Different Fathers, Same Man

“Fatherhood requires change blended with stability. Without changing, a father becomes distant; without stability, he loses his anchor.”   

TRK

My dad’s relationship with me changed as I morphed from one growth phase to the next: from my early childhood and pre-teen, to teenager, to married with children. At each stage, there was a different father in the body of Thomas J. Kennedy.

Childhood Differences

My childhood was on a different planet from my father’s. Living on a farm, he lost his mother when he was 10. He grew up during the Great Depression. Marriage and family in the 1940s. Struggling to make a living by starting his own trucking business.

I had the comfort of two loving parents, an adopted grandmother across Walker Street, and a baseball field next door. My sister and I could enjoy comic books and an occasional movie at the Mar or the Wilton theaters in Wilmington. Later, I was fortunate to inherit a young brother.

When he married Adele Margaret Ginter, Dad must have felt that he hit the jackpot. Mom was the most beautiful woman he had ever met and, despite the rumblings of WWII, they would soon have children. I came along in 1940 and then my sister in 1943. It wasn’t until 1949 that my brother joined the family.

Dad was immensely proud of his children. His dump truck was engraved prominently with “… and Sons.” I was his passenger/partner on jobs and on barstools as he sprinkled seeds of wisdom and lessons of life. But he also endured the horror, and some guilt, of witnessing his first son’s near-death experience under the rear wheel of a car.

(See: https://braidwoodguy.com/2020/09/08/a-parents-nightmare-better-not-to-remember/ )

My teenage years were absorbed in school and sports. During this time, Dad was the quiet cheerleader at baseball and later basketball games, not ever having had such athletic opportunities himself. Perhaps my athletic activities provided Dad with some pleasurable moments and some bragging rights with his buddies at the tavern.

He was also tolerant and understanding of my errant teen missteps, shielding them from my mother. Likewise, he confided in me on occasions when his own friends were unavailable. 

Switching Roles

As I took on my own mission as husband and father, I began to appreciate Dad’s hard life and fatherly challenges. The path that he walked was like an old country road, neither paved nor straight. Hard miles, stormy weather, and uphill. Later, there were times when his personal behavior conflicted with his well-being, but I gathered that he was trying to deflect the specter of old age.

Throughout my life, Dad changed and adapted to both his and my life stages. At his core, however, he remained the kind depression boy who loved his kids.

Dad’s Friends

But who was my father when he was with his friends? His good friends like, Nick Van Duyne, Red Abbott, Leo Fatlan, Red McElroy, Al Crater, “Sonny Boy” McElroy, Harry Wickman, Jack Tryner, and Dick Donahue? His best friend and little brother, Ray Kennedy? 

They were men who shared his experiences and views. They drove tractors or trucks, had kids the same age, were farmers or bartenders. Or euchre partners.

(See: https://braidwoodguy.com/2019/07/31/braidwood-saloon-society-in-the-1940s-and-1950s/)

Men with whom he could bare a piece of his soul and be his crassest, undignified, primordial self. They saw themselves in each other. As Dad changed, his list of friends transitioned and old friends were slowly succeeded by new acquaintances.

They saw him as a loyal, hard-working, generous man, who wouldn’t back down when challenged. But he was also “Irish tender,” prone to tear up in empathy with the less fortunate. And the first one to use his tractor to remove snow from an old Braidwood neighbor’s driveway, refusing any money.

Not a Cardboard Cutout

Like many others when asked about their fathers, I have often painted a picture of a kind, loving man who was well acquainted with struggle, but managed to be a great dad. But to portray him in one dimension, like a life-size cardboard cutout, is shallow. Rather, I try look at him through the lenses of several dimensions.

If Dad were a sentence, he would be “compound, complex with multiple adverbs and adjectives.” If he were a literary character, he might Tom Joad in Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.”