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My dad never got to see Tiger Woods hit his prime. He really would like to have seen that. He so respected young men who accomplished things, who set their minds to a task and persevered. He didn’t see the Browns leave town and then come back a few years later. That was probably a good thing, as he never cared much for the team’s ownership. The Cavaliers’ “King James” phenomenon also came after my dad’s departure, and he would really have enjoyed that. He always felt Cleveland had the fan base to support any winning team and that it was an injustice to deny that to the people of this area. Many of my life lessons were learned through his references to sports--a habit I find I have developed as well.
Simple, Noble Qualities
E-mail and cell phones were not as advanced as they are now, and my father would have considered it silly and vain for anyone to think he was so indispensable as to need 24-hour access through a phone on their hip. The fear and loathing over the potential Y2K disaster would not have missed his radar, and he’d have cited it later as an example of how people panic for no reason. I recall lying in front of the television as a child and hearing him snort from his easy chair when the executives of the major oil companies explained the gasoline crisis of the 1970s. “That’s a lie,” he stewed under his breath. He was a man of great emotion, but in complete control of the same.
When the Plain Dealer cost ten cents, he took a copy off a stack outside the local donut shop every morning before the proprietor arrived, and always left a dime on top of the stack. One Saturday when we actually went in for coffee, I told the owner I was sitting with the guy who left a dime every morning. The owner had always wanted to know who that honest person was, and called the staff out to meet the “dime guy.”