Addendum

I should have added to my last post that my father made more things than just my furniture treasures.  He built the kitchen cabinets at my grandparents' farmhouse when they remodeled a garage into a house after a fire that destroyed the homestead.  He made picture frames as needed for paintings.  (Shari, take note that Dad made the frame for the Hawaiian seascape painting hanging on your stairs and the "Christina's World" print that Lynn has.)  He also made wooden boards for my sister Shari's decoupage projects many years ago.  He was also frequently working on projects for friends, using his wood shop at Elmwood Park High School, to the point that my mother used to complain.  She had been requesting that he make end tables for years, but he was always doing other projects.  (You know--the cobbler's kids don't have shoes!)  Finally, Dad got around to making those end tables.  They were modeled after cobbler's benches and were quite big and sturdy.  Don't know what happened to those...

In my days, I have refinished many a piece of furniture, stripping off the old finish, staining, and varnishing.  Dad always claimed that he would rather build furniture from scratch than have to refinish it.  I don't blame him!  He jokingly called himself a "wood butcher", but he was good at what he did.  He was a great athlete, a good Navy officer, an admirable wood butcher, an excellent provider for his family, a Commander at the Streator, IL, American Legion and VFW for many years, a fantastic gardener and farm hand for my grandparents, and PROBABLY a good teacher. 

There are stories about his teaching.  He used to tell his classes that he beat his wife and children on a regular basis to keep them in line.  Once in awhile as a teenager, I would attend a football game that he was coaching or a basketball game that he was refereeing, and a student or two would ask, "Does he really beat you?"  I'd just laugh.  "He's never touched me in anger."  Those poor duped students!  There was also a time when a parent called the administration because Dad had called their son a "punk".  When Dad was asked to explain himself, he told the principal that yes, he had...and would again...because the kid was behaving like a punk!  And I vaguely remember a story in which he grabbed a kid by the collar and shoved him up against some lockers.  I didn't get the details, but you can bet the kid was fighting with someone or being disrespectful.  My father had no patience for disrespect!  Nothing ever came of that.  Today, there would be a law suit. 

The football team that Dad coached consisted of big Italian kids.  He called them "jelly bellies".  If one of them came up with a bloody nose, he'd tell the kid, "Wipe it on your shirt.  It'll make you look tough."  That probably wouldn't fly in today's schools.  Then there was the day that one of his students cut off parts of three fingers in a saw.  Dad said he had his back to the kid but could tell by the sound of the saw that something had happened.  He grabbed the kid's bleeding hand to apply pressure and hold it up in the air so he could escort the student out, but first had to deal with another student who fainted at the sight of blood.  He said he picked the faint-hearted one up and laid him on one of the work tables, admonishing the others to watch him until an adult could be there.  Then he took the injured student out for medical assistance.  Not sure how I would have reacted in the same situation! 

Still, when my father retired, he got an engraved scroll plaque that said, "With Deepest Respect, Your Homeroom Class of 1975".  Dad treasured that more than anything else he could have gotten as a good-bye gift.  It went on the wall at the farm and stayed there until we sold the place after he died.

There was also an incident at Elmwood Park High School back in 1973, during which a male student shot and killed a female student during a passing period, then ran out into an alley and took his own life.  Dad wasn't witness to that because his shop was on the back side of the building, but it did cause him to say, "I've been teaching too long."  He never talked about it to us.  (He came from The Greatest Generation--the group of our beloved care-givers who believed in protecting innocents from the ugly side of life.  I wish we had more of that now!!)  After my grandmother died, he took advantage of a new deal going around back then that allowed for early retirement so he and Mom could move to the farm to take care of my grandfather.  By that time, his arthritic knees had become so bad that he had given up coaching and could barely stand long enough to teach.  It was time.

When my dad the wood butcher retired, he had a full military pension from the Navy, a negotiated teacher's pension for early retirees, Social Security Disability, and crop income from the farm.  This man, even in retirement in the 1970s on up, brought in more money per month than I do so many years later!  His legacy?  Lots of memories.  But here we are, already in a generation of children who never knew him.  What he leaves behind for future generations are the wooden things that he made, with his signature, somewhere.  Tangible evidence that this man existed, did what he did, and loved.  I need to figure out what I can leave as tangible evidence of MY existence when my time comes!

Whew!  I didn't intend for these last two posts to be a shrine to my father.  He was no saint, for sure, but, in my old age, I have come to understand the man that was my dad.  A long time coming!