This post is in honor of him; a brilliant, inspirational, hardworking guy who really loved his family. Although my dad and I had a few "disagreements" (wow, amazingly, most of which occurred during my teens and early 20's) he retained a positive outlook for humanity and myself, the son who during those years must have appeared determined to aggravate him in every conceivable way. It's been said that my dad, as a technical engineer had more patience dealing with the predictability of blueprints and machinery than people. That may have been true to some extent but he really did like people. As for his patience, I'm going to relate one of my favorite stories about him...
When I was seven years old, I got one of those AMT model kits of The USS Star Ship Enterprise. It was a very advanced model for a second grader to attempt building. The kit contained lots of small parts and decals that had to be carefully applied. With my dad's expert help, the project took several days but damn, that was such a cool model when it was completed! (My dad had the steady hands of a brain surgeon when it came to model building.) I couldn't wait to show The USS Enterprise off to my friends in the neighborhood. I brought it over to a friend's house, a dweeb named Peter. After taking turns "whooshing" it around his backyard for a bit, we set the model down on a small patio table and went inside to grab some Kool-Aid or whatever.. We ambled back out onto their deck, just in time to see Peter's youngest brother Bradley, (in all fairness, not much older than a toddler) clutching The USS Enterprise in one of his snot encrusted little hands. He let out a shrill noise and hurled it into space. I watched in total horror as THE USS ENTERPRISE smashed into the wooden planks of Peter's outdoor deck and exploded into what looked like a ba-jillion pieces. I vaguely recall combing the deck for sections and fragments, finding plastic parts that were broken/separated in places they weren't meant to be. I knew it was bad. I definitely remember walking home with angry tears in my eyes, carrying THE USS ENTERPRISE in a PAPER BAG! The debris was jangling together like Lego pieces.. Luckily for me, (and The Enterprise Crew) my dad was an "Original Trekker" and he didn't gave me a hard time about the accident. He was up to the seemingly impossible challenge of engineering the repairs. Fortunately the "saucer section" was still mostly intact, but the "deflector dish" and "nacelle struts" had suffered major structural failures. (Cracked plastic.) Dad explained that we could save The Enterprise but due to those cracks it might take "some head scratching." He devised an elaborate structure comprised of little beams and C-clamps that held the ship together while the repairs commenced and the glue dried. It was basically a tiny dry-dock on the dining table! There were a couple of small, plastic braces that were shattered beyond repair but they were located inside of the model, so tiny wooden replacements were hand-fashioned and worked just as well, if not better. Thanks to my dad, the USS Enterprise flew again for some time, safely dangling from a fishing line in my bedroom, alongside the airplane models I later built all by my 'ownself ..
Hey, it was either this story or the one about fixing a crow's broken wing.. or rebuilding a dead carburetor on a ' 69 Toyota, Corona.. or repairing a vintage, Fender Champ .. etc... etc... etc.
Dad, you are loved and missed as ever...
1955
