Sunday, June 20, 2010

FATHER'S DAY 2010





Reading through what my friends have written about their fathers on my Facebook feed, I’m feeling the love they’ve expressed.  As I subject you to my tribute, I’ll invite you to leave one about your father here in the comments.  Everyone should write about their parents at some point in their adulthood, I think.  It’s almost like a cathartic and adds another layer of understanding to your relationship you have or had with them.

Last month, when I wrote about my mom on Mother’s Day, I hadn’t really planned it.  I sat down to write my usual Sunday blogpost and that’s what came out and there was nothing I could do to stop it.  I said I’d write about my dad on Father’s Day in that blogpost and write I will.  But it’s not the same as it was with my mom.  My dad was more…..complex.

Bob Elliott was born Robert Irving Elliott, Jr. in 1917 to Dr. Robert Irving Elliott, Sr. and Ann Louise Babcock Elliott.  He lived at 511 Main St., in Chadron, Nebraska – a two story Victorian with a deep porch.  If I was a house, I’d want to be one like that, loved so much there are sketches of it, a framed painting and years of nostalgic reminiscing.

It’s hard to talk about my dad without first talking about his parents, my paternal grandparents.  It was they who formed the man who would become my father, they who molded his character and somewhat enigmatic personality.

In 1917, Woodrow Wilson was president and the world was at war.  Life went on largely uninterrupted in Chadron, NE, located just underneath Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.  My grandfather’s parents had immigrated to Nebraska from Illinois as my grandmother’s parents had done from the east coast, seeking new territories to settle.  The Babcock side of my father’s family had been in the U.S. for years, a distant cousin having fought in the Revolutionary War, while the Elliott’s came over from England (and France, on my paternal great-grandmother’s side).

My grandfather finished graduate school, taught school for a while, was superintendent of schools for two different counties then won the election for Nebraska’s Deputy State Superintendent of Schools. He later became the President of Chadron State College.  Chadron State was formerly called Chadron State Teacher’s College and my grandfather was instrumental in transforming it into a fully accredited four-year college.  He was President there from 1916 until 1940.

My grandmother taught Latin.  She just didn’t teach Latin to school children….she taught advanced Latin to teachers, and later, taught college level Latin.  She had a degree, also, and that certainly wasn’t common for women in the mid to late Victorian era.  In 1910, she and my grandfather married, rather late in life, as they were both over 30, also not that common for the times.  My father was their only child.

I never learned much about my father’s life directly from him, other than his talking about his old home, the college and traveling with his parents.  Most of what I’ve learned about his early days, I’ve read from my grandmother’s many (many!) journals and from his best friend, my late Uncle Sandy.  I know my grandfather’s position warranted much travel, mainly to Washington, D.C. and New York.  I know that while in New York, staying in a hotel while his father attended more graduate studies, he contracted diphtheria.  He had to be quarantined and the doctors didn’t know exactly when he’d be allowed to go home.  I remember him telling me that his father was none too pleased to be kept waiting because of a sick child.

He also traveled to California with his parents, so his dad could take part in some continuing education at USC.  It was there that his father told him that after he completed his prep school at Chadron State, he would be attending USC.  He graduated from the USC School of Commerce in 1938.  He lived over by The Pantry in Los Angeles, which, along with Phillippe's, became his favorite places to eat.  He also loved the old Biltmore Hotel downtown almost as much as he loved his church, The First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.  My dad was an usher there for 30 years or more, serving with the likes of Gale Gordon and Rock Hudson.  He admired his friend, Dr. James W. Fifield, greatly, and was a member of the church’s Freedom Club.  Dr. Fifield married my parents in 1947 and baptized me in 1957, and my dad was a pallbearer at his funeral.

My dad was a staunch right-wing conservative, a member of the Conservative Book Club Of America and once flirted with The John Birch Society.  He wasn’t the type of guy you took to a party and trust to be silent on the subject of politics. He quoted Nikita Kruchev’s line, “we will bury you with your own shovel” quite often and his favorite books were “The Naked Communist” and “Kissinger On The Couch”.  When I was around the age of 14, he tried to explain to me that the Beatles’ “Hey, Jude” was a song about heroin – poor guy just couldn’t get past the lyrics “let it under your skin”.

This didn’t make him very approachable when I was an adolescent.  He was the ultimate task-maker, the rule defender and my mother’s last resort.  We were the classic “wait until your father gets home” family, which was also not very conducive to good relations.  There was such an age gap between my parents and my sister and I – they both were raised in a different age and they had a hard time understanding what was happening in the 1960s and 70s.  Of course, when you’re 16 and wanting to go to a party, you don’t understand how your father’s upbringing could have anything to do with the fact that he won’t let you go.

My father must’ve been raised with a stern hand.  Parents had different criteria for children in the early part of the 20th Century than they do now (seen and not heard comes to mind and is something I was told often when I was young).  Back then, kids mostly did what their parents told them to do without question.  Thanks to the youthful uprisings in the 60’s, that changed and left many older parents befuddled.  Education, naturally, was important to my father’s parents and so was important to him.  I ‘m sure I cut him to the quick when I refused my paid-for USC education and got married instead at the age of 18.

Having lived through the Depression also left a permanent mark on my dad.  I really never understood why so much, since his parent’s position in life wasn’t affected by it.  He had a real fear of the stock market and I can only surmise that others in the town must have suffered losses.  He did, however, teach us by example how to be accountable with money, although I didn’t appreciate that until I was older.

There was much that I didn’t appreciate about my father until I was old enough to understand him.  I’ve reached a deeper understanding now after raising my own child and maybe I’ve just grown wiser over the years.  I can look back and see that he was a generous man, had great family loyalty and a high level of personal integrity.  And to his credit, his extreme political views mellowed out over the years, so he was capable of expanding his mind. 

He never quite got over his reluctance to communicate on a personal level with his children.  I wish I’d known him better.  But if he were here today, I would tell him thanks for raising my sister and I with such high standards.  I could say to him that I thank him for passing on to us his great love for the U.S. and what it stands for.  Most of all, I’d say to him that yes, dad, I get it now…..I understand what you were trying to tell me all those years ago.  Rest in peace, dad, I love you.

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