Remembering My Immigrant Father

My father, who died when I was fifteen, seemed to be in and out of my childhood and that of my two brothers. He served on the police force during the Battle of Britain, was stationed in Germany in the British Zone after the war, and later chased his dog racing track fantasy. He was a gambler and a traveler.

The war disrupted the family. Because of the danger, my older brother was born in Dublin during the war. According to my mother, I was sent out of London to various country places in the north when Germany was terrorizing London with its V-1 and V-2 rockets. My first memories growing up were of the bombed-out buildings that surrounded our flat.

My father was born and educated in Dublin. I stitched his biography together by talking to his family and friends in Ireland. His past fascinated me. An Irish cousin told me my father made the customary promise to his mother that he wouldn’t drink alcohol until he was twenty-one, a quite normal commitment. He kept his promise and then apparently made up for lost time. By the time he was in his late 20s, he had three chins and looked to be two-hundred and fifty pounds. Perhaps being in the pig exporting business had something to do with the weight gain. He moved to London a few years later, shortly before the war began. In time he would take on a lean and hungry look.

It’s taken me much of my adult life to understand my family structure. My mother married a veteran of World War 1, had three children before he died from the effects of chlorine gas on his lungs during the trench warfare in France. She put her three children in an orphanage. Four years later she had another child, father unknown. Then she met my father and gave birth to three sons during the next war.

Based on conversations with my step-brother and sisters, my father was always kind and considerate towards them. With my mother it was sometimes another matter. My father became more familiar with the chronology of the births over time and would sometimes raise issues with my mother in language that disturbed me. Much later I thought my father was jealous of the full life my mother had lived before she met him. That’s what it felt like. I learned from studying psychologist Carl Jung that parents invariably cast shadows that children have to deal with. Their shadows tend to linger. Mine certainly do.

I recall my older sister leaving for the states with her new husband, an American GI; my brother returning from Hiroshima after the A-bomb was dropped, a sister leaving the orphanage for our London neighborhood, and then my father departing for the states to set up house for the rest of us. Each event seemed to be suppressed and smothered by time. My mother fainted on receiving the first letter from him three months after he left for New York. She thought we had been abandoned. I have never seen such anguish, tears and relief.

I have been rereading two letters, long neglected, that my father wrote my mother when he was in the states. The letters were written on lightweight airmail paper, both sides, apparently in the interest of economy. After more than half a century the ink has bled through the pages, making reading a particular challenge. Words literally run together and, in some ways, capture the nature of the past.

What is very clear is the salutation: “My Dearest Darling,” repeated through the text of the letter and at the conclusion. This still seems both out of character and very beautiful. He had a sense of humor but I never heard him refer to my mother (or her children) in such a delicate, loving way.

I get the sense that moving to America was transformational for my father. He did not look back fondly on either London or Dublin. He was glad to be living in suburbia, outside of Pittsburgh, PA. He recounted his trip from Southampton, England, arriving in New York almost broke and not eating for three days on the way to his destination.

He seemed proud of this, in an understated way, as if it was a rite of passage. He seemed rather domesticated, at least compared to the father I knew in London. He was on a budget. He mentioned paying the gas and electric bills. He stopped drinking coffee in favor of tea due to the expense of the former. The man who spent most nights in the Queens pub in north London, now rarely had a beer. He walked a mile to the highway and then hitch-hiked a ride to work. Taxis were far too expensive. He saw car ownership in his future.

He worked the nightshift as a guard at a nearby Continental Can Co. Most of the time he worked seven days a week, trying to speed up our arrival in the states. He would send money orders for $20 or $30 every week. At times he reported his shoes needed mending or he could do with a haircut. The letters revealed a parsimonious disposition.

My father, the Irishman, also came across as a very sexual being, understated, of course. He writes his wife that he has lost a lot of weight and was feeling energized and slim. He misses her and writes: “It has been so long it will be like starting over again, Darling. James is in top form after being dead as a doornail all these months. So, you can look forward to a good time until he is satisfied and believe me, darling, he is starving and is looking forward to making up for the last few months.”

In one letter he does wonder whether all the disruption and pain has been worth it. He answers his own question: “I hope so for the boys. They will be the ones to benefit, but they have been through a lot.” He didn’t want us to work in factories. He said the way forward in America is through education.

Three years later my father died from cancer of the throat. Within three years of his death my brothers and I had enlisted in the Army and the Navy. We benefited from the GI Bill to get our education started. Two of us worked in steel mills for a spell and learned from the experience. I would like to think we grew in wisdom and age.

My father’s last letter to his wife ended with the words: “God keep you all.”

I think his prayer was answered.