The Dad

I love this photo of my parents, especially of my dad. The baby is my brother Robert Emmet Jr, who was born in 1949. Doesn't my dad look like the Proud Papa.

I didn't know my dad very well, he died when I was 13. But some of the things I remember is that he loved the White Sox (we do carry on that tradition!) He had a lot of funny sayings, like "Itchy Boom Ba Uh Oh!" and "Da Do Da Do". He always signed a birthday card, "The Dad". He smelled like Old Spice and beer. He made breakfast on the weekends....bacon and eggs like I've never had since he died. He helped my mom with housework. He worked for the city of Chicago.

I remember when Michael and I were little tiny kids we'd each sit on a knee while he sat at the dining room table reading his paper and drinking beer...warm Meister Brau...he'd bounce us while we sipped beer out of little glasses (the kind of glasses that shimp came in). My dad slept downstairs off the living room, on the weekends my mother would send Michael and I downstairs to get into bed with him in the early morning hours, we'd run cars up and down his arm and giggle until he'd make us go back to sleep.

My dad was drafted into WWII at age 36. He was an MP and was stationed in California to "protect the coast". My dad and mom met at a dance hall in Michigan (even though both of them lived on the southside of Chicago) a week before he was to leave for the service. His family threw a going away party which my mom attended, the family fell in love with her and so did my dad. My parents got to know each other during WWII via air mail letters.

My dad was 39 when they got married, by age 50 he had 5 children under the age of 10.

My oldest sister Mary got married when she was 19, my dad walked her down the aisle. Not too soon after that he was diagnosed with cancer and for the following two years he spent most of the time in the Veteran's Hospital in downtown Chicago. Our family would go twice a week to visit him. Michael and I were not allowed to go up to see him because we were under 14 years of age (yes, there were rules like that back then), so we'd sit in the lobby of the hospital for hours waiting for our mom to come back down.

He was able to come home from the hospital on holidays and for a couple of weeks during the summer. He called it a furlow. When I was in 7th and 8th grade I would come home from school at lunchtime to make lunch for Michael and I, and then I'd clean and change his bandages from skin grafting I think. That's what it looked like to me because the wounds were big squares. He never complained.

The last time I saw him was on my sister Mary's 22nd birthday, Sept 9, 1968, he had been home for a few days but was in a lot of pain. Every day my mom kept asking him if he wanted to go back to the hospital but he kept saying no. I think he knew it would the last time.

The pain must have been too much because then he asked to go back to the hospital. I was sitting on the front porch when he came out and with the help of someone (maybe my brother or my mom) he walked down the front steps while crying. I just watched as he got into the car. I can't remember if I ran up to the car to say good-bye but I'd like to think I did. He died in October.

The following February, Mary gave birth to my dad's first grandchild Scott.