Dad was my teacher, mentor, exemplar

Dad looked as though he were way, way up in the sky, but he wasn’t. He stood on a 6-foot ladder as he painted the living room ceiling. He worked intently, shirtless, wearing only his white athletic shirt above the waist of his slacks. It was a memorable sight, for Dad was seldom seen in his undershirt.

As my brother, Dan, and I shared memories of Dad, Dan described this scene in vivid detail. I had only a vague memory of it. Dan also recalled a hurtful memory. Dad had asked him to pick up the floor lamp to put it in a more favorable place, where it would better shine its light on the ceiling. Dan complied, but with disastrous results. Holding onto the metal (and apparently not grounded) lamp’s base he walked toward the ladder and stepped onto the floor furnace’s steel grille. He immediately received a huge electric shock.

Dan was stopped in his tracks, but as soon as he could move, he dropped the lamp and ran off crying. Dad, who didn’t care a bit for crybabies, gave Dan a sharp reprimand. It was a lose-lose situation. Dan was hurt from the shock and also injured by Dad’s sharp words.

Dad was a giant in my eyes. There was nothing he couldn’t do. At times I was afraid of him; he seemed truly tough and fearsome. Yet, he could be amazingly gentle, especially when he was equipped with a sewing needle, gingerly removing a painful, offending splinter from my hand.

I called him a giant, but he was a man of ordinary stature. He was only 5-foot 10-inches, but every inch of him was packed with muscle. He should have been, for he had taken part in doing heavy work since he was a boy.

My dad’s sometimes harsh childhood eventually had an auspicious effect in later years on my own youth. Although Dad could be a stern disciplinarian, he was protective and nurturing with us, his tag-along brood. Because of his own father’s crippling accident, he was forced to drop out of school and work full-time on the farm, he felt that he was robbed of much of his childhood.

He treasured childhood, and he wanted his children to have full access to those precious years. He spared us from house painting, yard work and such. He wanted us to play and have fun. In a word, he spoiled us. Spoiled us rotten, probably.

Dad was not a devoted church-goer. He went to Sunday services with Mom until they married, and then he became what she called a “backslider.” There were times he came to see us youngsters in our Bible school commencement services, but he left religious instruction to Mom. He taught us by example.

One lesson he taught us, and taugh us well: honesty. I remember his ominous warning, “Never let me catch you in a lie.”

If I thought my teacher at school had eyes in the back of her head, I was sure Dad had radar vision, and was possibly telepathic. Anyway, I wasn’t about to take any chances. If Dad said, “Hop,” I hopped. If he didn’t, I stayed still.

Tales of Dad’s disciplinary actions with my older siblings were legendary. Either those stories were blown out of proportion by my sister and brothers or Dad had mellowed with age by the time I came along. I’m not saying he was an old softy, but I think he always treated me fairly.

To me, Dad seemed to be the strongest of men. During his youth, he plowed the fields on his family’s farm. As a young man he worked in a steel mill in Ohio. Later, he moved to Newport News and got a job at the shipyard, where he was a welder and a sheet metal worker for the remainder of his life.

I’m sad to admit that I never understood my dad when he was alive. I would only get to know him many years after his death. But he knew me much better than I ever had a clue.

He readily saw that I was shy and timid — and too, I was overly sensitive. I never rough-housed with my brothers and Dad never had to call me out for fighting with them. He never had to reprimand my raucous pillow fights.

When I saved up my allowance to buy a parakeet and made a disastrous attempt at constructing a birdcage, Dad went downtown and bought me my very own “Dinky” and a bright and shiny cage for him.I never asked for a bicycle or for a catcher’s mitt or baseball bats. I never begged for a pony, or a football helmet. Mine were quieter, gentler pursuits.

When I purchased my first-grade piano lesson book and taught myself to play on the dining room table without benefit of an actual instrument, Dad, seeing my keen interest and determination to play the piano, went downtown and bought me my very own upright.

Dad was, as far as I was concerned, an old man. In reality, he was 60, 16 years younger than I am now. I console myself saying, “Age is a state of mind.”

My dad died when I was 14. I timidly entered the ninth grade two days after his funeral. Dad would have been shocked, I’m certain, if he had lived to see me in the 12th grade, starring in Hampton High’s fall play. What a difference three years make.

But death takes no holiday. Life must go on. I grew into my adolescence, and as I did so I became more comfortable — but never completely so — with the obligations of socializing. I transformed.

No longer a bashful fly on the wall watching the world go by, I became an active participant, as long as I was acting a part from a script. I had to pinch myself when I stood on stage opening night. The footlights gleamed before me. More than a thousand pairs of eyes out in the school auditorium watched me as I played the part of a young attorney in “The People vs Maxine Lowe.”

I couldn’t believe it. Here I was on stage, and out there in the front row, sat my friends, my siblings and Mom. But Dad was not there. He lay in his grave many miles away.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I know, know very well, that I missed him. I think, I hope he would have been proud of me. After all, he did attend the Vacation Bible School commencement services to watch and listen, his face beaming, as as my siblings and I quoted our Bible verses. Yes, it would have been nice to have him at my high school play. Yes, it would have been something special to have him afterward pat me on the back and say, “Atta boy!”

I can easily return the belated compliment. My dad was a great mentor, a moral model and a teacher by example. From farm boy to a faithful husband and family provider, he was an unsung hero. I’d like to say “Way to go, Dad!”

Whipple, a Williamsburg writer, has published several books.