Harvey
Administrator
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2020
My dad passed at 2:30 am this morning. He was 92 years old.
He had a good life, and he really didn't suffer too much at the end.
My mom is 90, and together they were making it work living at home. They could get it done without too much help until recently. My sister really carried the load, I was more of a backup, and brought in for comic relief.
My mom promised my dad she'd never put him in any kind of facility or hospital, and she delivered.
Dad met mom in high school at a birthday party. A friend thought they would hit it off because they were both 'nerds' focused on academics. She was the most interesting woman he'd ever met. Most of the girls he knew wanted to get married, but she wanted to be a scientist.
Dad was second in his class of 500 boys at a private school — The Aquinas Institute — in Rochester NY. In his senior year, one of the priests came to my dad and asked him about his plans for college. He pushed dad to apply to MIT. Almost insisted upon it. Aquinas had a great reputation and my dad had excellent scores on his Regents Exams, and he got in.
My dad was the first in his family to go to college. The first time he visited MIT was when he arrived as a freshman. On campus the word was "Tech is Hell" and it was. Grading was different at MIT in the 1950s vs now. As and Bs were extremely rare, and Cs and Ds were passing grades.
In the summers, dad came home to Rochester and worked for Eastman Kodak, one of the biggest employers in town. The wanted dad to come back after graduation and take a position with the company. As luck would have it, he never took that offer.
After he graduated from MIT he had to serve in the military. He was able to defer his service until after college, and at that time he relocated to Maryland to work for the army.
Dad's highest degree was a Phd in Physics from RPI. He got his Phd when I was 9. I remember when he was doing his thesis he slept overnight in the lab, to watch his experiments.
After he graduated he became a pioneer in phone technology. Back when phones plugged into the wall, the first step in mobility was to move the keypad to the handset instead of attached to the wall, to improve the user experience. That specialized handle required circuit boards that were flexible to fit into the curved handle. I believe it represented new technology, at the time. AT&T called the product the "Princess Phone."
In some ways Physics is an idealistic way of thinking. Everything is theoretical. Dad operated in a world where everyone was equal. To him nothing else was logical. He simply didn't understand corruption or criminal intent or any iteration of me-over-you. It made no sense to him.
Dad had a reputation for seeking out the (mostly poor black) women who assembled the product in the factory in Richmond VA, listening to their ideas on how to increase reliability with an improved assembly process. It was unheard of in the company. None of the other Phds interacted with the line workers.
He had relentless patience for me. I used to ask 1000 questions a day, and he would answer every one, earnestly. He would always throw a baseball with me, whenever I asked him. He would pull me on my sled when it snowed in Troy NY.
I cried a lot today, but I am glad he's passed. He wanted to go.
I'm really going to miss him, he was such a solid human.
---
I sent a link to the original post above to my sister. She corrected me on a few things and generally had a strong reaction to it. She wants me to put together something bigger, that includes more input from others for the rest of the family. Family from Italy has been reaching out.
She reminded me of a couple stories I can't believe I didn't remember.
When my folks were in grad school at RPI we lived — 5 of us — in maybe 500 sq feet, it was RPI's "married student housing." We were a handful, especially when my dad was spending those nights in the lab.
We NEVER wanted to go to bed. So dad invented this thing to make it fun, to get us to sleep.
He called it "Fly Me to Bed."
Basically all three of us would run into the living room and lay on the floor posing as planes with our wings (arms) spread out. One by one, he would put his arms under our torsos and lift us up and 'propel' us to the bedroom, all while making plane sounds with his lips. Then he would land us in our beds (we all shared one bedroom), and put the covers over us. It was a lot of work for him but it got us in bed. It was so much fun for us, that we'd CALL for it. "Fly us to bed dad!"
The other story was sort of related. One night after going to bed, the three of us wouldn't stop talking - the downside of the three of us sharing a bedroom, we were all together. I think at the time we were maybe 5, 8 and 10.
Finally dad comes in, throws the door open and says "CUT THE BALONEY!"
He was mad, and Suz and I were silent. Then MB (my younger sister) says in this tiny pipsqueak voice:
"And EAT IT Dad! Cut the Baloney and eat it!"
No doubt we were a PITA, but sometimes it was hard to be mad at us, I guess.
---
OK I promise, this is the last one.
My sis told me my dad has three patents, for the circuit board/chemical etching work he did, at AT&T in the 80s.
I looked them up. He put Mike D's name, his technician, on all three. I think that is so fucking cool.
I remember dad telling me about Mike. He told me he couldn't do his experiments without him.
Including a tech on a patent, nobody did that.
