our parenting roles, I was mostly the good-time Charlie with the kids, enjoying and having fun with them, and she was the loving, tender caregiver and sometime disciplinarian. To this day, if my kids become sick, it's mom they call.

She sometimes did things that I was unable to do because of my job, and she was there for them during the day, as they grew up. She was the one who took my daughter Kelly to St. Joe's ER after a terrible burn on Kelly's wrist; it was I who rushed to the hospital from Dearborn.

It was she who first learned about a car accident on Belleville Road in which my son Matthew was involved. Envision the scene: she's in the Belleville High School auditorium for a school-related assembly, when former Van Buren Schools Superintendent Jim Richendollar walks up behind her. He whispers to her that Matthew has been taken to a hospital after a car accident, but he doesn't know the details.

Off she went, again alone. I joined her at the hospital, again traveling from Dearborn. In both cases, the kids were fine, although Kel still has a subtle scar on her wrist.

Apart from emergencies, she insisted, despite the blandishments of Ford Motor Company, that I be there for them, even as a crisis at work sometimes beckoned. We were there for our kids' practices, games, recitals. Soccer, track, cross country, basketball, dance, proms - we did these together, and I'm so glad we did. She's been teaching me now for many years about what's truly important in life, and I'm so glad I listened.

And so, together, we raised our children and lived our lives. Looking back on it, it's amazing how all the time has passed, but pass it did.

We met in 1972 in Auburn, New York. I was attending a nearby college, and she had enrolled as a freshman at Auburn Community College. My sister was her roommate, and with my father I was painting the kitchen of the apartment in which they would room with a couple other girls during the school year.

I was on a stepladder, and my back was to her as she entered the room. She said later that she was taken aback by my appearance, explaining that she had thought I was my sister's younger brother. One thing led to another, we began dating, mostly over games of chess - neither of us had any money - graduated, married about a year later, moved to Michigan to begin my career with Ford, had our two children a few years later.

Throughout it all, she's been my extraordinary and loving helpmate, nay, partner. She still writes notes to me that I see in the morning, on the computer keyboard on which I'm now typing. This morning's message: "You are my very favorite person!"

I've learned much from her, particularly how to behave toward and to care for others. I've said that, wherever I am, if I'm with her, I'm with the nicest person in the room.

Happy anniversary, Jan. Here's to many more. I love you.

The legacy

Three stray cats, a mother and her two kittens - one yellow, one black - adopted us a few weeks ago. We had seen the mother hanging around the house, and she didn't appear to be afraid of us. I can't recall when we saw the whole family, but Jan and I decided to begin to feed them, if only to help the helpless, vulnerable kittens and their mom who was nursing them.

They appeared to live under our deck at the front of the house. My dog Moses had begun to dig a tunnel under the deck to get to them. We corralled him in the house, and bought canned cat food and solid kitten food, and put a bowl of each out on the deck in the morning before Jan went to work, and in the evening as it got cooler outside. We sat in our deck chairs and watched what appeared to be a happy, thriving family.

I named the mother "Minnie," for "Skinny Minnie." Was she ever - skin and bones, but with six tiny teats under her belly to feed her babies, whom we called Yellow and Black. When we brought the food out, Minnie normally appeared in a few moments. A couple times, we saw her trotting toward us, coming from the east or west. She set herself to eating the canned food.

When she moved on to the hard food, she slowed eating, and began growling in an endearing way. She was calling her babies up to eat, to play, to have fun for a bit.

We never were able to touch the babies. They were skittish. If we laid so much as a finger on them, they'd scoot under the deck and re-emerge slowly.

It was great fun to watch them play. Mom would often groom herself, sitting in a relaxed fashion on the deck, and the kittens would cavort together, often quite funny.

As you grow older, you wonder what your legacy will be among those who survive you. I said to Jan that at least we'll be remembered for giving some dogs and cats some good homes, what has become a small parade of dogs and cats through our lives, each of them well taken care of. And this time, it didn't matter whether they belonged to us. We couldn't help ourselves - they needed someone.

We're not alone. There is a veritable industry of abandoned animal caregivers that is thriving, including the Friends of Michigan Animal Rescue organization in the Belleville area, to whom we brought our cats. Many thanks to them - an organization that runs on kindness, energy and commitment.

Because the cats couldn't stay at our house. The situation with the nice weather wouldn't last, and the kittens would grow and become feral. Minnie and Black would inevitably become pregnant, creating more trouble for all of us. We had just lost some baby birds to a clever, resourceful, persistent raccoon on the back deck, and we couldn't bear the thought of losing the kittens in a similar manner.

So we said goodbye last week. We miss them - we were responsible for a while for helping a small family survive and even to have fun and security. And that's enough for now.

Strawberry Festival: working, playing and witnessing

My experience of Belleville’s Strawberry Festival dates back to 1980, when we moved into the house across the street from St. Anthony Church. We had begun attending Mass there, and gradually became more involved with the parish community, including liturgical ministry, Men’s Club, CYO basketball, parish and school committees and, eventually, involvement with the festival itself.

We were slowly being drawn into a community, and more particularly being drawn toward its very fine people. Living in the shadow of a major part of the festival could at times be harsh, with dust, noise, lights, hundreds of people and vehicle traffic congestion. But we accepted it each year as it rolled around, and gradually became very involved in the Strawberry Festival.

The festival continues to play a role in my life, and as I look back on my initial and then more recent experience I find it helpful to view it as being working, playing and witnessing.

Working

The Archdiocese of Detroit had had an annual fundraiser program called the Archdiocesan Development Fund. The program had after some years run out of steam; the archdiocese breathed new life into it, and began calling it the Catholic Services Appeal. A key part of the new CSA program was personal home visitations to registered parish members, to reach out to them as a community, and to request their financial support for archdiocesan programs.

I volunteered, but I had to find a partner with whom to make the visits. At the time, I was lectoring at the parish, and I asked one of my fellow lectors to join me on CSA home visitations. His name was Richard Korgal. Richard agreed to join me, but there was a catch: I had to help him collect money and account for it at the booths sponsored by the parish at the festival. I agreed, and thus began a period of a few years where, every Saturday during the festival, I would begin my day in the early afternoon, collect money from the booths sponsored by the church, and sit down and account for it, before depositing it in the bank.

Playing

These Saturdays would last until midnight or so. We missed the mass for the festival workers at around 11:30 p.m., because we were still counting money. But we finished shortly after midnight, and I joined my wife Jan in the bar area on the festival grounds (she had worked in the food booth, where I sometimes helped on Sunday), where a dozen or so parishioners had gathered to relax, to talk about the day, and to laugh together.

I drank a beer or two. I knew from experience that even a single beer after 10 p.m. would produce a headache in me the following morning, but I threw caution to the wind. I was happily exhausted, and I was asked by the other workers to report on how each booth had done, how much money had been raised.

Witnessing

Each year before, during and after the festival I was able to watch a commitment by dozens of St. Anthony Parish parishioners to come together and, in a myriad variety of ways, plan and execute quite a large project each year, on behalf of the entire parish. Its scope was amazing, and my exposure to some very fine people was unforgettable. I still very much admire and respect what those parishioners do.

More recently, I’ve begun reporting on the festival for The View, and by attending committee meetings leading to the festival I’m able to see and to share with our readers the larger picture of the festival. On my peregrinations around town reporting on the festival, I always make a point of stopping at St. Anthony parish. I say hello to old friends and meet some new ones, and I’m reminded of how working together, of volunteering to benefit a common cause can have many positive effects on the individual. It sure did for me.

Jerry LaVaute is a special writer for Heritage Media. Follow his blogs “Pa’s Blog” and “The eye of the storm” at http://jlavaute.blogspot.com. He can be reached at glavaute@gmail.com or call 734-740-0062.