My father grew up the son of the town drunk in the poorest town in Eastern Kentucky, which is to say the poorest town in the USA.
He never graduated from high school after successfully running away from an unhappy home at age 14. This newspaper clip was from an unsuccessful attempt to run away at age 13.
My father got his GED in the Air Force, graduated from Princeton, attended graduate school, joined the US Foreign Service, taught himself French, Arabic, the piano, bass, and trombone, and was variously stationed in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Mali, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria.
He traveled everywhere, owned a 1937 Bentley, lived to play jazz, married once for life, and ran the climate program for the American Association for the Advancement of Science back when absolutely no one was talking about global warming.
My father was smart, tough, romantic, and an insatiable consumer of information. He would tell you the best thing he ever did was marry my mom. He was not wrong!
No comments:
Post a Comment