Walter Wright Thompson Father's Day Article

My dad's been gone four years now. I was thinking about him earlier today when I read the thread about sports things you'd like to do before you die. He was a much bigger sports fan than I've ever been. I was visiting him in the hospice before I had to fly home and I asked him if he was looking forward to the game tomorrow and he said, "What game?" I knew it wouldn't long if he no longer cared about the Super Bowl, he had more important things on his mind.

That was a great piece by Wright Thompson. There's a steakhouse not far from where my parents retired that I didn't discover until my dad was too ill to go. It's like something out of the 1940s and I know he would have loved it for the food, the atmosphere and the professionalism of the staff, a lost art that he always appreciated and never failed to acknowledge (and tipped accordingly). We've taken my mom there a few times, and I took my niece and her first boyfriend there once, but I always think this would have been his place. Wright has his golf course, I have my steakhouse, probably most of us have something like that and can relate.

 

I'm sure I've written this here before, probably every Fathers Day but what the hell, why should my mother get all the ink:

My father died at the age of 52. He knew nothing about sports. His father came to Chicago from the Old Country, selling sandwiches and coffee from a pushcart, scraping by enough to support his family, but not enough for luxuries like Cubs games. When the old man died, they found dozens of boxes stuffed with cash. Turned out Grandpa had been working for Al Capone and the boys who followed, but was too scared to spend the thousands of dollars he had made doing God-knows-what.

I took my father to his first and last Cubs game, six months before he died. I had two great seats over the Cubs dugout, on a Tuesday afternoon in May; the Braves were in town. It was Floppy Hat Day, and he wore that goofy hat until he died, maybe to hide way the chemo had cost him what little hair he had left, or maybe so people would ask him about the Cubs.

Dale Murphy hit a home run over the left field wall, and my dad leaped out of his seat like a little boy. Didn't matter to him that we were supposed to be cheering for the Cubs; he had just seen his first--and last--homerun in Wrigley Field.

He died the following winter. He never saw what I accomplished in my life, but after that day, he never again asked why I was wasting my time in sports. I think he understood, there couldn't be anything wrong with a world where a father and daughter could sit together wearing floppy hats on a beautiful spring day, as if life could go on forever that way.

 

Yes, you have. And your editor should let you turn it into a full-on Father's Day column. I think it'd be a helluva read.

 

BigRed, have fun next week at Rosenblatt with your dad. The cornfields and the cows miss you here in Iowa. Including me.

I enjoyed reading your story, Wright. It's not dusty here because I smile anytime I think of the things my old man and my maternal grandpa have done together. My goal before my grandpa leaves this world is to take him to Wrigley so we can watch the Cubs implode before our very eyes in person. He would get a kick of seeing in person.

And take Moddy's advice: break the rule and drop in when you have some free time.

 

That's the first time I've heard that story and it made things a little dusty here. Wright's story and the rest on this thread make me wish my dad and I had more than just surface conversations about sports and whatnot. It's always been that way and I guess how it always will be, but it doesn't mean I don't wish things could be a little different.

 

We can always hope, dreunc. I've been hoping for, oh, 25 years. Good luck.

 

Been hoping for, oh, 25 years, too. I'm very, very glad to see that others have that, though.

 

we're kin that way, bucky

so my conflict is this: i'm 35 and want to be a father; all of my friends have kids. what scares the shit out of me is that i don't have the reference of my father passing down wisdom and ways of the world to me, so that i can pass it down to my kids. i'm scared to shit that i won't be able to communicate with them or, you know, just be a dad to them.

 

I have always had a good relationship with my father, but not like this and that's what brought tears to these eyes. I suppose I always wanted a relationship like this with my father, but he traveled a lot for work and it never happened. It didn't mean he loved me any less, it just meant he didn't get the opportunity to express it.

Oddly enough, I DID have that close of a relationship with my grandfather (his father). He took me to my first baseball and football games and he used to tell me stories about his favorite athletes and how things used to be. My grandfather lost both of his legs jumping out of planes in World War II, survived a POW camp and came home to tell about it all the while not complaining once. We used to go for long walks, he on prostethic legs or me pushing him in his wheelchair. He died when I was 16 and before he did, he called me in his hospital room, handed me his World War II dog tags and his POW ID tags and told me that even though he couldn't jump out of planes to protect me anymore that those tags would do it for him. I still wear those tags around my neck every day.

 

Getting back to this thread after a long day of work and Junkie's post on the other page really got me thinking.

Junkie. . . I was never much of an emotional person growing up, that is, until the day my father died. Since then, there are some pretty simple moments that bring a tear to my eye when I remember him or if I even think about something sad.

A soldier dies overseas. . . the sadness can overtake me for a moment.
If I hear a song that reminds me of a friend who died all to young and the world stops for three minutes while I remember him.
Anything remotely patriotic can "make the room awful dusty," especially if I am alone at the time.

The change is because I lost my dad. It is hard to explain, but it just is.

I had a good relationship with my dad, but I was much closer to mom (who is still around in her 70's). Dad wasn't a talker. . . the number of long conversations that I had with him that didn't involve sitting at a bar having a beer with him after work could probably be counted on one hand. He was a simple man who worked his ass off to raise eight kids and give them a good life.

I mistook the relationship that I had with him until he was shortly before he was diagnosed as terminal a long time ago. In the four months from diagnosis until his death (with me living halfway across the country) made me fully realize that I did indeed have a good relationship with him but it was just different. Going through college, the running joke within the family was that my dad was short because every time I came home he reminded me that, "he was a little short this week." I may never have gone back to school with the extra $20 in my pocket, but on more than on occasion he spent his day off (Wednesday) finding a reason to stop by my apartment 100 miles away at school, bringing with him a cooler full of beer and steaks for my roommates.

My dad liked the simple things. John Wayne movies, playing cribbage, betting on anything and everything, a good poker game (pre-Texas Hold 'em) and any word puzzle or scrabble that appeared in the paper (He would love Sudoku). Like the Robin Williams character said in Good Wil Hunting, "that's the good stuff."

Don't get me wrong, my dad did have his faults -- a long list that I really don't want to get into -- but the day I learned to accept him for who he was instead of wanting him to be something different, was the day I started to learn who he really was.

I had some great times with him in his final years -- a trip to Vegas with him and my brother was the best money I ever spent -- and our best talks came after he was diagnosed as terminal.

As he was slipping away, I sent him a letter that included a copy of the latest media guide I had produced. The guide had won award the year before and I dedicated the new one to him (a fact that I only told him, even though it appeared in code in the book). In the letter, I shared a number of very personal thoughts about what I had learned from him and what being his son he meant to me. He received the letter on a Wednesday and promptly showed it off to anybody and everybody who stopped by. He died three days later.

When I came home for his funeral, my step-mother told me that he had confided in her that my letter was the first time anybody told him that it was okay for him to die and it brought peace to him. I haver that letter in a very special place.

Junkie. . . getting back to my original point. . . I don't think that you can appreciate Thompson's point of view because you haven't lost your father yet. Fortunately for you, there is still time enough to watch the John Wayne movies, have a beer with him at the bar or share a plate of chipped beef on toast. Trust me, those are the things down the road that you'll remember when you are like many of us who only have memories of our fathers.

Sorry that this rambled on for awhile but I hope this gives you a little more insight and helps somebody else on this forum to buy some Broncos tickets or make some other effort to do something special with their parents. It will be well worth it.

 

I just finished reading the story for the second time. I read it this afternoon, shortly after I walked into the newsroom, and realized then I needed to fight back the tears. Couldn't cry in the office, not on the clock. Now, a little later, I can cry all I want.

I am lucky enough to still have my Dad, only 600 north miles up the highway. I called him this afternoon, just to say hello, tell him I love him, tell him again how much I'm looking forward to having him stand by my side next year when I get married. I love my Mom, too, so much, but I've shared so many moments with my Dad over the last 23 years.

He taught me how to be a man. Without me even realizing it, he taught me how to be a father.

Thank you, Dad.

And thank you, Wright, for making us all realize one more time just how much our Daddys mean to all of us.