Dad

Me and Dad

“So, Dad, let’s say there was time travel, and let’s say an American Indian from before Columbus arrived was transported to our century. How would you explain Formica to him?”

My dad is the only person I ever knew who would take this kind of question from his twelve-year-old seriously and have the technical expertise to answer it. “Well, you start with tree resin …”

Mel in a typical pose - examining something!

What kind of guy was he? He was smart and creative, private, dignified and casual at the same time, loyal and trusting. There were three things that were important in his life:

People – his friends and family. He had a knack for maintaining friendships through many years.Several of his friends that I met at his funeral were able to describe me and my brother as kids … meaning they’d been his friends for 50 years or more. At the same time, years before it was in vogue, he was ruthless about dropping toxic relationships, family or no. “Family gets you in the door,” he’d say. “Respect and reciprocity and enjoying each other’s company, lets you stay.”

He met my mother on a beach, she was with her girlfriends and he told them it would start to rain soon – although the sky didn’t look like rain was imminent, his aviator skills taught him to read the weather. When he was proved right a short time later, the girls met him in the shelter of some park structure … they got to dating and he never looked back. He was utterly, totally devoted to her for the rest of his life, and they modeled for me and my brother an exemplary relationship.

He was absolutely crazy about his family and glowed with pride about his kids’ accomplishments.His lawyer was a family friend (another long-timer, the father of one of my elementary school classmates), who said that the biggest joy he heard my father ever express was when he was talking about me or my brother. He was secretly – okay, not so secretly – pleased that I’d chosen a similar career path to his own, and he loved to talk engineering with me and Dan. Yet he was equally proud of my brother, whose chosen path was business.

Profession - He was a brilliant engineer who worked on many high-profile projects, the lunar lander in the 1960s, the superconducting supercollider in the late 1980s, and a new type of waterproof, fireproof wallboard in the 2000s. He held several patents. His skills covered all aspects of engineering – civil, mechanical, electrical, and most especially, materials. If there was a substance in existence that would apply to a specific situation, he knew what it was … and probably had a small sample stashed in his basement workshop. He was as skilled on the home front as on those big projects, though. He joked that “Daddy, FIX!” was almost the first sentence I spoke as a toddler, after I somehow got a hold of his “scoodiver” and tried to disassemble my crib. I was one of very few kids who was taught the difference between Elmer’s glue, solvent-based glue, and epoxy while still in elementary school. When I was older, I could tell him that my car made “a brownish-purple noise” when accelerating, and he was able to diagnose and fix that, too. Yet, for all his brilliance, it seemed his parents were disappointed in him. His own father was a lawyer and his society mother, proud and conservative and judgemental and terribly concerned with appearances, made it clear that his choice of profession was not prestigious enough for the family; he should have chosen law or medicine like his older brother the doctor.

Piloting – The sky was the third element in the triangle of his life. He tried to join the second world war as a pilot but was turned down for medical reasons – a good thing, as only a handful of the men in the squadron he would have been in came back. He owned a small two-seater plane when I was a kid and would go flying every chance he could – not to a destination, just “up” to see the world from a different vantage and feel the air. When the pressures of a growing family made the plane impractical, he flew with Civil Air Patrol. In later life he rented time on small planes; his last flight was just a few weeks before his death. We both have the same funny squint as we look at the sky, which we do often, sharing a common interest in weather, astronomy, space (although he claimed that my life was easier than his, since on the boat I only have to navigate in two dimensions whereas on the plane he needs to know where he is in three.) He was buried alongside my mother on a sunny day in late August, and his flight instructor claimed at the graveside, “How fitting! He’s directly under the approach path for Kennedy Airport!”

Snippets:

His workshop, and after my mother’s death, his house, was always cluttered. Partly, he had a sentimental streak surprising for a science guy. But mostly, he was so creative he could imagine a use for any odd object – and when the time came, he could find it in the (apparent) chaos.

I was about thirteen, and very sad at the end of the summer because it seemed that with my birthday coming, it was time to act like a “grownup” fourteen when school started again. No more climbing trees or running and playing, I supposed it was time to act ladylike and get interested in things other girls my age were, like hairstyles and makeup and boys. For me, boys were just cool people to play football or ride bicycles with, not for (eeew!) dating. “Don’t you worry,” my dad said, “you’ll have plenty of time – the whole rest of your life – to act grownup. No need to rush. Go out and play now if you want to.”

“He who changes his mind, shows he has a mind to change.” When new information came in, my dad was always ready to reevaluate his previous position, like any good scientist should. Dogma scared him. He taught me to think, when solving a problem – and that if something that seems simple is unduly complicated, you’re probably approaching it wrong, so stop, and try another angle. He valued creativity far more than tenacity.

He wasn’t witty but he appreciated good jokes and oxymorons and memorized a few to tell at parties. He had a wonderful sense of silly and pointed out oddities or self-evident road signs when we traveled. He’d encourage critical thinking, and would always point out bloopers or scientific errors in movies (like, the “sound” of photon torpedos … of course, sound doesn’t travel in the vacuum of space).