Dad in the Army at the Coos Bay, Oregon, munitions center in about 1943.

Remembering Dad Is Often Difficult

My father died hard in May of 1960, two months before my 13th birthday. 

I didn't know him as well as I would have liked because he worked running restaurants from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day. When he was home, he was eating, sleeping, or reading a western novel. We played ball once that I remember. He hit a high fly to me and I missed it. The ball conked me on the head, knocked me out and we didn't play again.

Dad grew up in Johnson City, TN, the son of a well-to-do, but barely educated, building contractor. Dad's name was George Edward Smith; his father George Washington Smith. His mom, Mary Catherine Gervin Smith was red-haired, Irish, and meaner than a snake, according to my mother, who was detested by Mary because Mom came from poor people in Western North Carolina. 

Dad tending an overnight barbecue. People
loved his barbecue and Brunswick Stew.

Dad was a rarity of his time because he went to college, Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech now), a small Western Virginia school that was military in nature. He did well in school, finished with a high GPA in business administration, was popular with his classmates, played football and baseball, was sports editor of the school newspaper, and rose to a high rank in the corps.

But he began drinking in college. Slowly that crept up on him, but World War II intervened and he took a commission in the Army, already having three children. He was assigned to run a munitions depot in Oregon and there was a lot of downtime with that job, time to drink some more. So he did. He was undeniably good at his job.

The drinking became a real problem and Dad developed diabetes. He was scheduled to become a major, but the Army decided to give him a medical discharge anyway since the war was over and soldiers weren't needed in great numbers. Dad was broken-hearted. He wanted to make the Army a career. He went AWOL. He was caught and sent to Leavenworth Federal Prison for a year.

That pretty well shot his aspirations for a business career. He wound up cooking because it was the only job he could get but became quite good at it, and with his business background, he rose to management in restaurants.

I don't remember a lot about him, except the way he looked and his deep bass voice. He had some missing teeth in the years just before his death and the family didn't have money for dental care. We were pushing it just to get rent paid and food in the house.

He was popular with his customers and made friends easily. He was funny and his laugh was deep, hearty, and memorable. He was the hired cook at large barbecues because his barbecue was unparalleled. He cooked it all night, babysitting it like it was a sick child. His Brunswick stew was memorable.

Dad was a racist at a time when Southern white men were nearly all overt racists. He wasn't consumed with it, but he would casually say "nigger" and tell bad jokes about black people. Mom balanced that racism by insisting we treat people with respect and dignity and mom was around her kids more, so the influence was greater. I don't really believe Dad would have insisted we be racists, but maybe that's just me looking for a little sunshine.

Dad looks proud with Mom. He died
soon after this photo was shot in 1960.

I think Mom stopped loving him after her third child (of an eventual eight) was born. When he joined the Army, he was gone and she was left to hold the family together. They stayed married until he died, but when that finally happened, Mom seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

The last time I saw Dad, he was in an iron lung, weighing about 80 pounds and struggling to breathe. He was dying, so the hospital let us kids in to see him, knowing it was probably the last time. He had gone off on a drunken toot after having been sober for seven years and active in AA, gotten into a bad batch of moonshine, and had his insides rotted out. He looked bad. Awful. That impressed upon my 12-year-old mind.

Dad--or "Daddy," as I called him then--never spanked me, nor did he ever say a harsh word to me that I remember. The only sign of a temper I saw came when my older brother talked back in a nasty manner to my mother one evening and Dad slammed my teen-aged brother up against a wall and offered to eliminate him if that ever happened again. Dad always loved Mom. Always.

He loved his kids, too. I never doubted that. Not for a minute. 

Happy Father's Day, Dad.