Navel Gazing

Dad

My father was abandoned by his own dad early in his life and was raised by a strong-willed single mom, Julianne, forever referred to by us as "Nanny." The untold story is that she grew tired of the abuse received at the hand of the grandfather I've never met, a nomad ranch hand with an inclination for alcohol—vastly different from our Papa George, whom she married later in life. She requested her then-husband to leave, and for lack of detail, I only know that sometime around my Dad's 13th year, his father obliged.

[It is troubling to reflect on the age similarity between my father and oldest son, when I chose to leave]

Dad stepped into the vacant role left by his own father and continued to help support Nanny and younger brother Johnnie throughout their lives. My Dad was the last to pass from his family. He was a smart guy; his intellect is revealed in each of my siblings, with the most noticeable likeness shared by my younger brother Mike. He did well in school and was afforded opportunities in college and thereafter law school.

He was a calming source in my adult life, a much different, and wholly more accurate version than was conveyed earlier.

There's an image I retain of Dad that was born of a story he told from his youth. He worked as a stock boy after school in a local grocery store. Back then, all the product codes and prices had to be memorized, and my father, unsurprisingly, showed a great aptitude for this. So, after being the youngest person ever to be promoted from stock boy to clerk, they had to provide a milk crate for him to stand on to reach the register and perform his new duties.

I love that youthful image imagined of my father and the scenario that somehow encapsulates his life to which I've been privileged to experience. At his funeral, I retold that story and shared an observation:

"I have fathered four boys, and sometimes when thinking of their little boy faces, frozen in time and permanently etched on my mind, it can hurt. I feel a similar ache now in his absence. ..the pain of melancholy, for times past that can no longer be."

When my mom became ill after the birth of their first child, my Dad took a leave of absence from law school and eventually accepted an insurance sales job as a temporary fallback position. As the additions continued in roughly 2-year intervals, a temporary status became permanent. Decades later, my Dad received a self-winding gold watch as he retired from Berkshire Hathaway Inc., and although he doesn't speak of regret, and I know his life is much more fulfilled than the few preceding lines portray, it is accurate to state that his dream of being an attorney, like everything throughout his life since childhood and through the births of his own children, he put second to the needs of his family.

There is no better example of what being a man means to me. He continues to serve as a source of inspiration, as well as at times, internal conflict, as I continue to judge my own life against his.