The Quiet Man

This Father's Day I am revisiting a post I wrote about my father last year. I'm grateful that he was my dad. He loved my mother, and he loved me. Only now, as a grown man, can I appreciate his remarkable courage, compassion, humility, and sweet nature. I am proud of my father, and I miss him.

(Our scene opens in a large, homey kitchen in an American suburban home in the mid-1970's. A small family - father, mother, and teenage son - are sitting at the Early-American style round wooden table having dinner)

Son: We learned about this French luxury oceanliner, The Normandie, today. It caught on fire in New York harbor during World War Two and sank because of all the water they pumped in it trying to put out the fire. Isn't that neat? Have you heard of it?

Father: (chews, swallows, pauses) I was on it.

Son: (speechless)



How in the hell do you become old enough to drive a car without knowing this about your own father? After a few initial sputters reminiscent of our pushmower, my engine roared to life. I peppered my dad with questions as liberally as I had the Swiss steak which now sat before me, untouched and forgotten.

The French luxury liner, The Normandie, made its maiden voyage from France to New York in 1935. She was the sleekest, fastest, most artfully decorated ship of her day. The Normandie was the largest object man had ever set in motion. She was the pride of France. She was the pinnacle of the era's shipbuilding technology.

The Normandie was seized by the United States in December, 1941, and was immediately turned over to the Navy to be re-outfitted for troup transport. My dad, a young sailor, was assigned to this task. The ship caught fire and sank in February, 1942.

As I continued to poke and pry, my father told me that he was in a briefing in the childrens' playroom when the fire broke out. The playroom, he recalled, had padded leather walls so that rambunctious children would not injure themselves if they fell. The sailors were evacuated from the ship, and then sent back onboard to assist with firefighting. The irony is that the fire did not cause the demise of this great ship; the amount of water pumped inside to quell the fire caused the ship to capsize and sink harborside.

This story is typical of my dad's reluctance to talk about his past. To this day he remains a cryptogram to me in many ways. The bits that I coaxed from him revealed that he led a fascinating life. Through crafty questioning and wheedling I learned that my dad went with a friend to a Navy recruiting station and lied about their ages so they could join the action in WWII. He was assigned to the Atlantic Theater, and reassigned to the Pacific after the Normandie went belly-up. Assigned to a destroyer, the USS Buchanan, he was in many battles, including Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Bougainville, Cape Esperance, and others. He never talked about these battles. They were listed on the framed USS Buchanan scorecard on the wall that I had passed by every day without a glance.

The Buchanan was one of the first ships that entered Tokyo Harbor following the surrender of Japan, and his ship participated in the surrender ceremonies. He said the Japanese citizens were terrified by the sight of US sailors in Tokyo. He saw sumo wrestling matches and God knows what else before his ship was given the task of going up and down Japan's coastline picking up POW's. The only thing he would say about this was "Bill, they didn't even look human when we got them back." Those few words still make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

After the war, he became a Navy diver, a "frogman", a member of the elite Underwater Demolition Team (and, later, the UDT/SEAL team). At the time, there were four UDT's; two in California, and two in Norfolk, Virginia. He was first in San Diego, and I know nothing of his life there. He was then reassigned to Norfolk, where he met and wed my mother.

By the time I happened upon the scene, my dad was an elder member of this branch of the service, and he instructed younger men in the art of utilizing finesse and perfect timing with explosives. He was respected and admired by the men in his charge, but at least one told my mom that if he ever blew his top, they shaped up fast. He had a long fuse in general, but had no tolerance for the careless grab-assing of cocky young men. My dad had a dangerous job. He had seen buddies killed in combat, lost a man in a fall from a helicopter during a training maneuver, and had a diver alongside him eaten by a shark during a nightime mission. He told me the only parts they recovered for burial were a hand and a piece of thigh. He knew the dangers of the ocean. Sometimes the phone would ring in the darkness of night, and my dad would be gone in a flash. My mother and I didn't know where he was going or when he would return. But he always came home to us - thank you, God.

His reticence was not confined to his years of military service. I learned more about his family from his sister, Therza, than I ever learned from him. For example, Aunt Therza told me that their oldest sister, Olivia, died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918. My mother nor I had ever heard of Olivia. Even the circumstances of his mother's death when he was six are cloudy; he always said she died of tuberculosis, but Aunt Therza told me she died following a horseback riding accident. He did not like to talk about his childhood, and was adept at avoiding questions. Like the sea he loved, he held his secrets close.

He was a quiet man. He enjoyed simple things. He liked to laugh. He did not want many possessions. He cherished my mother and me, and he provided us with a good life. There was always plenty of food on our table, even if boats and campers never cluttered our driveway. The vehicles may have been old, but were always bought new and never financed. Our house was not large, but it was paid in full and we lived in a nice neighborhood. He and my mother taught me that friends and family do not wear out with time like material things.

I grin everytime I think about my friend Suzanne and my dad together. Once one started chuckling they were off to the races. Chuckles and giggles turned into side-clutching gales of laughter. My friends adored him, and he made each one feel welcome with an easy-going manner, a twinkle in his eye, and questions that engaged them in conversations that told them that he found them as interesting as they found him. He was never boastful, and was always kind. Meeting him casually, you would never guess the risks he took every time he headed off to work. No one would dream that he had been trained to kill with his bare hands.

I think my friend Tracey put it best when, following his death, she turned to me and remarked "You know, Bill, if I had to describe your dad in two words I would say 'humble' and 'gentle' ."

I couldn't have said it better.