Kirkie by Jamie Kirkpatrick

Father’s Day has come and gone. So has my own father who died in 1987. I can’t say I miss him because I still feel his presence. I’m glad he is home with his parents and his six older siblings, right back in Butler, Pennsylvania where he belongs.

Born on the very last day of 1906, he was a small town boy who made it relatively big in a relatively big city. He was a thoughtful lawyer, loyal to his clients. A kind and gentle man, born into a generation that understood faith and service. A young husband who met his future wife on a blind date in Boston during the Depression; the first family car would often sit idle the last week of the month because there wasn’t enough money for gas. A young father of three (I didn’t come along until much later) who went off to war, not to fight but to outthink and outplan the enemy. Then, when that duty was completed, a new father again, probably surprised—gobsmacked, even— but more than up to the task of me.

I don’t know if we were much alike. I can see a faint resemblance but being alike is so much more than that. He was calm and quiet; a Presbyterian and a conservative Republican in the days when that meant something very different than what it does today. He doted on my mother; I think he knew how lucky he was. He was the only one in his family who emigrated to the big city (it was only an hour away) but he retained all the mannerisms and attitudes of his small town origins. His friends and colleagues all respected him, but I doubt they knew him or loved him the way we did because he never actively sought their approval. He was not particularly social, just satisfied with what he had; I don’t think he had a frivolous or material bone in his body. He would read with his wire-rim spectacles on top of his head. He indulged me, perhaps too much, but I like to think he quietly approved of my more Democratic predilections.

When the first grandchild came along, he went from being “Bob” to “Kirkie.” That seemed to suit him better. Perhaps to better recall or renew his humble origins, he and my mother (now “Nanny”) built a weekend house on seventy acres of meadow adjacent to Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania. I say “built,” but their modest split-level house came up the gravel lane loaded on two flat-bed trailers; It was a Sears house, right out of the catalogue, but completely sufficient to our family’s modest needs. Kirkie loved to putter around the place: ride the John Deere mower, plant the rhubarb, play shuffleboard, or tinker at his work bench down in the basement. He wasn’t what I would call handy, but nothing seemed beyond his reach: if he couldn’t fix something, he knew someone who could. 

In the photograph that accompanies this Musing, “Kirkie” is the little boy, front row, right. Of course, he wasn’t “Kirkie” then, just Bob, the baby of the family with his whole life ahead of him. I wonder if he had any inkling of what was to come; I doubt it. I’m just glad that it all came to pass as it did.

The territory of fathers and sons is a mysterious island, steeped in the mists of time. Its coastline has plenty of safe coves and rocky shoals, high cliffs and sandy beaches. I know that no father is perfect, but I was blessed. My father was a good and admirable man, worthy of emulation. I live in his shadow.

I’ll be right back.