Dad's Birthday

Today is Dad's birthday. I think he was 16 when this photo was taken.

It's hard to believe that Dad would be 84 today. I've thought about him all day and honestly the thought that keeps coming to mind is that I know so little about his youth. I don't know exactly where he grew-up. I think in the city of Santa Barbara here in California, but I don't know for sure. I know he was born in Los Angeles. I think he finished high school, but I don't know where he went to high school.

I know so very little about his dad, my grandfather because my grandfather died when my dad was 16. I know that grandfather was from Britian and that he was much older than my grandmother. I don't know how they met. I guess they never traveled overseas to his homeland.

I'm a little overwhelmed with what I don't know. I don't remember my dad ever talking about his youth or his dad.

My mom was Dad's first wife. When he and mom separated, I was so young that I don't remember him ever living in our home. After that Dad married many many times. Each one ended in divorce. My older sister and I were his only children.

Dad spent the last couple months of his life in the Veteran's Hospital in Los Angeles. He basically drank himself to death. The summer before he died, he was laid-off from his engineering job and he couldn't find work. I think he drank all summer until he was sick and the medical professionals determined that he had leukemia.

The last time I was in Dad's hospital room before he died, we gathered his things, what little was there . . . a lovely trench coat that we gave to our son, a package of white knit socks that a volunteer group distributed to patients, a Hershey chocolate bar, and a quarter (25 cents). Mr. Fun kidded me at the time that I was looking at my inheritance and he was right. It was an extremely sad moment for me. Dad was comatose. I knew he only had hours to live. He would say that he died successful because he didn't leave a penny. He'd spent it all. He would have no regrets; he never did.

My dad died at the end of 1992 when he was only 66. He was buried in the Veteran's National Cemetery in Riverside, which provides free graves to veterans, so it seems he even had that planned.

I know Dad was an army paratrooper during WWII, but he never went overseas. He met my mom when he was stationed in Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia. I know a lot about my dad's life during the years that I was alive, but the 23 years that he was alive before I was born have lots of blank pages for me. The little that I do know about Dad's younger days, I included in a previous blip.

Today, on his birthday, I am wondering about Dad and wishing I'd known him better. I wish he'd left behind a Blipfoto journal, so I could read his life.

Good night from Southern California.
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol