Rolling With the Roll Top
A Family Heirloom Finds a New Purpose
A Commanding Presence
Here I sit at the old roll-top desk my father sat at for years as he took care of family business. This old desk used to sit in the main foyer of our old house on Berkshire Avenue in Pittsburgh, just to the right of the front door. To the left of the big desk rose the stairway up to the second floor. That foyer had a high ceiling. Atop this desk stood a large bookcase that stretched halfway up the wall towards that ceiling.
This desk had a very commanding presence in that big, old house. Dad, a tall man at 6’3”, was very intimidating when he sat at it. He was usually very serious there, deep in thought, and you didn’t dare bother him. He was doing what he did to keep the business of the family going. There was a kind of mystique to it all. Like the desk in that powerful setting, Dad was always larger than life to me, his 5th son and 6th child. I mostly tried to steer clear of him, and this desk.
New Location, New Purpose
When they moved to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, this desk sat just inside the family room, right off the kitchen, without the bookcase on top. Dad continued to take care of the family business at it, but the nature of that business had changed, considerably. No longer a big, growing family to manage — there were nine of us, including he and Mom — it was just the two of them for a good 18 years, from the time Mary, the youngest, got married and moved out, until he died, much too young, at 77.
He managed many of the volunteer activities he and Mom were involved in from this desk. Mom ran the Ala-call hotline for the state of New Jersey for 27 years, which was part of a larger non-profit outfit called Contact 609. It was basically a crisis hotline, helping anyone dealing with any crisis, of any kind. They would listen to the callers, and help them determine where to go for help. This was long before the internet and google.
Dad was one of her many volunteers, and he became a volunteer leader, conducting trainings and what-not.
Being There for Others
One of his most notable volunteer activities was his involvement in PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. We’re talking early 80’s here, when there was still a great deal of misunderstanding in the world about homosexuality — well, much more than there still is today.
Through some of the outstanding training he and Mom had received through their involvement with Contact 609, they became aware of some breakthrough studies on homosexuality that had recently been done. It was not necessarily a sexual aberration, as many then still believed, or even a “choice” of preference, but actually something that people were born with. A much higher percentage of people than most realized, had the natural preference for the same sex. This was in the 70’s, when the likes of Anita Bryant were out there campaigning to make homosexuality a moral issue, and most religions still considered it a grave sin.
It was fortunate that they’d had all this training, so when their third son, my brother Ken, came out, they were able to be there to support him. Dad had quickly realized how unusual it was that Ken had parents so supportive — most of his friends did not. He’d dedicated the rest of his life to raising awareness of LGBTQ issues, working directly with families of lesbians and gays through PFLAG, and directly with lesbians and gays who’d been disowned by their families. He became a beloved father figure to many who had no support from their own natural families.
Notes to Mom
After Dad passed on, Mom found a number of notes in this desk that Dad had left for her, that would all start with, “Rosey, if you are reading this note, it is likely that I am no longer with you. I just wanted you to know how much I love you, and to let you know how to…..”, followed by instructions for how to do many of the various things he did to keep the business of their partnership moving in a positive direction.
Moving South
After a few years, Mom moved to Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. This desk made the move with her, along with much of the old furniture from their much larger place in Cherry Hill. She somehow managed to fit a good deal of the furniture from that house into her two-story townhouse in Pawley’s, despite the mover shaking his head at the door, saying it would never all fit.
It all did, and this desk made it into the second floor guest bedroom, where it appeared that Mom used it some for keeping track of her business for a few years. Then, as her back worsened, and she had her first of several back surgeries, she could no longer make the climb to the second floor, where it sat unused for several years. It followed her to her 2 bedroom Independent Living unit at Litchfield Lakes, where she spent her last couple years.
Rolling Back North
When Mom passed in September, 2012, the desk, along with a good number of the other antique furniture pieces still in her possession, including two roomfuls of bedroom furniture, made the long trip up to Virginia in a U-Haul trailer, to our house.
We filled two of our spare bedrooms with all of that bedroom furniture and the old Victrola (circa 1917), while the desk found a little corner in the finished part of our basement, on the opposite wall from the chair where I do most of my writing.
I never really used it as a working desk. It quickly got filled up with junk, old bills and any paper stuff I needed to sort through before shredding, that I never got around to doing. It’s been sitting there, slowly getting more buried in paper and old bills, for 7 years, until this past weekend and this morning, when I finished clearing all the old bills and paper out, unburied the old desk, and moved it into our basement bedroom, where I plan to use it to conduct the business of our family, and perhaps some of my writing.
Where It — and I — Belong
This morning, I began writing this piece at it. I thought about Dad and how he sat at this desk on Berkshire Avenue, and how, until this moment, I probably never felt worthy to sit at the same desk he sat at, so many years ago, when he was actually much younger than I am today. No, I would have felt very much like an imposter had I tried sitting at this desk any other time before now.
Now, I feel like I do belong behind this desk. It just feels right. While it is an honor to sit here, where the old man once sat, and where Mom sat after him — it feels like where I belong.
Two years of regular counseling has helped me to overcome my “imposter” syndrome. Steven, my counselor, really reinforced the idea that I am very much a man in my own right. Who and what I am are very much my own person, not just my father’s son, but just me, Pete, and that I am, indeed, a force to be reckoned with, in my own right.
I think I’ve waited a long time for this moment to come. Now, I feel like I have earned it.
Let this work begin.
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