Chubby

Dear Dad,

Your nickname was not because you were chubby. It was the name of your dog. It stuck to you, and I knew all my life that friends who loved and cared for you called you “Chubby.” In your later years, you grew into it. All OK.

I have so much to thank you for. With the exception of an occasional flare-up at Mom (she could be so irritating), I only knew you as a gentle, kindly, decent, honest, and wonderful dad. More than that, there were moments that stick with me about your integrity that shine a light on how our future should be.

You were a golfer. We lived in a time and place where golf was accessible. You had a handicap of 1 or 0 my whole life. During the finals of a tournament, your caddy made some kind of mistake—handing you the wrong club or having the bag in the wrong place—it doesn’t matter. What did matter, as they wrote in the Long Island newspapers, is that when you could have castigated him for causing you a lost shot or two, you praised him as your friend and a good caddy and laid no blame on a young kid who was just learning the ropes.

You were a solid, rock-ribbed, lifelong Republican. Not a fanatic, but clearly in the camp of those who felt Franklin Delano Roosevelt had done too much. And yet, as vice-president of a savings bank, you came home from work one day and expressed gratitude that the federal regulators were coming to check the banks’ books.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because if the regulators don’t come, the other officers will steal the bank blind.” It was a savings bank to serve the people. Entrepreneurship and capitalism, if left without oversight, would do damage to the bank’s purpose. Not a common Republican point of view, but an honest one, grounded in fairness.

Our community being what it was, we belonged to a private country club where you could play tennis and golf, or squash in the winter. It was WASPs only, with a few families who were Roman Catholic.

One day you and Mom sat sadly in our den. I asked what had happened.

“Your father tried to get the club to accept a Jewish member,”

Mom replied. “But they didn’t.”

You had tried to expand tolerance with a lovely man that you knew from business, but the majority would have none of it. It was a quiet, sad acknowledgment of how things were and would remain.

In college, I wanted to go on an American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) summer service project in Mexico. Having been raised Episcopalian, I had reached the age when I was full of questions about the church’s doctrine and liturgy.

I sought some summer service, plus adventure, on the opportunities bulletin board at college. Most of the ads involved church-led summer projects in which you would teach others how to be a good Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Episcopalian. I felt that something was wrong about telling others what they were supposed to believe when I had so many questions.

Then there were these Quakers (I’d hardly ever heard of them) who went to rural villages and performed services that the local people needed. Since my “religion” was in doubt and this AFSC group did not proselytize, it sounded good to me. Doubting the religious doctrine of my upbringing, I was not ready to impose one on anyone else. I needed money for the plane fare. I came home from college and asked you for some money, Dad. You took me on a walk around the neighborhood pond, asking me what we would be doing on this two-month project.

“The girls teach arts and crafts, and the boys dig latrines and fix the road,” I said, parroting the brochure.

“Will you be teaching them your religion?” you asked.

“No,” I replied. I was glad there was no proselytization. I didn’t have a “faith” I was willing to impose on anyone. I just wanted to be of service and have a safe little adventure. Mexico was exotic to me.

“You’re sure you won’t be teaching a religion?” you asked again.

“No, these people don’t do that,” I answered again, hoping the brochure was telling the truth.

“Then you can have the money,” you replied. I had never known that you were not a fan of evangelism until then. It was a moment of deep spiritual kinship.

When I go to the garden to tend my vegetables, I talk with you, 30 years after your death. And you talk back. You are still there for me.

Thank you for so much, Dad.

Nancy Marshall went on two AFSC projects and became a Quaker in 1970. She has been a member of Phoenix Meeting since 1976. She is currently writing a series of grateful vignettes about significant people. It’s working title is “Thanks to the Dead”.