“It’s Your Dad”

Just before my seventh birthday, my mother remarried a man I had known as “Uncle Bob” since I was about five. I referred to Bob — and another half dozen or so guys who worked with my mom at the Jewel Food Store on California and Granville — as my uncle, as these guys, ranging in age from their 20s to 30s, were always keen to look after me when I would come by the supermarket for lunch or after school.
Uncle Gary, to my mother’s chagrin, would ride me around the parking lot on his Harley-Davidson; Uncle Mike would treat me to Shakettes (a super yummy chocolate milk drink) and Twinkies; and another Uncle Bob would give me the latest issue of Mad Magazine to read up in the staff lunchroom.
My mom started dating Uncle Bob — a divorcee with two young children around my age — and he’d begin showing up at my grandparent’s house (where I had lived with my mother after Arnold left us) more frequently, oftentimes taking my mother to their usual haunt, Jimmy Fulton’s Captain’s Table on North Clark Street, a dark and smoky lounge featuring fish tanks and kitsch maritime decor.
On our way home from the supermarket one warm autumn afternoon, my mother stopped as we walked up Peterson Avenue in front of the Green Briar Park fieldhouse, took my hand and asked me a question that would change my life (and hers) forever…
“How would you like a new father?”
I knew immediately she meant Uncle Bob and I couldn’t have been any happier. They were married the following spring — on May 31st 1970.
Less than a year later — in the presence of my grandparents — we went downtown in our finest clothes to the Cook County Court Building where, in just about an hour’s time, I would face a judge who would ask me a few questions, shake my hand and sign a document making me Bob’s legal son.
But before any of that happened, Bob asked those present in the conference room if he might have a moment alone with me.
He said that he knew I understood what was going to happen later that morning and that he couldn’t be happier for all of us. But it was what he said next that would have the most profound impact on me…
“If you ever want to see Arnold, all you have to do is tell me and I’ll arrange it.”
That was the moment in which Uncle Bob became my father; and he has been, and will always be, the only father — the best father — this boy could have ever wished for.
Needless to say, I never took him up on his offer to find Arnold. But as I was reaching middle age, and had begun having children of my own, I started having questions about the half of my family medical history I was never able to account for during regular doctor visits.
I eventually turned to the internet, found and spoke by phone to some reluctant family members of Arnold’s who led me to the family attorney who took my details in the event he’d ever run into Arnold, who he said he hadn’t seen for years and didn’t know of his whereabouts.
That was September 5, 2002–16 years ago this very day. I was 39 years old.
Barely ten minutes after speaking to the lawyer from my home in Valencia, Spain, the telephone rang…
“It’s your dad, Arnie Sandman.”
It was the first time in my life — other than when I was an infant — that I heard his voice and at once I became nervous and at a loss for words.
Arnold and I spoke for about twenty minutes; I told him I had been living abroad, was a teacher and that I was married and had two small children. While I can’t recall his reactions to hearing that he was a grandfather or that I had a successful career and family life, I can recount the rant that followed.
He spoke at length — and with a good amount of rancor — about how his family had turned against him, owed him 700,000 dollars and were keeping his army footlocker from him that contained his dog tags, photos of me and other personal effects.
He also mentioned that he had fathered two daughters in the years after I was born — Tina and Beth — with whom he had no contact and knew nothing more about.
Oddly enough, I was too overwhelmed with emotion to even remember to ask him about our family medical history so, a week later, I called him and asked him about it. He mentioned that he suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and walked with the help of a cane. He said there may have also been some heart issues in the family, but wasn’t able to go into many details.
That was last time I ever spoke to Arnold.
But hardly the end of the story.
