As we gather together to celebrate Fathers Day across the land, it seems an appropriate time to offer readers another glimpse into the personality and background of John McCain - particularly his relationship and remembrances of his father and grandfather as demonstrated in his 1999 book, Faith of my Fathers. This portion comes from Chapter One of the book, “In War and Victory” and I believe it speaks to the family history and relationships which inform the man’s values and character.

For a hint as to the shadow cast by the previous generations of McCains, click on the picture above for a full size photo. This iconic image shows, in the foreground, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signing the Instrument of Surrender (of Japan) on board the USS Missouri (BB-63), on the second day of September 1945. Behind Nimitz are General of the Army Douglas MacArthur,
Admiral William F. Halsey and Rear Admiral Forrest Sherman. Take a look at the front row of military dignitaries in the background. Third from the left (with his head slightly bowed) is none other than Rear Admiral John S. McCain. At the moment this photo was taken, Senator McCain’s father, a Naval Submarine Commander, was only a few hundred yards away on the deck of the Sub Tender USS Proteus. McCain writes of a meeting which took place that day between father and grandfather, and how they were destined never to see each other again.

Immediately after father and son parted company that day, my grandfather left for his home in Coronado, California. Before he left, he issued his last dispatch to the men under his command.

I am glad and proud to have fought through my last year of acive service with the renowned fast carriers. War and victory have forged a lasting bond among us. If you are as fortunate in peace as you have been victorious in war, I am now talking to 110,000 prospective millionaires. Goodbye, good luck, and may God be with you.

He then describes his grandfather’s arrival home four days later and a welcome home party arranged by his grandmother. It was attended by friends, family, neighbors and the families of many other military officers still awaiting the return of their loved ones.

Some of the guests remembered having observed that my grandfather seemed something less than his normally ebullient self; a little tired from his journey, they had thought, and worn out from the rigors of war.

In the middle of the celebration my grandfather turned to my grandmother, announced that he felt ill, and then collapsed. A physician attending the party knelt down to feel for the admiral’s pulse. Finding none, he looked up at my grandmother and said, “Kate, he’s dead.”

He was sixty-one years old. He had fought his war and died. His Navy physician attributed his fatal heart attack to “complete fatigue resulting from the strain of the last months of combat.”

The admiral’s funeral at Arlington was attended by many of the same dignitaries present at the conclusion of World War Two. Much of Senator McCain’s memoirs focus on his father and grandfather, who he clearly respected greatly and sought to emulate. (With varying degrees of success, by his own admission.) In upcoming installments we will look at the early days in Barack Obama’s life and some of his stories from his book, The Audacity of Hope.

One night in 1968, my father was in a Manhattan ballroom for the first time in his life, watching Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. hand me an award. The expression on his face was the essence of “nachas,” the word immigrants used for the joy and pride their children give them to redeem a lifetime of suffering.

I had been six or so at a Fourth of July parade when the colors came by and my father’s hat went flying from his head, knocked off by the beefy hand of a red-faced man behind us pointing at the flag. Shame and rage rose in me, but my father only smiled sweetly, nodded and bent to pick up the hat.

Years later, I read that, as a child, Sigmund Freud was told by his father that a man had grabbed his new fur cap and flung it into the mud, shouting, “Jew, get off the street.” Freud recalled angrily asking, “What did you do?” His father answered calmly, “I stepped into the gutter and picked up my cap.” In dreams, Freud would later note, a hat may stand for male genitals.

My father never talked about the past. I knew him only as a man who went to work early, came home late, ate his dinner, kissed me goodnight and went to bed. We did not play ball or go to games or listen to them on the radio. He told no stories and passed on no fatherly wisdom. He expected nothing, envied no one. He just slaved sixty hours a week to put food in my mouth, and he loved me without words. What I learned about his life came later and not from him.

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(I’d prepared this article earlier to run during the day today, but in no way wanted to put a clang in the middle of the news and memoriums about the passing of Tim Russert. I hope it is alright to post it now overnight as the shocks of the day begin to recede a little. This piece was meant to commemorate bright moments that most often occur in the most mundane ways between fathers and sons.)

When I was a little girl, my dad used a rough brush and a heavy porcelain mug to lather up, and then a straight razor to shave. Don’t touch, don’t touch, he’d say when he laid the razor down on the little sink. In fascination I watched him shave. Just like I learned to cook from my mother, by watching…if I’d been a son, I’d have learned to shave just by watching my father; how to make the facial grimaces, how to tilt your head, how to sweep the razor up on this part, and across on that part.

Every night, every day, my dad’s face grew a beard, over and over. That was amazing to me. Something taken away, kept coming back. His strength. As a man. It isn’t too much to say.

Your dad too, no doubt, would he nick himself and just go on shaving while the blood ran down his throat? Wasn’t that amazing to you when you were little? And the tiny yelps when he put the styptic on? And the tiny bits of tp? And how cool Read the rest of this entry »

There’s nothing equal.

Not supposed to happen this way. The children bury their parents, dont they?

No parent ought to have to bury their child.

That’s what we humans think of as the natural order. But sometimes, it’s just not meant to be.

This is a picture of Big Russ, Tim’s dad whom he wrote a book about, Big Russ and Me. On the left is Tim’s son Luke, who just graduated from Boston College.

Often people say they don’t know what to say to those in mourning when a sudden tragedy has taken place. I’d offer that words are not the most important at first, no matter how eloquent, no matter how brave, how polite. But something else is.

I can only humbly offer that being there inside the hell of losing a precious son in our own family, that for Big Russ, for any father this Father’s Day who has had to bury a beloved son… many people will say many things to you, write many things to you, but … and… the kindness of people is what will truly stay with you,.

Others’ words may register later or never, much will be a blur now… but kindnesses from others to you will remain seared into your cells forever… kindness being one of the only things that can reach down into the dark where you yourself walk as though dead too for now. Hold onto that, along with all else that has any light at all to it.

___________
CODA
tx HR for link
This is the link to Compassionate Friends, a national non-profit that many have found helpful. They offer friendship, understanding, and hope to bereaved parents, grandparents and siblings.

Fathers, as well as brothers, grandfathers, uncles, best friends, neighbor guy down the road, strangers out of nowhere… all can count as good, sometimes nearly beatific fathers sometimes.

Perhaps because no man, no woman, can fit the perfection of the archetypal father or mother, perhaps because there are sometimes too many errors and omissions in parenting without maliciously meaning to, perhaps because some one didn’t see, couldn’t see, because some one ignored or betrayed or dismissed or turned their backs at a time so critical…

Perhaps that is why when the fathers and the brothers, when the uncles and the anyman come for us when we’re lost, no matter what else, no matter what happened in the decades before or the days afterward … they wear for the rest of their lives the crown of heroic being, heroic man.

For myself, I had a father, who as they say, “drank to much,” and you can read all you know about bad times and struggle, shame and redemption written between the life-lines there.

And yet, there was this…. there is still this… there will always be this….

BAPTISM:
THE GOOD FATHERS

Our bodies painted red by the dawn sky,
our hair stuck up in cockscombs from sleeping,
we two little children snuck down to the rowboats.
We wobbled across the lake toward the lily ponds
to gather blooms for our mothers.
What a big boy! What a big girl!
they all would exclaim upon our return.

We tugged up the white blush flowers with roots so long,
till the bottom of our boat was filled to the bow.
As we turned toward home the rains began.
Then fog threw back its hood and roared; and we rowed.
The waves turned black; and we rowed.
We lost first one oar and then the other; and we cried out.
Our thin night clothes stamped with cowboys and stars
went transparent like tattoos all over our pale blue bodies,
and we cried out, Mother! Father! God! Help us!

Death slid its hands down over our eyes…
But the wall of fog was suddenly pierced
by a battered wooden rowboat leaping and bucking,
the tiny boat filled with four phantoms,
rowing and rowing like madmen,
their faces distorted by rain and rage, eight oars
slugging the roiling waters over and over;
and they were calling out our names, bellowing
over the storm, Hold on! Hold on! We are coming for you!

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