Member-only story
Seeking My Father, Finding a Brother
I knew that researching my paternal family would be hard, but I never dreamed it would be so awkward
Let me tell you everything I know about my father.
He was born around 1952 in the state of Kansas. Growing up, he was an athletic young man who excelled in a few sports, including baseball and — much later — golf. He did well enough in school, though as he grew older he developed something of a rebellious streak, culminating in a joyriding incident that turned into a police pursuit.
Clearly, I didn’t really take after him.
At age 20, he married a young woman from his high school and had a son a year and a half later. During this time, he settled into a sales position — not glamorous, but well-paying enough in the 70's to afford a house. Around 1985, he received a new business opportunity that took him out of state. Sometime around this period, his marriage ended. I’ve never managed to precisely place the sequence or timing of these events.
He did eventually remarry (as did his ex-wife), but seems to have had no other children. He bounced around for a while, living in Colorado and eventually Nevada, where he died in 2005.
