Happy Father's Day

Here is a link to an article just published in Hawaii Reporter.com. It is my thoughts and reflections about this first Father's Day without my Dad being here.

In the closing moments of my father’s 86th birthday he died. It was a cold February evening in New York’s Hudson Valley when he was called away. My sisters surrounded dad at the time of his passing. My younger sister had flown from her home in Paris, and at the moment he expired she called to convey the sad news. Snow flurries started to drift slowly from the darkness after a window was opened. For me in Hawaii the sunset behind Oahu’s Waianae Mountain’s seemed particularly bright. Dad was gone.

“His toils are past, his work is done,” an epitaph in my ancestral hometown reads. “And he is fully blessed. He fought the fight, the victory won. And entered into rest.”

A night of celebration became a night of mourning and reflection. One season ended for him, and for us. But we certainly were not alone. And it was not the end of the seasons between my late father and myself.

My friend Malia Zimmerman and publisher of this online news source reported that her own father passed away not long ago in a hospice here in Hawaii. As I write these words a dear friend in Connecticut reported that his own father died suddenly, and that his mother may not be far behind.

As this 100th anniversary of Father’s Day approaches I am reminded that for others we greet this annual holiday with mixed emotions this year –but I am reminded that there is substantial cause for celebration. I only learned recently that Father’s Day started a century ago by the daughter of an Arkansas veteran of the Civil War who raised his six children on his own after his wife died due to complications in childbirth. Who knew then that William Jackson Smart’s example and devotion would lead to a holiday now celebrated internationally into the 21st century?

J.W. Howe is quoted in Eric Sloane’s ‘The Season’s of America’s Past’ as saying, “Blessed is he who takes comfort in seed time and harvest, setting the warfare of life to the Hymn of the Seasons.” A favorite quote from Ecclesiastes mentions “…a time for every purpose.” One of my sisters pointed out to me that our father was in fact a man of the seasons. We come from a region where seasonal changes are sharp and heightened at various times of the year. Dad seemed to prefer telling time by the position of the stars in the evening sky and the direction of the weathervane. He taught me the same in the wide expanse behind our home in Round Hill, and after I received as a gift my first telescope one Christmas morning I learned to appreciate the wonders of the infinity of the heavens.

Sure, my father went to the office five days each week, as did so many of his generation. Our family seems to gravitate between business and farming, and though Dad supported his family through business means I reflect now that he wished for a life more tied to our land and the seasons around us. “Seasons were timed to the vagaries of weather,” writes Sloane, “the appearances of the moon, the peculiarities of growing things, or the rise of an occasion. They were the slow heartbeat of the American countryside. They were the countryman’s calendar.” My father was a true albeit an unpretentious countryman.

This morning I was reading a New York Times report dated November 18, 1945 about the “Grave World Crisis” that was brewing in postwar North China. The region was a hotbed of civil strife. American forces were present to aid in the disarmament and disbanding of Japanese forces. A reinforced company of the U.S.1st Marine Division on a “Leatherneck troop train” had come under attack by Chinese Communist forces. For 15 hours scattered shots were exchanged between the Marines and Communist forces during the trip from Tianjin (spelled Tientsin in those days). On two occasions the railroad –which was still being guarded by Japanese troops- was blown up in front of the Marine train. The train had hardly stopped when automatic fire erupted. None of the Marines were killed or wounded. Lt. General Albert C. Wedermeyer suspected that the reasons were either poor marksmanship, or as he said, they did not wish to wound the Marines and instead harass railroad repair crews.

What struck me as I read this was that my father was there. I stopped what I was doing and just paused.

He rarely conversed about events in that season of life. He preferred instead to talk about how good the French were at throwing parties (but never providing details), how parts of Beijing were so dangerous that some who ventured to certain corners were not heard from again, Chinese New Year celebrations, visits to the Great Wall, and so on. He told me on various occasions how he loved China and its people, and how hard it was to leave.

As Dad reminisced about that early season in his life I could also sense the indebtedness he felt for the U.S. Marine Corps and for what the Marines and this country had done for him. He never expected anything in return.

That “don’t ask too much of life” trait is so distinguishing of the men and women of that season of our history. Dad like our family were descendants of resilient and robust New Englanders where self-reliance, virtue and gratitude are cornerstones of temperament and disposition. Gunfire and life’s ceaseless hurdles never seemed to defeat him, though no doubt such things provided their own brand of stimulation. Whatever pains were suffered was rarely if ever dwelled upon. Small gains were causes for celebration.

There were small joys, and plenty of them. Each Christmas season a large blue-spruce tree in front of our home was decorated with outdoor Christmas lights, and Dad and I would be out there on ladders in wind or cold –often both- to carry forth this annual tradition. There was lawn-cutting, sheep shearings, walking ponies and horses, learning to ice-skate on the front pond, harvesting vegetables from the garden, and -as my father was a volunteer fireman- being awakened at all hours of the day and night in the form of fire calls to save life and property, near and far. The list goes endlessly onward.

We have much to be grateful for from our fathers. By their sacrifices and examples we have the continued freedom to accrue great prosperity, freedom from outside tyranny and enjoy the self-determination we as Americans so often take for granted. We have the benefit of their examples. My father’s fondness for our town’s fire services extended to the mission of securing roles for those who had been traditionally excluded from the full participation. It was one of the purposes of his life and a cornerstone of his legacy.

Each Memorial Day the graves of fallen soldiers are decorated with flags and flowers. Here in Hawaii Boy Scouts and others made their way through the cemeteries with flags and leis. This was to commemorate fallen fathers as well as those who died in the service of country and freedom’s cause who would not live to the celebrate the ups and downs of fatherhood. One such soul was my father’s best friend who rests eternally in the National Cemetery of the Pacific.

On a continent six time zones east the same scene was played out, as I remember well. Men from towns large and small, of all backgrounds imaginable were called to depart the safety of home for battles they did not ask for –but who, out of a sense of duty were called to sacrifice and endure, and then return home. Their lives and sacrifices are the spirit of the American character.

A father just walked by -hand in hand with his young daughter and son- on their way to the public library to return books, and perhaps to choose some new ones. At the end of the day a father near my home in Upper Pearlridge was out in the parking lot of the condo community teaching his son how to ride a bicycle. At a shopping mall I bore witness to a daughter who asked her father, “Could I have my graduation money early so that I could buy this?” Dad simply smiled. A younger father with his child in one arms and a folded stroller in another performed a balancing act as they hustled to board the city bus for some unknown destination. One of my fellow deacons at Central Union Church just became a Dad two years ago, and being greeted by his young son is always a cause for celebration.

Those moments in the seasons of fatherhood are reminders that each moment and each purpose holds significance beyond our immediate comprehension. In all these fathers -and in my own- I realize that in these snapshots in time the true meaning of Father’s Day is found. In their own quiet and assuming way our fathers comprehend what has been consummated. Their ledgers are recorded in the hearts of those they touch with gestures large and small. Father’s Day gives us pause to annually rediscover the magic and integrity the roles Dad’s have in our lives. It’s not about sales at the shopping malls. It is about the gift of love, caring and giving. “A good father is one of the most unsung, unpraised, unnoticed, and yet one of the most valuable assets in our society,” once said Christian Evangelist Billy Graham. How true!

Happy Father’s Day.

Jeffrey Bingham Mead is an author, college professor and historian. He is a native of Greenwich, Connecticut residing in Honolulu. He is the Chair of the Deacons at Central Union Church and founder of the History Education Council of Hawaii. Mr. Mead is writing a history of his late father’s service in the U.S. 1st Marine Division in China 1945-1947. His blog is at http://mydadtheuschinamarine.blogspot.com/