I once knew a man that very few people knew. He wasn’t famous, and hadn’t done anything to change the world. He wouldn’t be considered a great man by most people’s standards, but he was a good man. He was very good at math, and loved all those science shows on public television. He worked hard to provide for his family. Though they didn’t have a lot, they had what they needed. And they always had love. I know this was true, because I was there. This good man was my father.

Dad was born in 1943, the oldest of three children, and grew up in a small town in Connecticut. I don’t know much about how he grew up. We never talked about it. Dad was more of a listener than a talker, I guess. Most of what I know I actually learned from Ma.

What I do know is that when Dad was given a choice between braces and college, he chose college. I still remember his crooked teeth, which apparently I inherited. I think he made the right choice, because that’s where he met Ma. And that’s where they fell in love. Every once in a while, I wonder how that happened, though. I saw my Dad’s college yearbook picture. He was a nerd. Right down to the pocket protector and plastic framed glasses. After college, Ma spent three years in the Army. When she returned home, Dad still didn’t propose, so she threatened to join the Navy. Well, it worked. They were married in July, 1970. But before she would marry him, he had to grow a mustache. After the wedding, he grew a beard, too. I don’t remember if I ever saw him without either a full beard or a goatee. I think he did it to get to Ma.

My brother was born in March, 1971. I guess they were so happy with one child, they decided they needed another, so I was born in August, 1972. When I was six weeks old, I suffered the first of many ear infections, which left me more than half deaf, but it didn’t stop me from getting into trouble. I still have a scar on my little finger from the day my brother managed to catch it in a door. I was three. Dad paced the halls of the hospital, worried that his little girl would lose that finger. That was also the year I stepped on a nail, and Dad had to make me soak my foot in hot salt water. I didn’t like it much. Fortunately, it was healed before my first dance recital. Dad was there, watching. He went to every one of my recitals.

Dad liked HO scale trains. He had quite a set-up in the basement for a long time. It eventually took up the entire front room down there. My brother was more interested in them than I was, so I guess they spent a good deal of time together, messing around with the trains, the buildings, and whatever else they could add to it.

Dad always came home for lunch, and made the weirdest sandwiches. Peanut butter, mayonnaise, and potato chips. Or onions. Or bologna and potato chips. Weird. When I started Kindergarten, he would drive my best friend and me to school on his way back to work. That was also the year my audiologist put me on an antihistamine, rather than put tubes in my ears, to help clear up the extra fluid causing my hearing loss. Meanwhile, Ma and Dad continued doing whatever they could to teach me how to hear. Trust me, that wasn’t easy, but it seemed to work. By the time I was six, my hearing was back to 95 percent.

He loved to take us camping, which we did nearly every summer when I was little. Most summers we went to a campground with my maternal grandparents. I can still remember getting ring-pops at the little store they had there, and going swimming in the pool with my grandmother, with our silly little swim hats, to keep our hair dry. Eventually of course, our summers got to be too busy with too many other things to make the time. But we still took family trips when time allowed.

Dad wasn’t the type to start a home improvement project, and then abandon it. And he always let us kids help. That was family time for us. So even though there was always one project or another going on, at least they were different projects. I still remember the year we were redoing the room that, at the time, was the living room. Christmas arrived between tearing down the horsehair plaster and putting up the sheet rock. We decorated the bare slats.

I was seven or eight when Ma helped me make a Father’s Day present. A tie that I made mostly by myself. We kept having to hide it so he wouldn’t catch on to what we were doing. I think we finished my dress at about the same time as the tie, which was white with little flowers. It immediately became his favorite. He wore that tie more often than any other one. The next year, I made another one for him, and one for Grandpa. But it was that first one that Dad wore most.

Dad always woke me up when he got up, brought me down stairs, and tucked me into his chair so I could watch cartoons first thing in the morning. Of course, I always fell back to sleep, and Ma had to wake me up again so I could get ready for school. But it was our little thing, and I don’t remember Ma ever complaining about it. She just complained about the fact that I was always running late for school. I never was much of a morning person.

I don’t remember Dad ever missing a baseball game when we were kids, even when we were on different teams, or in different leagues. When we were playing at the same time, he would run from one field to the other just to see us play. And he never missed a concert or a play at school. And there were a lot of those over the years. I always loved being on stage. My parents even attended plays where I was not on stage. Just to see how well I did my back stage job.

Ma and Dad had it all worked out. Ma was in charge from six am to six pm, and Dad was in charge from six pm to six am. So if any of us needed anything in the middle of the night, Dad would come running. He saved me from several nightmares, and even one I didn’t remember. So I said I had a headache. And Dad made it all better.

When my sister was conceived in 1981, we were all happy about it. I was eight, and had been begging for a little sister for several years. Of course, I ended up making my parents laugh when they told us. Rather than jumping for joy, which was probably what they expected, I simply asked if I could have more spaghetti! Ma and Dad loved listening to my brother and me bicker about whether we would have a brother or sister, so much that when the ultrasound showed that it was a girl, they kept that information to themselves. When Ma was six months pregnant, she went into premature labor, and had to spend the rest of the pregnancy in bed. They set up a bed for her down stairs, so she could still spend time with us, and Dad took over the cooking and cleaning. He wasn’t much of a cook, so we had macaroni and cheese a lot, but he did his best. When my sister was finally born, we thought things would get easier, but it didn’t work out that way. Both she and Ma spent the next year or so in and out of the hospital. We were terrified that we would lose the baby. Every time she was laid down, everything she ate came back up. Ma and I even had to drive thirty miles to the hospital in a snowstorm once because my sister was so sick. Her doctor led the way with my sister in his car. And Dad was always there, making sure that everyone was all right. One of the specialists finally decided that my sister needed to sit up for eighteen hours a day, in order to keep the food down. It worked, and she finally began to thrive.

When my sister was around four, she and Dad started a little routine of running down the hill and back up. Almost every night. It was fun to watch, and they had fun doing it. It was kind of funny seeing them fall asleep together. Either in his chair, or on her bed, while he was reading her to sleep. Someone always had to wake him up.

Dad had to deal with the tough discipline. I know he didn’t enjoy, but at least he didn’t have to do it very often. We were pretty good at knowing when we had pushed a little too far. We knew how to cause trouble, but we also learned when it was a good idea to stop. At least until we became teenagers.

One thing I remember is that Ma and Dad always encouraged us to do what we enjoyed. When we were in High School, Dad made sure we got to our school functions, no matter how many times a week they were. And believe me, there were a lot of them.

When I was 15, I managed to break my wrist right before opening night for the fall play. Dad brought me to the emergency room for the original cast, and the next day, after I had been at school for the required four hours, drove me to meet Ma so I could get a regular cast that wouldn’t get in the way of my job as a grip. And it didn’t. I still ended up moving half a church pew the following night, cast and all.

I got my first job that year. My first day of work, I also had a rehearsal for the church choir I was in. My sister and I had rehearsal at the same time, and Dad always picked us up. That night, when I got out, I couldn’t find either Dad or my sister. I was getting a little upset by the time he finally pulled up in front. My irritation melted instantly when he told me he had taken my sister home so he could take me out to dinner to celebrate my first day at work, even though he had already eaten. That’s the way my Dad was. He attended my dance recital near the end of May, just like he did every year. It turned out to be my last, because that was the year everything changed in our family.

On Memorial Day, I decided not to go with them to the parade because I had to work that afternoon, and I wanted to sleep in. I still regret that decision.

On May 31, 1988, Dad drove my brother and me to school. We were running late as usual, but Ma stopped us anyway so my sister could get her kiss. After dropping us off, Dad went on to work. About an hour later, I was called out of class to go to the House Master’s office. My brother was already there. Dad was sick. That was all he knew. The House Master drove us to the hospital where we met up with Ma.

There had been an accident at work. Dad had been hit in the head with a piece of the machine he was fixing. He was already on his way to a larger hospital for surgery. By the time we arrived there, he was out of surgery, but he was in a coma. They told us that they had done everything they could, but he was brain-dead, and would never wake up. Ma had to let them turn off the machines keeping him alive on June 1, 1988. They turned them off just long enough to prove that he was gone. Then, those same machines were turned back on, because my mother had agreed to donate everything that could help save or improve someone else’s life. They even took his cheekbones.

I knew my Dad. He wouldn’t have wanted us to stop our lives just because he was no longer there, so that night, I still attended choir rehearsal at church, and the Spring Concert at school. I barely made it through either one. The next day, my chorus teacher asked if I had known before the concert. All I said was ‘yes.’ My English teacher was kind enough not to tell me to remove my sunglasses during class for the rest of that week. Somehow, I even managed to pass all my finals just two weeks after his death.

The man who swore like Donald Duck was gone forever, and there wasn’t anything any of us could do to change that. He was buried in the tie I had made so many Father’s Days ago. I wore pink to the funeral because he always thought I looked my best in pink.

It was nearly two months before I could bring myself to visit his grave. I sat there in the dark, and cried.

As I write this, more than eighteen years after his death, I still miss him, and wish he were still here with me. I admit that after he died, I lost track of what I was supposed to be doing for quite a while, but I hope that wherever he is, he is proud of who and what I am now. And I hope he is proud of his granddaughters. They have inherited his love of science.

Maybe Dad didn’t do anything in his life to change the world, but you never know. Maybe his children or grandchildren will.

In loving memory,
John Alden Carruthers
1943-1988

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