A Dad’s Story
Father’s Day, June 15, 2008
Born December 1, 1908. Straight brown hair that never turned gray; handsome, rugged face with smiling light blue eyes. Tall at 5′11″ and slender, he was considered 4F. Not acceptable to serve in the Armed Services during WWII because of a accident. A friend slamming a car door onto his thumb. When he pulled his hand out instinctively, part of the digit stayed behind.
We didn’t know much about Dad’s life before he met Mom. He was mostly the strong, silent type, reminiscent of John Wayne; a rough exterior but with a generous and kind interior. What little we did gleam from Dad’s youth was retold to us by Mom. For one reason or another we were not close to my Dad’s family. By the time my parents met his Dad had already passed away. My paternal Grandmother was gone before any of us children were born. Not being close to his siblings didn’t help us find out more about him. What little we could gleam is filled with mystery, intrigue and chaos; not surprising for my family on both sides of me.
Dad’s family consisted of his German-born Mother and French Canadian-born Father. There were a series of daughters similar to Mom’s family and finally came two boys, my Dad being the older one. The family was poor, I vaguely remember them living at one time on a farm, then having to sell it to pay bills. Eventually they moved into the city. Because of a work accident my paternal Grandfather had a metal plate in his head which bothered him most of his life especially in the summer months. Working alongside his Father at the same asbestos factory at an early age, Dad never went to school. He never learned to read or write. Which didn’t mean that he was stupid. He was just a wild spirit always opened to learn new and exciting experiences. Never could sit still. So instead of a proper schooling Dad’s knowledge came from the tough mean streets of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Similar to New York, every block in Philadelphia had its own street gangs with their varied ethnicity; the German groups, the Italians, the Irish, the Jews. Though he wasn’t affiliated with any one gang he was sociable with many of them. Enough to be able to weave his way through the different neighborhood streets without getting into any serious fights. That wasn’t to say that he went through his early life totally unscathed. More than his fondness for nice clothes and free living; loose women and smoky nightclubs and burlesque halls, Dad especially loved to drink. Shot glass overfilling with expensive whiskey which he’d dropped into a cold glass of beer. Liquor wasn’t good for him. More than once the gentle and kind John Wayne turned into a Mr. Hyde-type character. Many a time was when he came home bloody from a bar fight to a frightened mother and older sisters. But that was before Mom met him. The fighting, at least, had stopped by then. The drinking, unfortunately, never did.
After his father passed away Dad continued to work and support his mother, older sisters and younger brother, who he dotted on. Nothing was too good for them. He worked long and hard at the asbestos factory but spent his money and lived his life with wild abandonment. Such recklessness led to a dark night in Dad’s young adult life.
He had just bought a brand new car, his pride and joy, in which he drove all over town. Generous to a fault, he gave rides to his family and friends. But Dad drank too much plus he didn’t know how to say no to his friends who needed a ride. Along the way a mistake in judgment was made; but not by Dad. Screeching of tires; the burning of brakes. Cars swerving but eventually colliding. There was a fatality involved and though it was officially stated that he wasn’t to blame; Dad never drove a car again.
It was something very painful to him; he never talked about it. Somehow Mom was able to get only this little bit of information out of him but nothing more specific. Since Mom didn’t drive we had to walk to grocery stores or we’d take public transportation. When Dad worked on the night shift he had what we called a “driver”, a fellow worker who drove Dad to work for the price of gas.
By the time Dad met Mom he was thirty-six years old, time to settle down, he thought, and start a family of his own. There was a World War raging overseas and Dad was reluctant to admit his mother’s German heritage. Instead, he told everyone that he was Irish. It wasn’t until Mom finally met Dad’s older sisters that she discovered his German bloodline. As to his Dad’s side of the family, Mom soon discovered that her soon-to-be-husband was not the only one that kept secrets.
My grandfather came to Philadelphia when he was a young adult and though he married and had a household of children he would never disclosed where exactly he had come from. The only personal information he would indulge was that he was French Canadian. But though my aunts would press him where in Canada he had come from, wanting to communicate with relatives over there, their father would become stubbornly mute on the subject. Then one day, while he was reading the newspaper, he began to break down and cry. Abandoning the paper that he had been reading he ran upstairs to be by himself. One of the sisters bent over and retrieved the paper from the floor. It was opened to a horrific headline about two ships colliding and exploding, many dead and injured. The city was Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
It was on a cold December work day, while adults were hurrying to their factory jobs and school children were eating breakfast and getting ready for school. Two ships collided in the narrow harbor, one filled with deadly explosives. Evacuating sailors tried to warn the curious men, women and children away from the shoreline but it was too late. The fire on board the Mont Blanc ignited its explosive cargo and the resulting detonation was the worse man-made explosion prior to the dropping of the first atomic bomb.
One of the ships was blown apart, the other beached on shore. Windows were blown out, houses and factories caught on fire and many lives were lost, many more injured. Scattered glass left many blinded, permanently. A resulting tidal wave crashed on shore taking many more bodies with it. When my aunts questioned their Father about the news article he refused to answered them. They insisted and secretly wrote a letter to Halifax in hopes of finding a relative. But Grandfather found the letter before it was mailed and angrily tore it into shreds. When the sisters protested that they wanted to know their relatives, Grand-dad screamed, “You don’t have any relatives! They’re all Dead!”
Later, he had confided that he was the thirteenth of thirteen children. A black sheep of the family who after arguing with his family, ran away from home. Whatever the reason, he never gave them any clue, other that he didn’t want any communication with his family back in Canada. After that fateful day in December, any chance at reconciliation was forever taken away from him. It went up in an explosive mushroom of fire and debris and death and was finally washed away forever by that terrible tidal wave.
Back in the early 1990s I tried to finish what my aunts had started and visited Halifax, Nova Scotia. The city reminded me of a Philadelphia in its youth, perhaps the reason why Granddad decided to build his life there. He had always insisted that he was French Canadian yet his surname, the one that I shared, had English/Irish origins. But it was all that I had in my search for my long lost relatives. I did have approximately the date he was born. This was discerned from his tombstone. Plus I knew that at least most of his family was killed in that horrible collision and explosion. Yet since he ran away from home, what if he had changed his name. Shrugging, as long as I was here, I might as well try. So, with the little that I had to go on I made a visit to the local university, Dalhousie.
I wasn’t allowed to have anything with me, not even my handbag. They supplied the scratch paper and pencils. There were a lot of people there, probably from the States, doing the same thing that I was doing, searching for those who went before them. I heard many discussing writing books and piecing together genealogy trees of their families. Perhaps in the hopes of contacting long lost relatives.
Luckily it didn’t take me too long to find an empty seat at one of the microfiche stations. The assistants at the library were very helpful and friendly. I went through microfiche after microfiche in search of my surname but found nothing. Dead end. But I would not so easily give up! I told one of the friendly attendants about my Granddad and the newspaper article about December 6, 1917. She nodded in understanding. Then I told her that I couldn’t find my family name. I explained that my Grandfather had insisted that he was French Canadian yet the family name was obviously English/Irish. She nodded again and said that perhaps my Grandfather had “Americanized” his surname. That was it, I thought. I asked her if she knew the French way of saying my surname and she did. With my new knowledge I anxiously went through the microfiches again. I also had surmised that the families were more than likely the ones who had gone to the shoreline to see the two ships on fire. My reasoning was probably correct. The French form of my surname was there in the microfiche. Not once but several times. The families with the same name lived in several houses next to each other. A big family! You see, I really never intended to find any living relative. I knew they were all killed in the big explosion. But still, it would be nice to have known them.
With nothing else to do, I tried to research the birth records. Perhaps I could discovered when Granddad was really born. I had a date from his tombstone in Philadelphia to go by plus now I had his true surname. Remembering that Grand-dad’s father did masonry work I added that equation to my search. Too bad they didn’t have Google back then.
Another thing that confused me was that Halifax isn’t one of the French speaking cities of Canada, like Quebec or Montreal. Then I discovered that there were French Protestant Huguenots, persecuted in their own country, migrated to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1753. It made some sense. But every answer lead to a million more questions. I could have spent years there instead of only a few days. Regrettably, I left but while researching dates and names for this article on the Internet, curiosity has sprung up in me again! The Quest for knowledge continues on! I intend to continue my research into my Canadian background. Luckily, I live in the Phoenix area where the Mormons have a huge library that anyone can visit to search their genealogy. Hopefully, maybe within the next few weeks, I will have a continuation of my Grandfather’s story and some old questions finally answered. Or not.
Back to my Dad’s dedication. After Mom and Dad married they lived with her parents. Dad had been laid off from the asbestos factory and it was difficult with his lack of education to get another job. Luckily, through the neighborhood grapevine, my parents learned of an opening for a forklift operator at the Curtis Publishing Company. The popular publishing company was founded in 1891, in Philadelphia, becoming one of the largest publishers of the 20th century. They published such hugely successful magazines as The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Journal and Jack & Jill. Dad rushed over to apply for the position even though he knew nothing about being a forklift operator. He took Uncle Adam with him to help assist in filling out the application.
When they got to the company’s personnel department they were told that Dad had to fill out the application there, by himself. Uncle Adam somehow slipped a blank application into his coat jacket, took it home and filled it out for Dad. The next day Dad returned to the personnel department pretending to fill out the application himself and handed it in for submission. After an interview Dad got the job!
He worked at Curtis’ Sharon Hill factory as a forklift operator for 25 years. He would bring home their magazines but we especially loved Jack and Jill, a children’s magazine that had puzzles, cartoons and paper cut-out projects. It also had a lot of interesting stories presented on a child’s level.
Then 1967 came and it was the beginning of the end for the Saturday Evening Post. An article had been published in the Post that hinted at a conspiracy between two college football coaches. It was insinuated that the coaches had “fixed” an important game. A lawsuit was issued with the result that the Post lost and had to pay out a lot of money. That year Dad was given an early retirement at age 59. A couple of years later saw the end of the company and the Post.
Because of his inability to read and write, plus his age, Dad was unable to get another job. By then I was working at the telephone company and Harry eventually came home from the service. At sixty-two Dad received social security. It wasn’t a lot but with Harry and my help we were able to send our younger brother through college. Eventually, because of his extensive smoking habit, Dad contacted lung cancer and suffered with chronic bronchitis. He passed away in 1984.
I remember him being a very quiet man who was always there for us. He saw to it that we had a good education, food on the table and a roof over our heads when we were young. Dad instilled in us his love for music, enjoyment of Philadelphia Mummer’s Day parades. He would always extolled in us to constantly learn and be the best that we could be. Even though he treated and called me his “Princess”, he never stopped me from doing things that my brothers were allowed to do.
I remember him with his hand on my bicycle seat, giving words of encouragement as I rode my bike without its trainer wheels for the first time. “Don’t look down, look straight ahead,” he yelled. “I’ve got you so you won’t fall.” Running alongside of me and my bike. Then all of a sudden he was gone and I was riding on my own!
That’s how I will always remember My Dad!
Love You, Dad! God Bless All Those Dads Out There Today and Always!
Arlene