My Dad
It’s been 4,631 days since my Dad died. That’s more than the lives of all three of my kids combined. I’ve lived almost 1/3 of my life without him. Some days it feels like forever ago. Some days it feels like yesterday.
I brought my two sons to visit their Grandma this past summer. While we were there, my Mom showed me some of Dad’s old stuff. It got me thinking about who he was and who I am. This is far, far from comprehensive, mostly just inspired by the stuff Mom shared with me. I’ll work through it in roughly chronological order.
James Kenneth Godfrey was born in Philadelphia on (or around — there’s some dispute here) June 29, 1943. Apparently seeing the potential for deviant behavior, his parents wasted little time getting him baptized
Fun fact for my kids— you can see that my Grandma’s last name was Funk, which makes you about 1/8 Funk!
They moved south to the Jersey Shore, back when that meant luxury resorts and Frank Sinatra rather than trashy reality TV.
And what’s the first thing you do when you move to a new city? If you’re a Catholic in the 1950’s you get confirmed at your new church
Dad grew up without much money. He sold newspapers on the beach and was obliged to “donate” half of whatever he made to his dad to help pay expenses. When he protested, his dad suggested “maybe he should give him all of it.” So that was that.
By the way: newsprint + heat + humidity = seriously dirty. Not a fun job.
When I was growing up, my parents similarly obliged me to put away half of any money I made. The key difference was that mine went into my savings account. Forced savings.
$10 from grandma for my birthday — $5 in the bank. Paper route money when I was 12 years old — half in the bank. This small adjustment to his dad’s rules (me saving half instead of him taking it) enabled me to accumulate over $5,000 by the time I’d turned 16. Which allowed me to buy a car, while maintaining a large chunk for college. (Cars and college were both cheaper back then).
More important than the car was the lesson. Delayed gratification. Not only should you not live beyond your means, you should live below them. Especially early on when saving has the most upside and being thrifty isn’t so challenging.
By the way, this is that first car — 1982 Honda Accord in metallic brown (9 years used, bought from my Dad):
Younger Dad supplemented his newspaper income in creative ways. Want to see a movie? Grab an empty can and go door-to-door collecting money for the poor. Or even better, for the church. No one in 1950’s Atlantic City wants to stiff God. Except the kids I guess.
What was the lesson here? Be resourceful, sure. But also, maybe don’t be afraid to break the rules? Or always look out for #1?
I started a business in middle school selling blowpops for $0.25. Profit was $0.20 each, and I’d make maybe $2–3/day. I quickly realized there was a bigger opportunity. Back then governments at least pretended to care about children’s well-being, so schools didn’t have vending machines. I filled the gap by selling candy bars and warm pop (aka “soda”) out of my backpack for $0.75 each.
This was most definitely against school rules, and just as definitely harmful to my customers, most of whom used their lunch money to buy sugar from me instead. But it was lucrative. I made between $20–30/day — pretty great for an 12 year old kid in the 80’s who just wanted to buy as many baseball cards as I could get my hands on. And it was all under the table, immune from the 50% savings tax my legitimate revenue was subjected to. Dad was a CPA who didn’t really break the rules, but certainly was willing to bend them to his will. So I think he would’ve been at least a little proud of my resourcefulness.
Dad graduated high school in 1961. In Ventnor City, career options were pretty limited. Dad joked that if he’d stayed in New Jersey his career choices would’ve been police officer or mobster. I’m actually not 100% sure he was joking. I’m also not totally sure what he did for the next few years. Mom thought he’d joined the army almost straight away, but far as I can tell he didn’t join until 1964. He spent a little time at Stockton College, but the rest is a mystery. Maybe he was in the mob after all…
Just kidding, he wasn’t in the mob. I’m almost positive.
Regardless, in 1964 the Army came calling. Sort of. Back then, the U.S. Military had a “peacetime draft”. The Korean War was over, and Vietnam hadn’t technically started yet, but they were conscripting young adult men just in case.
If there’s one thing Dad hated, it was being forced by anyone to do anything. Poor and without connections, it was pretty clear that he’d be drafted eventually. So he joined the Army “voluntarily” instead. The benefit of volunteering was that you got to pick your specialty. He wanted to be a paratrooper. The downside? A three year commitment instead of two. This last part almost comes back to bite him (and me!)
Dad was in the 101st Airborne (aka the “Screaming Eagles”), 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (aka “Currahee”).
Dad’s military service was rocky. He could be quite stubborn, and butted heads with his superiors. One example — back then the parachutes were round and couldn’t be reliably steered or slowed. Landing a parachute was the equivalent of jumping out of a 2nd story building. So they teach you to hit and roll to avoid hurting your legs. Dad knew better of course, and decided to land upright on his first training jump, which of course meant he hurt himself. Lesson learned the hard way.
As my wife and friends will attest, I can be a bit stubborn myself. And I definitely channeled his spirit of adventure by becoming a recreational skydiver. Totally different context when you’re preparing for war vs. getting your weekend kicks. But I think it allowed him to relive some memories vicariously through me, and he was glad I could choose to jump from planes instead of being pushed out of them.
I even see Dad’s stubbornness in one of my sons. Recent example — a two hour standoff of me trying to force my son to wear pants (instead of athletic shorts) and him refusing. We missed a bowling party, pizza, and the holiday concert he’d been practicing for for weeks. All things he desperately wanted. But not as badly as he wanted to stand his ground.
Dad’s distaste for authority notwithstanding, he was by all accounts a respected and admired member of his Regiment, and was discharged honorably on July 31, 1967. And not a moment too soon. Within a few months the 506th was deployed to Vietnam, and many his friends and compatriots never made it back.
We never talked about what that was like. To lose friends (brothers really) to war. To know that it could have been you. To simultaneously rejoice in your good fortune while mourning those who weren’t so lucky. I can barely imagine. It drives home how much our veterans have sacrificed. How much they have to carry around with them. Forever.
While Dad didn’t love his time in the Army, he was very proud of his service. And rightfully so. One of those things he was glad he did, but probably would never have wanted to do again.
Shortly after returning home to New Jersey, Dad decided to make a leap and move 3,000 miles to California. He had no money, no friends out west, and from what I can gather no specific plans. He drove cross-country, stopping every 200 miles to add a fresh quart of oil to a car that barely ran. He lived on mustard sandwiches and beer, slept in his car and, if I know Dad at all, blew what little money he’d scraped together on a stop in Vegas.
He rarely gambled, but he liked to live big — even if only for a couple hours. He grew up with nothing. No money, no notoriety, no stature. California was his chance to dream big and make those dreams a reality. But Dad was also a pragmatist. He didn’t go to California to “get discovered”. He’d have to build his dream himself.
The GI Bill enabled vets like Dad to go to college on the cheap. He got a job waiting tables and started classes at California State College in L.A. Dad had a way with numbers, and pretty quickly figured out that he could ace accounting classes without a lot of effort. Which was good because he was working 48 hours a week tending bar to pay the bills, and probably drinking and playing pool into the early hours afterwards. See, in addition to being good with numbers, Dad was also a whiz with a billiards cue.
As a kid he’d spend hours playing at a local rec center, winning $0.25/game, often running the table before the other kid could even take a shot. As an young adult, the stakes presumably got bigger, and so did his attitude. Dad had a dental prosthetic for his top 4 front teeth after someone removed them from his mouth with a pool stick. It wasn’t enough for Dad to wipe the table with someone and take his money, he had to talk him step by step through the humiliation.
This was Dad’s life for a couple years. School by day, bartending by night, drinking by late night until early morning. Until a young women arrives on the scene.
The story of how my parents met is too implausible to be true, except it is. Mom had left the Convent a couple years earlier (that’s a whole other story), and was determined to travel the world. Her “plan” was to hitchhike to California, work in bars to earn some money, then hitchhike to New York, make some more money, then hitchhike around Europe.
In L.A., she’s on the side of the road, thumb in the air, when a fateful journey begins. She climbs into a car and the following conversation ensues (roughly paraphrased):
Driver: “Where you heading?”
Mom: gives the name of a restaurant
Driver: “Meeting some folks for dinner?”
Mom: “No, I’m looking for a job.”
Driver: “You don’t want to work there. I’ll take you to a much nicer place.”
Mom: “Actually, I really want to go to the place I said.”
Driver: “Nonsense. You’ll like this other place better. Trust me.”
Mom: presumably thinking “Shit, what did I get myself into…” but maybe also thinking “hey, it’s the 60's! Things always work out! Let’s see where this adventure takes me!”
The driver drops her at a nice restaurant, wishes her well, and drives off, completely oblivious to the chain of events he’s set in motion and the lives that’ll be impacted. Mom turns in a job application and is told they’ll let her know. She then exits and sees a bar across the street. She may as well apply there too — a job’s a job. They need a cocktail waitress and hire her on the spot. The bartender at that place? You guessed it, my Dad.
Turns out Mom was a lousy waitress. She came into work after a few weeks and found her timecard missing. When she pointed this out, the manager said “that’s because you don’t work here anymore.” This infuriated Dad. Not because he was sweet on Mom (which he was). And not because she didn’t deserve to be fired (which she did). Not even because the manager was a jerk (which he was).
You see, Dad could be a jerk (remember those missing teeth?), but he wasn’t a jerk arbitrarily. Only when the situation called for it. One night, on New Years Eve I think, he had a customer that stuck around for two hours after everyone else had left. Dad had to stay through the night waiting for this one customer and his date to leave. When he finally left, Dad grabbed the check and saw he’d left no tip. Dad followed him into the parking lot:
Dad: “Excuse me.”
Guy: “Yeah?”
Dad: “Was there a problem with the service?”
Guy: “Nope, it was fine.”
Dad: “The food?”
Guy: “Food was great.”
Dad: “Well, did you know you stiffed me?”
Guy: “I don’t believe in tipping.”
Dad: “What? What do you mean you don’t believe in tipping? That’s how we make money.”
Guy: “Sorry, that’s not my problem”
Dad: “Well you’re an asshole!”
He was fired the next day. He was also fired once for throwing loose change at a customer in response to a lousy tip. If you gave Dad a reason to come for you, he wouldn’t hold back. But to attack someone just for trying their best? That was over the line. Especially when that person is your future wife.
He tore into the manager, which of course got him fired too. Dad’s brother John was the other bartender (he’d moved out to LA to join Dad at some point), and of course he quit, leaving the bar with no bartenders. Loyalty was everything to John, just as it was to Dad.
Dad would loan money to almost anyone. He’d never ask for it back, and after a while he’d mentally write off the loan. And the borrower. Someone who didn’t have the moral conscience to pay back their debts unprompted wasn’t worth the mental energy. He did free tax returns for family, friends, waiters who remembered his favorite orders (he generally tipped about 40%, so they SHOULD remember him), you name it. And never expected anything in return. Always wanting to do for others, but never wanting help himself.
Anytime his sister visited from New Jersey and we’d go out to dinner, these epic fights would erupt over who got to pay. Sneaking their card to the waiter first, or when that failed forcing them to reverse the charge on the other’s card. Both sides insisting on paying and not taking no for an answer. I always felt horrible for the waiter, but took solace knowing there’d at least be a huge tip in it for them at the end. Family first above everything. Give more than you get. That was Dad’s religion.
Anyway, back in 1960’s LA, Mom’s priorities shifted pretty quickly from Europe to Dad. Less than a year after first meeting they were talking about marriage, but Dad refused to get married before he finished college. He received his degree on Business Administration on March 19, 1971.
Two days later, on March 21, 1971, he was married. As a bonus, he figured the first day of spring would be an easy anniversary to remember.
From there things moved pretty fast. Dad and Mom moved back to Jersey, and my older brother Brian was born in June 1973. By the time Mom was pregnant with me, she desperately wanted to move back to Seattle. Things were different out east. Or at least they felt different. More racial divide, more cronyism, less opportunity. And while it was nice to be around Dad’s family, she missed her own.
Was this really where they wanted to build their family? To raise their kids? I’m sure we’d have been fine, but it just wasn’t what Mom wanted. Mom wanted Seattle. And Dad wanted Mom to be happy. So six weeks after I was born, they loaded my brother and I and whatever else would fit into a brand new 1974 Chevy Beauville G20 van — in pea green! And off to Seattle we drove.
I was the world’s happiest baby when being held, but cried incessantly otherwise. After several hours of blood-curdling screams from my car seat, Mom relented and held me for the remainder of the 2-week cross country journey. Back then holding a kid while driving was probably only marginally more dangerous than using whatever passed as a baby seat back then. And I’m not even sure it was illegal. The good old days.
This story could go on and on and on. And maybe I’ll add to it one day. But I’ll just end this chapter by saying what I admired most about my Dad. He was a doer. Instead of making excuses, he made things happen. And he did it with integrity. The only thing worse than being a talker was being a phony. Put up or shut up.
No one gave him anything. He was dealt a lousy hand, set up to fail at life. And yet he made things happen. He got out of a dead-end situation where he grew up, put himself through college, snagged an amazing wife, built a family, built a business, and made sure I was dealt significantly better cards.
He worried about how to survive, how to build a life. I worry about where to travel internationally and which tech company I should work for. He and Mom scraped every extra dollar they could find and poured it into real estate so they’d have something to retire on. I own a triathlon bike that costs more than some cars.
And yet, he’d constantly tell me “You earned everything you have. Nobody gave you anything.” Wrong Dad. You and Mom gave me everything. You gave me life, love, opportunities, discipline. Most importantly, you gave me a role model for my life. You made me who I am, and your memory guides me as I raise my children. Without you, I’d have nothing. Because of you, my family and I have everything we need and so much more.
You often told me how proud you were. If you could meet you grandkids and daughter-in-law, you’d be even prouder. But I don’t think I ever told you how proud I was. Well, I was. I still am. More and more every day.
