On Christmas evening we honored my Dad's 90 years of life by sharing memories from family, friends, neighbors and employees of Dad's. (His 90th birthday is on January 2, 2011. It's not too late to send your memories of him!)
At the end, my kids and their cousins said in amazement, they didn't know they actually KNEW Superman! Among the memories shared:
As a young teen, he had the presence of mind to direct his younger brother out of harms way when a bull charged the two of them on the family farm.
Having graduated from Syracuse University at the age of 20 in 1941, he was still considered too young to be commissioned as a 2d lieutenant in the Army, despite completing 4 years of ROTC. He went back to work the family farm for the next year and a half. During that time, he threw a drunken neighbor (his father's age) off the property when the man attempted to assault his sister.
After the War, my father eventually became a partner in a barrel stave mill. One time a tree fell on one of his employees on a logging job out in the woods. Dad lifted the log off the man and freed him. Later on, two other guys tried to move the log and were unable to even budge it.
One time in the mill, a white oak bolt fell off the conveyor belt. My father easily hoisted it back onto the belt, a feat no other man could manage.
There were many written tributes from former employees, thanking Dad for giving them the opportunity to provide good lives for their families.
My father used to have a rather heavy foot as he travelled the 65 miles between his stave mill outside of Kittanning PA and our home in Seneca PA. Unlike here in Michigan where the roads are straight and flat, and one can easily cover 60 miles in 45-50 minutes (I was late for a soccer game of Tommy's) the roads in Pennsylvania are curving and mountainous (well, hilly is what I always thought, but having now lived in the Midwest, they do qualify as mountainous.) There are no direct routes and certainly no highways, so for the approximately 5 miles of the trip on I-80 he would "put the pedal to the metal" and on multiple occasions was stopped for speeding. Once he told the cop he figured they "would give a guy about 10 miles over the limit," to which the cop replied, "Sir, you were misinformed," and proceeded to issue another speeding ticket. One day on that stretch of I-80, Dad saw a cop being assaulted by a guy he'd pulled over. Dad stopped, got out, and without giving it a second thought, slugged the assailant and effectively broke up the altercation. Sometime later he received an official commendation for his assistance to the State Police. From then on, if he was stopped for speeding, he somehow was never issued another ticket.
When I was about 11 we were visiting my grandparents on the farm in upstate NY. Sitting at the dinner table, we heard a loud crash outside when a car full of teenagers plowed into the row of trees across from the house. My dad rushed out and began pulling kids out of the wreck and administering first aid. My uncle remonstrated with him, saying that it was against the law in NY state to do that (now, mind you, this is what a young kid remembered.) My father said the heck with that, he wasn't a citizen of NY, the kids needed immediate attention, and he was going to take care of them, which he did.
In these and so many other ways, my father truly is a SUPER man. Taking care of people has been his way of life.
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