There are times when I’m in the same room with Gene and he quietly disappears. He doesn’t go anywhere—I just stop seeing him. Or he’ll come into the room while other people are talking and I don’t notice him until suddenly he’s right there, standing among us. His life force, a presence which was never overly assertive, these days is more akin to a firefly on a summer evening: now you see it, now you don’t.
I value the brief glimpses of his quiet humor, and even the negative outbursts he occasionally voices. The other day, getting back into the car after our weekly bout of shopping, he was shaking with the cold, his eyes bright and intense. “You’re freezing,” I said. He sat on his hands, still shivering. “I’m FREEZING,” he said loudly, with more conviction than I recall hearing from him in a long time.
My father’s life, the things he’s experienced over these past 86 years would be considered noteworthy by almost anyone. The list of flukes is long and uncanny. How many people from that era can say they were raised on a socialist-anarchist commune? How many boys actually saw the Hindenburg fly over their small New Jersey town, not to mention firing a BB gun at it? (No, he didn’t cause it to crash.) Would you believe that he saw Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig playing on the same field? That when he was 12, his father gave him a baseball signed by the entire 1936 team of the New York Giants, the same year they played in the World Series? (The ball, its autographs badly faded, is still with us.)
I can also note that my dad was listening to the radio on that night in October 1938 when Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” was broadcast, causing mass panic throughout the country. For his part, he did not panic—but looked out the window and saw that everything appeared normal. Then, to make sure, he listened to a few other stations before concluding it was just a radio drama.
Gene was always a bright kid, and after graduating from high school at 16, headed straight to UC Berkeley, far from home. World War II interrupted his studies and found him serving in the army, stationed first in England (where he heard the sound of V-2 rockets overhead before they exploded) and then in Germany and Austria. While in Vienna he used his nascent theatrical experience directing plays at the Theater an der Wien for the entertainment of American troops.
Back home, he completed his BA and went on to Stanford for a Master’s degree in dramatic arts. He began a long teaching career; at 34 he got married, only to find himself in a relationship that was troubled from the beginning and which neither party had the tools to repair. My arrival became the primary focus of his life, as he had full custody of me from the time I was one year old. I remember him as always there, reliable and quiet, focused and withdrawn at the same time. People have told me how lucky I was to have such a loving, present father, one who read stories and sang songs to me at bedtime every night. I have to agree—he did his best.
It’s only now that we’re again living in the same area, seeing each other almost every week that I’m starting to realize that my dad and I are writing the final chapters of our story. As before, there are some sweet moments….but I’m angry to see what's happening to my always steady and predictable father; sad to witness the slow disintegration of his memory and wit, the loss of his physical stamina. And I’m forcing myself to accept the reality of his gradual, then ultimate, disappearance.
