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Thank you for noticing, houeto...

I will say this about my dad: he spent the first 18 years of his career away at sea (basically between 1946 and 1964 (his last ship, USS Bristol out of Newport, RI, on which he was the XO, was one of the vessels that stayed longest on quarantine duty in Cuba 1962-63)

In 1963, when his orders came up, he requested shore duty. He knew that would be the end of his promotion path, for the most part. At that time, he had six kids ranging from one to seven years old, he was 38 years old, and had spent very little time with us.

He chose his family over his career.

He started out as a reservist in 1945 and was recommended for transfer to the regular navy, which in postwar 1946-1950 may have been a compliment, as I have been told by at least one source that many officers were trying to make that jump. I have all of his papers and service records now, and his fitness reports all included the coveted “recommend this officer for promotion and command” statement. There was a copy of a report of his performance when his ship was first on the scene in Belize in 1961 when Hurricane Hattie basically destroyed the main port and much of the country, hitting it square. His ship could not enter the harbor due to damage and the channels being destroyed, so they anchored a good ways offshore and sent my dad in with a team of sailors on a launch to survey the damage and find out what could be done. My dad advised his CO that they needed water and generators first, then began helping the shocked people there get things organized, begin dealing with bodies and so on.

In any case, he wanted to be with us, and so he was. For the next ten years, we traveled together around the world as a family. He never once expressed regret for not pursuing a command, and the fact that he never rose above Commander.

It is often said of men of his generation that they didn’t know how to express their love to their families. Well, I never heard my dad say the words “I love you” until he was in his seventies.

But he sure as hell said it loud and clear with his actions as a family man. My mom told me this aspect of his career after he passed away, something that had occurred to me, but he never discussed it and I never asked. I guess there were probably a lot of conversations between my mom and dad back in 1963 as his orders were coming up.

So my mom did that amazing balancing act that military spouses often do. They run everything, do everything, pay all the bills, and when the husband returns, they hand control back over to them until they leave again. Now, I suppose that doesn’t happen (or happens less often) since most people can see the inherent issues with transferring control back and forth like that, and probably choose to let the same person handle stuff.

Back then, the man did it, usually with no questions asked. And I now know that generated a HUGE amount of friction in not only their relationship, but the relationships of many people they knew.

On the subject, though...I DO believe with all my heart that a man is vital in a child’s life. For those early years of my life, even though my dad wasn’t there, the threat of having to answer to him when he came back in eight months was very real indeed, and it kept me from straying to far, even though I was a kid who could push the confines of common sense to dangerous and unsafe limits. I wasn’t evil or bad (my parents often said I was the quietest and least trouble of all) but I simply had no commonsense whatsoever. So I got in trouble a lot by getting hurt or ending up in compromising situations (like the time in Japan where I set a field on fire by firing smoke bombs into it from my house across the street with a slingshot. It didn’t occur to me that the red, blue or yellow smoke coming out also had sparks too, that could light dry grass on fire...)

So even though my dad wasn’t around, he was ALWAYS on my mind!