1 post tagged “fathers day”

MEMORIES OF MY FATHER

Fathers Day was just yesterday and it was a time for me to sit back a reflect on my father.  He died in 1988 and my mother died 9 months later.  My two older brothers and I have very different memories on my father.  They remember him primarily as a colleague or someone that took them to their different activities.  My memories I think are more as a child who my father taught to throw a football and who was my scoutmaster.  Out of the three boys, I had probably the most normal relationship with my father.  Camping, going to baseball or hockey games, going in the basement and sitting in his special chair and reading, building snow forts, snowball fights, listening to his stories about the war or spooky stories around a campfire.  My father was an unusual man.  I recently got his records from his time in service during WWII which confirmed much of what I had been told as a child.  At 17 my father, Lewis E Robinson Jr., with a permission slip signed by his mother, joined the US Marine Corps in 1939.  He had served for over a year as an adjutant orderly bodyguard of Admiral Kimmel at Pearl Harbor and was there when attacked by the Japanese, Dec. 7^th, 1941.  He continued in that position after Kimmel was relieved under Nimitz for several months, until his reassignment to the 2^nd Marine Raider Division, often referred as “Carlson’s Raiders”.  There were actually four Raider divisions but they were disbanded in 1944 and absorbed into standard Marine infantry divisions. His pay stub said he made $109.00 per month…combat pay, at his discharge in 1945.  I saw his picture that they took when he signed up.  I almost did not recognize him…except for his eyes.  He was just a boy.  He was at Makin Island and served on the “long Patrol” behind enemy lines at Gudalcanal from Nov 4^th, 1942 to Dec 4^th, 1942.  He also saw action in Saipan.  After developing “dingy” fever he finally was transferred to the Great Lakes Hospital where he met a young nurse, Evelyn Anderson, my mother.  When he was discharged he had lost so much weight, he looked like a starved POW.  Several of his uniforms, metals and  the black shirt from the Raiders are now at the Nimitz Museum, donated by my mother after his death.  After the end of the war, using his GI Bill, he entered College at Monmouth, Illinois and continued through University of Southern Illinois, University of Iowa, MIT...ending with a PhD in Physics.  He continued his career at Alice Chambers Labs and Arrgone National Laboratory.  He was also a professor at University of Chicago.  But with all that, he was the one who taught me astronomy, how to use a sexton, how to tie knots and make a fire, how to throw a football and make a snow fort.  I got married at 24 and had my first son within  the  year.  As an Airman First Class in the USAF force, stationed at Altus AFB, I don’t think my either of my parents understood how poor we were.  I did not have enough rank to qualify for on base housing and there was no where for my wife to work.  I worked extra jobs and we lived on credit cards.  When I could not go up to Chicago for my  fathers 60^th birthday party or his retirement or contribute to his gift, both my mother and brothers felt I was just being “cheap” or petty.  They just did not understand.  Later I sold his rifle that he had given me (which had been a present to him from my mother).  I sold it for food for my family.  All those hurts festered (probably with the help of my mother) for years.  It was twelve years later when I went to their retirement community in  Florida, that I finally got things taken care of with my father.  We forgave each other...and it was the only time I ever saw my father cry.  The medications he was on made my normally very unemotional father….cry as he told me how much he loved me and that he was sorry for those lost years and past misunderstandings.  He only lived eight months more after that and died in 1988.  There was still much more I wish I had said and time I wish I had.  He really was an enigma.  A man  born out of time who was a master chess player and loved the complexity of mathematics…and yet who taught me to listen to the trees sing as the wind passed through the branches.  He told each tree had its own song.  I remember his deep bass voice in the choir at church and his whistle that he taught all of us when he needed us to get back home for dinner.  I remember his (ugly colored) green upholstered chair/rocker in the basement that he had modified as a writing table, with a coffee holder.  I would sit in it and rock..only to be ousted out when he got home from work.  I remember all the things he built and his workshop.  How many times was I grounded for using his tools without permission…or losing a tool?  I remember the smell of his leather jacket, “British Sterling” aftershave, and the smell of his pipe.  I remember his funny coffee cup, with a whistle in the top that mom had given him.  The whistle never did work.  I remember how he liked to play golf and the times he took me on the course while in High School.  I never did get into golf…but he loved it.  I remember his India-Jones Hat he wore.  Popular at that time.  Maybe it will come back.  I remember his bolo ties with the beautiful turquoise stones and silver.  I remember going to the shooting ranges with my brothers, my own 22 rifle and his 45 revolver.  I still have both.  So many memories.  I miss you Dad.