My Dad, the Wild Man Part I: In Search of a Wife

My dad is (was) a wild man.  Not the sex-drugs-rock-n-roll kind of guy, but the I-can’t-believe-he-did-that kind of guy.  I love him and I am a daddy’s girl. 

I don’t get my looks from him, except my hair color; his mom had red hair and, when he was in his twenties, he grew a beard and it grew in coppery red.  But I don’t have many of his other physical characteristics; however, emotionally and mentally we are very similar.  Introverts and logical thinkers.  Not subject to effusive emotion.  Capable of being so matter-of-fact that it comes off as harsh.  But there are so many good sides to him.

My dad was smart.  He graduated HS at age 16 and college at 20.  He went to UCLA because it was cheap and walking distance from his parents’ house.  But in my 50s he told me that one of his two biggest mistakes in life was going to UCLA instead of Cal Tech.  You have to understand that Cal Tech was a feeder directly into JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab – they did all the cool space stuff leading up to and after Apollo.  He would have been a great space guy. It would have changed the trajectory of his life, but he would have thrived there and been his best self. His parents wouldn’t pay, so UCLA it was, which turned out okay.

When he was at UCLA, he was in a fraternity and was the only member excused from Spring Sing because he couldn’t hit a note to save his life. He couldn’t sing, but also he was very much a math-science guy and couldn’t write a decent essay, whether his life was at stake or not. Thus, all though college his mom wrote his papers for him.  I can’t believe he cheated and she helped him!  But she was a good enough writer that they asked him to write for the Daily Bruin, and he had to beg off.   

My ethical dad!

The Monday after graduation, Daddy started work at Douglas Aircraft and his first job was to design the windows of the DC-10.  Later in his career, he was doing military satellite launches, and he worked there until he retired. But he was so good at satellite launches that, for two years after he retired, they kept calling him and asking him to do “just one more launch” until he finally told them to leave him alone.

After college, life was good; he was still living at home, and driving a Porsche.  He did a stint with work over in England for eighteen months, installing ICBMs, and traveled Europe, a rarity for middle class people at the time.  When he came back, he figured it was time to get married.  He had been dating Jodie since college, and I do fault him for this, but he never considered her marrying material. 

Dad on the East German side of the Brandenburg Gate.

He comes from a long line of staunch Presbyterians and grew up going to church every Sunday at Hollywood Pres.  I still have his Sunday School cards showing his matriculation at each level.  It was a big church, and had a College Group of over a hundred students.  Now, by this time he was 25, had been abroad, etc., and was getting a little old for it. But at that time there were no young singles groups and (obviously) church is where you go to meet a nice girl.

So he decided to go one last time to College Group and see if there might be a woman there for him.  After the program, he stood at the back of the auditorium and prayed.  He said, “God, if you have a woman for me here, show her to me.”  And in his very methodical engineering style, he started at one side of the room, looking at each female as he moved from one side of the room to the other.  He got to the center aisle and saw my mom.  She was heading away from him to talk to the speaker.  BOOM! She was the one. He didn’t even know her. But he walked up to her and asked her for a date.  She said yes and every time he saw her again, he asked for another date.  Six weeks later they were engaged.  She never knew about this until they’d been married more than 30 years. They were married for 56 years.

Mom and dad.

When he was on his death bed, we asked him if he had broken up with Jodie before he asked my mom out.  He said, “Nope.” But after that evening, he went home, setup a date to break up with her, and never looked back. That’s pretty bad on my dad’s part, but water under the bridge now.

On their Wedding Day!

They were both living in the Los Angeles area while they were engaged, but soon Dad was transferred to work at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.  That’s a twelve-hour drive to L.A.  But he was a good and faithful fiancé and needed to see his love so there were times when he would take of after work on Friday, grab some food, and drive through the night and get to my mom’s the next morning.  They’d sit and talk, he’d fall asleep sitting on the couch, and then she’d make him lunch.  He’d go to his parents' house and shower, and take her out on an evening date.  Then he’d get a good night’s sleep and take her to church in the morning and out to lunch.  Then drive the 12 hours back, catch a few winks, and get to work bright and early Monday morning.  As I said, he was a wild man. Of course he was in his Porsche, so it couldn’t have been that bad.  Plus he said he once pushed it to see how fast it would go, and then needed major engine repairs.  It’s good to be young. But you get that he didn’t need much sleep to function.

This is how my dad started out adulthood:  a Porsche and a woman picked for him by God.