My Dad Died Today

On August 19th, 2000, the start of the new millennium, my dad passed away. Alone in a hospital. But alone was how he lived most of his life. Or so it seemed to me. Like many sons my relationship with my dad was strained and tenuous at times.

That Saturday I had a wedding to shoot. I did. My dad would have said, “Son, you took their money. This is your job. Do your job.” When I showed up I took the groom aside and told him I might disappear for a few moments because of what I was dealing with, but I didn’t want that to take away from their happiness, so don’t tell his wife. He was very compassionate and understood. I kept telling myself, “This is what dad would tell you to do. Do your job. Honor your obligation.”

I know it didn’t start out that way, strained and tenuous. My mom tells me repeatedly how proud he was when I was born. He was a father, and most importantly – to a son. My memories of him aren’t like he was Ozzie Nelson, or Robert Young, but then he wasn’t Attila the Hun either. Let’s state it like this – I don’t ever remember him hugging me, or telling me he loved me. Later in life, when I was in my thirties I would hug him or tell him I loved him, and then he’d reciprocate in kind. But he never initiated it.

He’d brag about how fast he could change that diaper.

I get a lot of who I am from my dad. His sense of humor, which was rather dry and quirky at times. Once he invited a couple from work over to dinner with us. The wife, who worked with dad, asked, “Hey, Jake (almost everyone called him Jake), would you toss me a roll?”

Which he did. He tossed it across the table to her. Thank God he was a softball player and had a good pitching arm.

In 1964 we moved to a new house “out in the country” my mom still lives in that home. The reason for the move was as much upward mobility as it was about my dad having an affair with one of the neighbors. He was a bit of a Lothario. Especially when he was drinking. It was a flaw in his character that I emulated in my first marriage. I became the very thing I despised him for; a drunken libertine. To be fair, I’d like to think that he struggled not to be that man. And in my personal life, after destroying my first marriage, like dad, I did become a better man. A broken and humbled man, but a better man than I had been.

But to return to his sense of humor…

My first and best friend in life is Billy Williams. I think we first met when I was three years old and living at Lafayette Shores apartments. And oddly enough both of our families moved to the same new neighborhood – Wedgewood, and in adjacent streets. So naturally I asked for Billy to come spend the night at my new home.

We slept in the den in couch with a pull out bed. At some point in the night, when we were not quiet asleep, we heard “monster” noises emanating from the den. The design of the house was such that you could move in a circle from den to kitchen to dining room to living to the den again. Or you could make a left turn and run down a hallway to the bedrooms.

When the noises began Billy asked what it was and I told him it was my dad trying to scare us. Well that soon became a rout reminiscent of when Andrew Jackson routed the British at the Battle of New Orleans.

“Yeah, they ran through the briers and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go
They ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch 'em
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico ,”

We ran through the kitchen and we ran through the dining room and we ran through the living room and back through the den again. Laughing and screaming like banshees. And that describes both parties – my dad was laughing as much as we were.

Then I came up with the brilliant idea of running down the hallway straight down to my parents bedroom. Which we did and then locked the door. But bedroom doors in a lot of these homes could be opened with a hairpin, which my dad started to do. So we ran into the bathroom, and when he started unlocking that door we did what any sane kid would do – we did a reverse of that Beatles song and climbed out the bathroom window.

That was my dad and his sense of humor at his best. It set a standard I still try to match.

I remember summers as numerous trips to baseball fields where his team was playing. As a kid I was bored to death and contented myself by exploring the areas around the baseball diamond with all the other bored kids. Afterwards we’d be rewarded by going out for a pizza. In the 1960s going out for a pizza – a delicacy brought over to our shores all the way from Italy, the land where we fought the Germans, and where goddesses like "Gina" Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren came from. The kids got to sit at a table all by themselves, and between daring to see who could eat a slice with prodigious amounts of red pepper, we’d debate if the Caesars ever ate pizza.

He was a trumpet player and I dimly remember him playing in a marching band. In my junior and senior years at high school I found that old jacket in the attic, and wore it to school. Which when wearing round sunglasses, like John Lennon, would make the girls think I was Sargent Pepper cool. Or so I hoped.

I remember him listening to Tom Jones, Marty Robbins, and Herb Albert. That Herb Albert album cover with the buxom model covered in whipped cream is as memorable to me as the Gunfighter album cover for Marty with him all in black looking like he was on that dirt street in High Noon. Lately I’ve been listening to that Marty Robbins album. And Tom Jones has matured gracefully from his 60s persona. In my dotage I’m listening to Tom Jones, Frank Sinatra, and Tony Bennett along with the Woodstock era artists I embraced as a teenager. Who’d have thunk it?

Sunday afternoons in the summer often would mean a drive in the country. Again, as a kid for the most part those rides were boring as hell, “Hey, look a cow! Yeah, again…” But now, especially now with me traveling for hours out in the country seeking the elusive barn, decaying house, or abandoned town, I think I understand what that meant to him. Some of my best adventures, best memories, are the ones where I cajoled Wesley, Malachi, and Gabrielle into sojourning with me.

At first when he died and I looked at family photographs I noticed how few he was in. I was hurt, angry. Why wasn’t he there? Years later I realized he was MIA not because he didn’t care about us, but because he WAS the photographer. He was documenting the family he loved, even if expressing that love verbally was a hurdle for him.

Dad and his kids. Notice how I’m pulling away. I was too cool to be in that shot. I was, like many teenagers, more concerned about being cool than being a son. What I jerk I could be.

My dad was tight lipped about showing any affection. It was as if it were a sign of weakness in a man. But one day in 1980 I found out that didn’t keep him from being proud of me. I had worked for him for three years as a terminal operations manager for a Yugoslavian shipping company – Jugolinija – when I received an offer from a North Atlantic shipping company to work for them for $3000 a year more than what Jugolinija was paying me. I was at my office at NIT (Norfolk International Terminals) with a sales rep from NBC Lines when my dad called me at the office.

He started the call off by saying that he didn’t want to make the call, but that the Yugoslavian management – Capt. Bozo Brajak and Capt. Miro Maverck – wanted him to make a counter offer; they would match what TFL (Trans Freight Lines) was offering if I would stay. After a moment of considering what was being offered I turned it down. One of the reasons I gave was that as long as I worked for him, I’d always be “Jake Wade’s son.”I’d never be given credit for anything I achieved on my own. He said he respected that and would pass that along to the Yugoslavians.

When the call ended the sales rep from NBC lines told me that had to be a hard decision to make. He then proceeded to tell me how many times my dad had showed his pride in me to him. When I was doing theater my dad would come to the show after the lights had gone down and leave before they came back up. When my band played at the King’s Head Inn, he showed up to listen but stayed at the bar where I wouldn’t be able to see him. It seems that every artistic endeavor I engaged in he was secretly proud of.

He loved fishing. For many years I thought he was probably more proud of this catch than he was of me. I was wrong.

Looking back I realize how much I inherited from my dad. Good and bad. He struggled with alcoholism, I did too. Many of his bad traits I ended up repeating in my own life. But I conquered those demons. Towards the end of his life, he did too. My dad was a musician, I am too. My dad was the family photographer, I became a photographer. I was an artist and he didn’t understand that, but his proudest day was when he visited me at my studio. I was running my own business as he did too. Finally he could really relate to his kid, his son.

Seeing this sign may have been my dad’s proudest moment in our relationship. Running a business was something he could relate to.

I preached my dad’s funeral. I, as a volunteer chaplain for a jail ministry was the closest person he knew of a “religious persuasion.” I ended my sermon with a quote from Hamlet, "He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again."

Being a parent, being a dad, isn’t anything life prepares you for. Some of us do it badly, others with grace and style. I am the man I am, for better or worse, because of my dad.

Melior esto patre tuo.

Be a Better Man than Your Father