I was born to two intelligent attractive people who decided that they needed another child. They had been high school sweethearts, and married young in the midst of a war that threatened to darken the world.
They left University early because he was concerned that others were getting ‘all the good jobs’ which for him meant any job where he could write everyday about sports. In five years they lived in twelve towns. They got really good at making friends, figuring out how things worked, and moving on while keeping those friends.
When they had been together seven years, they embarked on parenthood, adding me three years later.
By then he was the lead golf writer for the Ft. Worth Star Telegram, at a time when the world’s best golfer, Ben Hogan, called Ft. Worth home.
By the time I was four, they made the choice between moving to New York, to take a staff position at the relatively new magazine “Sports Illustrated” or going to San Diego, where my father became the Sports Editor with a daily column for the “Evening Tribune”. He liked writing everyday, and California had both old friends and friendlier winters.
So I got to be a California boy, with Texas papers, and Oklahoma cousins. My parent’s expected me to do well in school and behave myself according to their standards, which included respecting my elders and questioning everything. They were journalists, after all.
My sister set the example of what could and couldn’t be done, making a much easier path for me. My father trained me daily in how to read between the lines, deduce the prejudice of witnesses and writers, and form an independent opinion that was informed by understanding other’s point of view.
In my senior year of high school, my father was part of designing and building what was then a state of the art media facility, based on paper, but with an eye to when ‘you will read your news on a wall screen’ which was totally a science fiction idea at the time.
I won their approval and we all survived the tumult of the youth rebellion of the 60s including my having long hair. I went off to college and a life that eventually led to a career in the film industry, and being a change agent in its transition to digital. My father, the person who had demonstrated how to be a leader in his community, imagine a future and execute on creating it, would ask me “just what is it you do?” My mother, was happy I had found a complicated enough set of challenges to engage and employ me.
The greatest challenge of being a son was none of those issues that seem to fill most of the literature. It was my father’s passing which presented the most difficult of circumstances. Juggling the needs of a compromised parent, those closest to him, including his brother, his partner of 22 years, my mother, who he was married to for 33 years, and my sister, all while being present to his wishes and desires, was unexpected, and among the most intimate experiences I shared with him.
This served me well in the passing of my mother, whose recurrence of cancer included radiation, chemo for nearly a year, and then her choice to forego further treatment. I was able to produce a small booklet for her memorial which is available here–
I am extraordinarily blessed by all that these two people gifted me, in addition to breath. Their wisdom and perspective informs me daily.