Elmer's Brother

The cancer took him in March of 1996. He fought hard, over four years with multiple myloma. The doctors gave him 6 months when he was diagnosed. My wife and I found out he was sick while I was stationed in Guam. At first I thought I might never see him again. We might never call each other during the Army/Navy games again and give each other a razzing. We kept praying for him and after a particularly tough time he wrote us to say that God must have decided that if we needed him that bad we could keep him. God saw fit to let me be stationed in Arizona for the last three years of his life, but that's another story.

My father in 1957 at the age of 15

He was the third child of a half breed Indian and a steel worker nearly twice her age. Blue collar baby. The fact that his mother was a half breed meant that his fathers family had disowned them before he was born. So his father drank his pain away. Whenever someone describes my grandpa it's almost always said that he was ugly. Not his features, his attitude....his personality. My father grew up in what we would call today a dysfunctional family. Abusive.

By the time he was fifteen he dealt with his pain the same way. By drinking, and at the age of fifteen ran away from the steel town and hitchhiked to California. I try to imagine one of my kids at fifteen hitchhiking nearly 2000 miles and it floors me that he did this. After this incident and his return trip to Ohio my grandparents lied about his age and sent him off to the Army.

He served in the Army for three years in France and Germany during the Berlin Crisis. He continued his alcoholic ways. After being discharged and going back to Ohio he met my mother. She was a nursing student and he was a gas station attendent. They had a whirlwind engagement (4 months) and I was born 10 months later.

In the Army ca. 1958-1961

My fathers alcoholism continued during my formative years. My father was abusive too. Often this could lead to a knock down drag out between my father and my mother and/or him being sent to jail to sober up.

Just before I joined the Navy my father came home drunk one night. He was a binge drinker and in this particular instance I was the scapegoat. He and I got into a fistfight. I'm not proud of this but I beat the crap out of him. My mother kicked him out and he lived in the car for three weeks. In the meantime my mother put the house up for sale and told him she had had it.

Mind you my father always provided for us. I knew that he loved us and I knew that when he wasn't drunk he was the most kind and tender hearted man you could ever meet. I'll give you two examples. They will seem like little things but they illustrate my point.

It was election day. My mother and father went to vote and my parents took turns. One voted while the other stayed in the car with us kids. My father was voting and we noticed that two older ladies were having trouble closing a door. I said to my mother, "If Dad comes out I know he'll help them." I almost became a prophet that day because out strolled my father and what did he do? He stopped to help them.

On another occasion while he was being treated at the VA he had gotten to be sick enough to use a walker. I was outside waiting for him and there were some fellows in some wheelchairs trying to get through the double doors. This was while some able bodied guys just kept going in and out and not giving a damn. I got up to help but before I could get there my father came out. He was in worse shape then they were but he held the door so they could go in.

Well, he finally hit rock bottom.

I'm not telling you this story because I am a martyr or to make you feel sorry. The best part of the story is coming up.

My father realized he needed help. He got sober. It meant that he lost his job and his house. He got counseling.

He also gave his life to Jesus. This made a huge difference in his life. He still dealt with the effects of his alcoholism but he knew if he took another drink it would kill him. Then he got cancer.

When I was a child if someone had said I was just like my father I would have been insulted. Now knowing the courage and guts it took to quit drinking and make things right with his family and with his God, if someone were to say that to me now I could think of no greater honor.