I’ve often heard brilliant people labeled as “Rocket Scientists”. It just so happens that my father was the real thing.
To look at him, you’d have thought he was an average, every day sort of guy. However he was anything but.
Even as a child, Dad was a bit unusual. Unlike typical sports-hungry kids, his earliest passion was for the piano. Dad’s family lived across the street from his school, affording him the chance to rush home each day at lunch, gobble a sandwich and fill the air with classic compositions such as Rachmaninoff’s moody “Prelude in C# minor”, Beethoven’s haunting “Moonlight Sonata” or the gentle strains of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”. Grandma said she was often moved to tears by the sheer beauty that would ebb and flow from their old second hand piano.
Since math is a key element of music, it wasn’t hard to envision how Dad ended up in his future profession. After a four year stint in the United States Air Force where he was a flight deck navigator on C97 Military Air Transport Service (MATS) aircraft, he graduated from Indiana Technical College in Ft Wayne, Indiana with a bachelor’s degree in Engineering. Prior to graduation, he met my mother Marcia Ann Sprague at Lincoln Life Insurance Company where they both worked. Romantic sparks flew, and they were married on June 29, 1958. I entered the picture 17 months later.
As Dad carved out a living for Mom and I in the snowy cold of Indiana, he longed for a warmer place to put down roots. In the Air Force, he spent two years stationed in West Palm Beach Florida where he grew spoiled by balmy breezes and a laid back Southern lifestyle. Determined to make some changes, he found what he was looking for with Honeywell’s Military Avionics Division in Clearwater, which in turn brought our family to the Sunshine State.
During his 28 years at Honeywell, Dad was involved in a number of military projects. However he spent the greatest portion of his career participating in the building of an electronic control system for NASA’s Space Shuttle. The control system was intended to monitor engine performance. If problems were detected in the count-down process, the system would not permit a launch. From 1969 until the early 1980’s Dad spent many long days, nights, weekends, and holidays toiling alongside his colleagues to help ready the Space Shuttle Columbia for its first flight on April 12th, 1981. The work was demanding, but also rewarding. He was as excited as a little boy as he stood in our front yard and breathlessly watched Columbia’s early morning lift off from Cape Canaveral, clearly visible from 150 miles away.
Dad was definitely our “go to guy” when Mom or I needed help with anything. I never once saw him faced with a problem he couldn’t handle. If the plumbing was broken, he fixed it. If one of the cars was acting up, he fixed that too. He had excellent first aid skills, always knowing the right thing to do when I had a big splinter in my finger that wouldn’t come out, or a cut that weren’t healing properly. In addition, he painted, gardened, cleaned the pool, and still managed to grill the best hamburgers on the planet nearly every Saturday evening.
Unless he was doing something messy like mowing the grass, Dad was always well groomed. He looked especially sharp when dressed in a suit or sports jacket and tie. A lot of men wore the sorts of clothing that he wore, but they never looked as polished as he did. Over time I realized that it’s not what he wore, but how he wore it. He possessed a quiet dignity that transcended style.
When his own father lay in a hospital dying from terminal cancer, my loving Dad drove more than 50 exhausting miles round trip after work so he could shave Grandpa with his favorite straight edged razor, sponge bathe him, splash him with after shave, and help him into a clean pair of pajamas before the drive home. Grandma often remarked how her son's selfless visits gave Grandpa much needed comfort during the final days of his life.
His gentle side also extended to animals. From the moment I brought home a stray cat named Chester, Dad adored him. The feeling was mutual. Where Dad went, Chester followed. The silly cat even went so far as to hitch a ride on top of Dad’s Oldsmobile (unbeknownst to him) as he drove away to get gas. As they pulled into the parking lot, several people pointed at the top of his car, laughing. It wasn’t long before he figured out why! When Chester passed away, Dad grieved so much that Mom and I worried he’d become sick too. It was a long time before we could talk about the kitty, without seeing Dad's eyes fill with tears. As a way of coping with his heartache, he spent several weekends building a terraced garden as a memorial to his beloved friend.
My father was also a deeply committed Christian. In addition to work, family time, household and yard chores, he served as our church lay leader, and Chairperson of the Administrative board. Each Saturday afternoon, he readied the church bus for Sunday morning…which by the way, he drove after teaching Sunday school, and singing in the choir.
“Anything worth doing is worth doing well” he’d often say.
I often wondered where he got the energy to do so much.
When Dad retired after 28 years with Honeywell, he and Mom moved back to Indiana to care for their elderly mothers. Like a lot of men, he looked forward to retirement with great anticipation, and then regretted doing so once it was actually a done deal. Depressed and bored, he filled his days shuttling my grandmothers to doctor appointments, puttering around the house, or mowing the lawn. He even began structuring his activities around daytime television shows, which would have been unthinkable before retirement.
“A man needs a job. Sitting around the house all the day is for the birds” he would mutter in disgust.
Eventually he tired of hearing himself grumble and began scouring the want ads. He found what he was looking for in a part-time position working at the security checkpoint of the Fort Wayne International Airport. The job not only interested him because it had a certain level of importance, but he especially liked the required dress shirt and tie, something he missed from his Honeywell days. As a former Air Force man, he also enjoyed spending time around planes again, as well as interacting with passengers, and foiling FAA “mystery travelers” who regularly came through his line attempting to smuggle illegal items on board such as faux bombs, and knives. Dad’s eagle eyes even spotted a real handgun in the carry on bag of a disturbed female traveler who planned to commandeer a Delta Airlines flight. For his efforts, he earned the sincere thanks of Delta’s management as well as a cash reward.
I guess by now it’s obvious that Dad was a pretty cool guy. I could go on and on about the contributions he made to the world around him, and why his was a life worth living. But what makes him so special to his one and only daughter is simply that he was and will always be my irreplaceable father…the one who whose love and example helped shape me into the person I am today, who encouraged me to pursue my dreams, and who was one of the greatest friends a girl could ever have…a friendship that ended all too soon.
I miss you Pop.
