Daddy’s Girl

Dad and Cos

As children with no money to buy gifts for anyone, much less our dad, it required creative thinking.

Let's start with the beginning. My parents had five daughters and no sons. I have no doubt this initially disappointed my dad. He probably was looking forward to teaching his son everything he learned, fixing cars and appliances, and doing handyman stuff around the house—you know, like electrical and plumbing, carpentry, and house painting. Realize this was way before YouTube. My dad knew how to do these things without having to rely on learning how to repair anything from a YouTube video.

I was the firstborn. Two more baby girls came quickly after me. So tag, I was it. I was my dad's new apprentice.

Rosemarie, Dad, Carlene

Daddy held several jobs after he returned from WWII and married Mom. Once the babies started to show up, Dad also took extra jobs, such as a local cab driver. He would bring me with him, and my guess was to give Mom a break. I was probably 4 or 5 at the time. Dad told me that I helped him get good tips! But besides wanting to help Mom deal with young children, he wanted to show me what work was like.

The Cold War brought a new opportunity for my father. He had a strong aptitude for learning and working with his hands. There was a job opening for a government contractor for a machinist. But the machinist needed to understand metallurgy. So, my dad worked to learn the metallurgy required to do his job successfully. Evenings, he would sit me on his lap and read metallurgical books to me while he learned this new field. NOTE: I went on to college and became a chemist, though not in metallurgy, but in inorganic chemistry, which is pretty much the same thing. I don't think my dad ever realized how much his evening studies, reading his books out loud, impacted my future choices in profession and my love for learning new things.

My father taught me that even though I was a girl, I could achieve whatever goal I set for myself. During the 60s, this went against the norm for expectations for girls.

Wedding Day

I was and still am a headstrong girl, which made it a rocky time during my dating phase. Daddy and I were at loggerheads with several of my boyfriends. However, I finally met a man who captured my heart; lo and behold, he was just like my dad. He is uniquely smart, knows how to fix stuff, and works with his hands in construction, electrical, and plumbing (BTW, he is not fond of but does it), just like my dad.

Father's Day, when we were kids, was different from today. In school, our art teachers would help us construct ashtrays from clay to give to our dads. We had no money to buy anything. But as we got older and went away to college, our careers, and lives far away from home, our dads' best gift was hearing from us (even though early on, it was a toll call and mom would make sure that we reversed the charges so it didn't cost us to call).

Happy Father's Day, Daddy in heaven. You are still my rock, and I will love you forever.