Doubly Blessed

Clifford Franklin Morningstar
Today is Father’s Day. I expect that my son Jeff is spending this day with his Dad, either playing golf together or watching a golf tournament on TV. My fathers are gone. Yes, that is fathers, plural. I have been doubly blessed in my life to have had two fathers. My birth father died when I was only four years old, but in the brief time that we had together he laid the foundation for the person I was to become. He was a teacher, an artist, a poet, a 4-H leader, a lover of nature and an avid outdoorsman. He was a family man, helping his widowed mother with the farm and stepping into the father role for his youngest sister. He did the same when his brother died in a logging accident, helping his sister-in-law and her young children. One leg was shorter than the other so he walked with a distinct limp, but still coached the baseball team in the small rural schools in which he taught. There is very little left of his material things; a small watercolor painting, his journal of ink-penned poetry, a set of encyclopedias, a book by Gene Stratton-Porter, and sepia toned photos of my father and his ragtag depression era pupils, some with bare feet. I treasure those things for they tell me much about my father, but his true legacy lies in the effect his life had upon others and me.

Dominic John Venza
My first glimpse of the father who would raise me, came in the last year of World War II. He was a sailor, a first generation American of Sicilian descent, and young. Having met my mother in North Bend, Oregon, they married in Yuma, Arizona prior to his unit being transferred to a naval base in Long Beach, California. Mother and I traveled by Greyhound Bus from Oregon; my hair, naturally straight, was twisted with rag curls and combed out just before arrival. Dressed in his summer whites, Dad met our bus with a hand full of comic books for the skinny five-year old kid that was to become his daughter. My surname name was not changed out of respect for my birth father. That is the kind of man my new father was. Having grown up on the streets of East Boston, he taught me to stand up for myself when confronted by bullies. A lesson that will come in handy now as I fight cancer.

I could not have asked for a better Dad, loving, protective, encouraging, supportive; someone you could always count on. When I cried on his shoulder because I had not been asked to the Junior Prom, he patted me on the back and said, “It’s okay. Boys at this age only want one thing. When it comes time for them to settle down, it is someone like you they are going to pick.” I didn’t believe that, but it made me feel better. Never having built anything before, he built our family home with the help of my grandfather who was a carpenter by trade. A city boy who loved the country, wearing boots, a bolo tie for dress-up, and belts with big buckles. He enjoyed listening to the music of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. He loved to tease, and had silly made-up names for all of his grandchildren. Every day of their marriage, Dad composed a short love poem and left it on the table for my mother to find when she got up in the morning. He was a good man with a big heart. Years later I was able to repay him in a very small way by being there for him in his struggle with liver cancer. He said I was his anchor. He gave it a good fight and survived for seven years. Now it is my turn.

... PLM