Dad
Long life, a long goodbye. I started
writing these words months ago. If I don’t get through it, we’ll just
Xerox it, okay?
I had a picture in my head of Dad sitting in the front row, ready to
hear all the nice things said about him. He didn’t have a big ego; he
just liked to talk to people and hear their stories and to tell his
stories.
We’re here to honor a gentle man. It is good to see all of you, and it
is testimony to him, that we all are attendants to his passing.
Dad was from towns called Coffeyville and Independence and Mound
Valley. He was from Kansas, where people have a streak of friendliness,
honest dealing, a work ethic, faith, loyalty, respect, persistence,
studiousness and literacy, modesty and civility. Mom and Dad believed
in service – church, military, jury duty and voting.
* * *
The name Savage is from the Latin
sylva, the woods, and sylvanus, someone who lives in the woods or other
non-urban setting. In old French, Sauvage. It came to England with the
Normans in 1066. Either one of the invaders had the name or it was used
as a pejorative against some Anglo-Saxon ancestor of ours.
* * *
Dad was influenced by the humorist Will
Rogers, who was popular in the 1920s and 30s and who grew up nearby in
Oklahoma. In their world a stranger was just someone you hadn’t met yet.
He was the first born son of his parents. So is my brother, and so is
my nephew. So were Dad’s father and several fathers before him.
He came from people who live and work in small farm towns. One owned a
livery stable. They paved roads and worked in lumberyards. They worked
for the railroad or the post office. The Depression of the 1930s wasn’t
so bad in farm towns, he said, because there was food even if there
wasn’t cash.
Everyone worked and, as his parents’ family grew, Dad moved in with his
paternal grandparents while in high school. He said he could have found
a way to go to college, if he had really tried, and maybe even law
school, but he said it with regret and not as a complaint.
Mom comes from the extended Hamilton farming family in south-central
Kansas, and was working for her cousin when she met Dad. They were
married in 1940. The next year, the United States entered World War II,
introducing yet another major factor in Dad’s life. So long as he
remained employed at the Boeing Aircraft plant in Wichita he was
deferred from conscription. As the war in Europe wound down in 1944 he
took a chance and quit so he could move for health reasons to Arizona.
Did the doctor mention it was hot?
He was instantly drafted and trained to go to Europe. Before he shipped
out from the East Coast he was transferred West to go to the War in the
Pacific.
He spent 18 months in the service, first behind the lines in the
Philippines and then in Occupied Japan, where he witnessed the signing
of the peace treaty from shipboard alongside the battleship Missouri.
He achieved the rank of master sergeant, was honorably discharged in
1946 and went home to his wife and young son Russell. He went back to
work and went on with his life, and I was born and eventually we all
moved to this radiation-rich environment we call Tucson.
Dad worked at Hughes Aircraft, bending sheet metal and
fabricating metal parts. He built an adobe house in the desert that we
lived in. My brother and I went through public schools and the
University of Arizona. Dad also built or remodeled houses for other
people in Cochise County, where he and Mom and I lived a few years, and
he sold insurance there and continued in the insurance business when
they returned to Tucson, and they owned a few rental homes. Eventually,
he retired and Mom and Dad began to travel in an RV and to trace their
family histories. Dad worked his way back in time to the cabin boy who
arrived from the old country in the early 1600s and was a co-founder of
Middletown, CT. They went to England and Scotland. Last year, Mom went
back to Scotland and then on to Ireland to see where the Hamiltons came
from.
* * *
Dad’s other great regret of his life
was that he never went back to Japan. He wanted to see how it had
changed.
Dad said all along that he admired the people of Japan. He saw them
accept their defeat, pick themselves up and go about rebuilding their
country without complaining, without expecting somebody else to give
them everything. He admired their work ethic, the importance of
cohesiveness and their resilience.
In the last couple of months, Dad began to talk in more detail about
the war. It told me how important the war was in shaping his life. He
had been one of those who don’t talk about what they saw. But one thing
he said really stood out to me. He said that before he was sent to
where he would serve, God told him that he wasn’t going to shoot at
anyone and no one was going to shoot at him. He took great comfort in
that, and it turned out to be true.
Let’s unpack that statement a little bit. First of all, it underscores
Dad’s deep religious faith. He was a Sunday School teacher and he
raised my brother and me in this church and others much like this one.
But he didn’t join veterans’ organizations and he didn’t wear his
religion on his sleeve. He lived by example, quietly, acknowledging his
faults. It took a long time to appreciate it. I’m glad I had the
opportunity to tell him I understood.
He waited to talk about it because it wasn’t really anybody else’s
business. It was between him and God. He was modest, and he had a
strong sense of who he was and what his limits were and what he was
capable of.
But he didn’t avoid his duty, doing what his country asked. He calmed
his fears and went onward in faith.
And when he came home he went about his business, raised his family and
quietly did what he had to do.
In the weeks when Dad was especially ill, when Mom was exhausted taking
care of him, he began to fall and was hospitalized briefly in March.
There he accepted the conclusion there was no point in continuing
treatment. He was in hospice care at home for a month surrounded by
family and friends, and he wasn’t in pain. One of the last things to go
was his sense of humor.
I stopped by to see him every day or two and, when it was time to go
I’d put my hand on his and I’d say, “I’ll see you later.” He would say,
“Okay, son.” On Friday, the 18th, a day before he fell asleep for
the last time, I went to say goodbye. He held out his hand and for once
it was a handshake. Later I realized that was goodbye.
He slept Saturday afternoon and evening and was in a coma by Sunday
morning. His breathing was irregular and labored. We took him to the
hospice at about 3. The nurse said she thought he could sense we were
there. At about 7, the small group of us who were there decided to go.
The nurse called a few minutes later to say he had taken his leave.
It was as if his last act of dignity was to die in private, rather than
in front of us.
I say he is living in the City of Peace. I’m sure he is striking up a
conversation with the people next to him in line.
To which we all say, Amen.
Neal Savage
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