I know I recorded this before, but lately, I've been taking care of my 94-year-old father. He broke his arm back in May and it still has not healed. He needs constant care right now to make sure he doesn't fall again. I spend Thursday nights and usually Saturday nights with him, basically giving up two of my seven days just to help out with my two sisters who live in the area.
Ever since his wife, my mother, passed away in 2015 I've watched my father grow weaker and weaker. He turns 95 in March and I hope he makes it to that and far beyond, but none of his 5 children expect him to last that much longer, so, we are planning a birthday party for him to celebrate.
My father was born in Los Angeles when his own father had to leave St. Louis because he had taken up with another woman whom he had gotten pregnant. My father was born there, but moved back to the midwest as the scandal blew over, and he obtained a divorce and re-marriage. His father did many things, one of which was being a baker. My father grew up during the Depression, and learned a lot about how to make do with very little. He had big plans, however, as he was fascinated by electricity.
The War intervened, however, and he joined the Army where he served as a Signal Corpsman in Europe. He saw the ugliness of war and hated it with a passion, but also understood its occasional necessity. Right before he went to war, he courted my mother, and, after the war, married her. My elder brother was born in St. Louis, while my father was studying Electrical Engineering at Washington University. He moved to Harriburg, PA where my older sister was born, to work for RCA. He then moved to New Jersey so he could work in New York City, which is where I was born, New York City. He got new employment with Bell Telephone and my two younger sisters were born while we lived in New Jersey. Soon afterward, he was transferred to Columbus, Ohio, where the Bell Telephone Laboratories was centered, and where I grew up from 6 until 21. He worked on the last of the mechanical switching equipment, and was there as it got changed to computerized switching. He was partly in on the design of Touch Tone dialing so, you can blame him for the reason why telephone pads are different from 10-key pads.
I left to do other work and went back to New York City, but since he occasionally had to go back to New York on occasion, I did get to see him. I finally moved back to Columbus after he retired in 1992 where I have lived since.
At 94 years, his mind is still sharp, even though it wanders much more than it used to. He is now legally blind due to macular degeneration which happened so quickly, it caught him by surprise. He had just gotten his driver's license renewed, and not two months later, he was effectively blind. He can still watch some TV and read with the help of a magnifying glass, but it is a struggle, and he gets very frustrated trying to use electronic equipment that he simply cannot read.
I spend my evenings with him, reading the newspaper and challenging his mind with the crossword puzzles in the paper. It is a pain, especially when I have to read the obituaries, which he insists on. I don't like doing that as it reminds me, again and again, how soon it is that I will be losing him.
Why do I tell you all this? After the loss of my mother, and the loss of Pandaguy, JBadger and Quasiskunk, I wanted you to know him BEFORE he leaves. He is a man I look up to for his hard work, his patience, his wisdom (even though we vehemently disagree on certain issues, but he has is reasons, and I have mine), and his love.
I owe him far more than I can ever repay. This song is dedicated to him, Fred Henry Smith Jr., my father.
