Today is Juneteenth - if you want to learn more, please check out my Juneteenth post.
Today is also Father's Day in the United States, and it also would have been the birthday of my best friend from childhood, who died in 2015.
My father died when I was in my 30's, almost 40 years ago, and I think about him each Father's Day.
So I am going to repeat a post from Father's Day 2015 and combine it with another Father's Day I sometimes post. It's long but I hope you'll read all of it.
Let me first take you back to July of 1914. The world is on the brink of World War I, going through a
series of crises, but no one knows how close to war the world is yet.
My father is also too young to know. He certainly doesn't know that the life
expectancy for a male born in 1914 is only 52 years. Or that the
leading causes of death in 1914 included tuberculosis, influenza, and
diarrhea. Or that his one daughter would use something called the
"Internet" one day to blog, and to pay tribute to him.
He would have no idea what a blog was. Or a cell phone. Or a computer. They were way in the future, the future he was fated never to know.
When
he was a young child, he would have been too young to know that a
pandemic would hit, taking some 675,000. American lives, and more than
50 million lives world wide.
My father was born and grew up in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood called
Brownsville. My grandfather owned a candy store, which he ran with the
help of his wife (my grandmother) and their six children (including him). A seventh child died weeks after birth.
In the 1930's, my father's mother died, from complications of high blood
pressure, an illness so easily treated today. My father ended up
quitting high school after two years.
Dad doesn't have
too much of an Internet presence, but there
are a couple of things I can find. Several years ago, I looked at his record in the 1940
census, when he was still living at home with his father and several siblings.
I then looked up my father's World War Two enlistment record and found
this. What I know of
his enlistment is that he was already considered disabled (a childhood
illness destroyed his hearing in one ear) and had tried to enlist
without success. But, by 1942, we needed anyone who could serve.
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| State of Residence:
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New York
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| County or City:
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Kings[Brooklyn] |
| Enlistment Date:
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6 Aug 1942
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| Enlistment State:
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New York
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| Enlistment City:
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Fort Jay Governors Island |
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| Term of Enlistment:
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Enlistment
for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months,
subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law
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| Component:
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Selectees (Enlisted Men)
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| Source:
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Civil Life
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| Education:
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2 years of high school
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| Civil Occupation:
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Semiskilled occupations in manufacture of miscellaneous electrical equipment, n.e.c.
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| Marital Status:
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Single, with dependents
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| Height:
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69
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| Weight:
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130
|
I suspect one of the dependents was
his younger brother, the only sibling still alive today. He and two of
his sisters helped to raise my uncle after my grandmother died, in their own apartment.
His military experience shaped my father's life. For the first time, he was out
of Brooklyn. He saw the South (stationed in Arkansas and Mississippi). He was also stationed for a time in India. He would sometimes tell
me bedtime stories about his time in India.
My father didn't make it to the end of the war. He suffered a head
injury and was flown back to the States. He was given an honorable
discharge but suffered the aftereffects of that injury for the rest of
his life.
After the war he worked for several years on Governor's Island,
part of New York City, where his World War II enlistment took place.
Now, his one child is in her late 60's, and
our country is in its third year of a pandemic. We recently passed 1,008,000. dead in our country, and 6,339,000 worldwide.
When I was 12, my mother died, and my
father raised me to adulthood as a single father in their Bronx apartment
in a city housing project.
When his last sister died, in the first decade of the 21st century, the funeral procession
didn't go directly to the cemetery. It wound through Brooklyn, going
through some neighborhoods before it got on the highway. I wondered
where we were going and why. It didn't occur to me at the time that we
were going near to where where my aunt, my father, and their siblings,
had grown up. It was one
final tribute. My father had died almost twenty years before. I found
out about why the path to the cemetery after the funeral.
I owe a lot to my father and the simple, everyday lessons he taught me.
He did what he could the best he knew how. He ended his life in
Brooklyn, in the same facility where his own father spent his last days.
My love of history, a love I share with my late father, got me to thinking how much our world has changed in
the many years since my father was born.
But also, how much the world has stayed the same.
I also wonder what my childhood best friend would have thought of these times. One thing she never withheld were her opinions.
Happy Father's Day, wherever you are, Dad.
And to you, my best friend from childhood, I commemorate your earthly birthday.
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