News, Dad And Me

I just finished putting my father to bed after we watched the memorial service for Senator Ted Kennedy. It's amazing, even now, how much watching television news with my father has shaped my life.


I can remember sitting on our living room floor late in the summer of 1974, playing with my plastic dinosaurs. My father told me to stop what I was doing and watch the television with him. I did as he said and watched a live broadcast from the White House. President Nixon was about to speak from the podium. My dad, no fan of Nixon to be sure, watched with a delighted grin on his face and occassionally glanced down at the floor to make certain I was paying attention. "You need to watch this and remember...this is history being made." Some thirty minutes later, Richard Nixon announced his resignation as the 37th president of the United States. It was, indeed, history being made.


Many years later, December of 1989 to be precise, I was spending a month in Pennsylvania with my parents between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I was sitting in front of the TV with dad again, watching groups of people, young and old, dismantling the Berlin Wall. Once again, dad tells me that we're watching history in the making. It was amazing to glance at my father during that time, and see a look on his face that, without a doubt, told me that this was the most important thing that we could be doing at that moment--watching the news.


Today, I proudly call myself a news junkie, no small thanks to my father. Even though our news is a sorry shadow of what it used to be, I fondly remember the evenings of my youth, hearing "...and that's the way it is," as Walter Cronkite signed off feeding my father fuel for the political discussions that often took place at our dinner table. My father's opinions were clearly his own, but even when I disagreed with him based on my little understanding of politics as a child--and disagreed often, though not vocally--I respected the amazing conviction that echoed through dad's animated voice.


I saw a faint shadow of that animation tonight as dad attentively watched Ted Kennedy's memorial service. I asked him what he thought of it after the last speaker had finished. He paused. "He wasn't as great as his brothers, but he did some good things." He said it with conviction, as though that were the final word on the story.

(listen to this story by clicking the link below)

Thomas Boylan · Newsdadandme.WAV

The Things We Take For Granted

It took some time but we finally got to the bedroom. I timed it at thirty-seven minutes exactly. Each night, my father's ritual is the same. Some nights he moves faster than others. Last night, he was moving pretty slow. He starts by announcing that it's time for bed. This happens downstairs, usually between 8 and 10 PM. After this, he ascends the staircase in a motorized chair lift while I follow on the stairs behind him. Since I've been here taking care of him, each time he's situated and ready to press the button, I say "...five, four, three, two, one...we have liftoff!" He always laughs at this. When we get to the top, he slowly moves out of the chair and grabs hold of a walker waiting at the top. The upstairs bathroom is adjacent to the top of the stairs so it's a short trip to the toilet. Here, I remove his jacket, then proceed to remove his tennis shoes, surgical stockings, shorts or pants (depending on weather), Depends undergarment (immediately tossed into the trashbasket. Sometimes I hit and sometimes I miss) and shirt. We place his glasses on the window sill and I get him a cup of water and his PM pills. He takes his pills and then we dress him for bed: a new Depends (lined with additional strip for extra protection), fresh shirt, pajama bottoms, white socks, and slippers. He struggles to pull the pajama bottoms up himself but always ends up needing assistance in the end. After all this, he clutches the walker and we're off to the bedroom at the end of the hall. This is the trip that took 37 minutes last night. When we get to the bed, he situates himself on the edge, I remove his slippers placing them on the walker's shelf, and get him positioned over the mat that protects the fitted bedsheet from soiling. After he's tucked in I ask him if he's allright. Tonight he responded, "What do you think?" I wasn't sure what to say. But I can write what I really think here. Why do we take so much for granted? Is it because we don't want to know how terrible things could be? Is it because we really don't know how good we've got it until the rug is swept out from under us? As glad as I am to know that my dad's okay and safe from harm each night as he's tucked into bed, I am saddened that he can no longer do so many of the things the rest of us take for granted.

(please scroll to the bottom for an audio file of this entry)

Thomas Boylan · Thethingswetakeforgranted.WAV

How Little We Know

I like to complain. A lot. But I often think of my father when I get on a roll. That's usually when the complaining stops, because I start thinking of his early life and it seems to put mine in perspective.

Dad was born in 1925. He was the oldest of five children. His mom, Kathryn and father, Clarence lived in a very rural area outside of Kane, Pennsylvania. Clarence labored in the oil fields while Kathryn cranked out one child after another in rapid succession. Kathryn’s mother, Lucy, lived in Kane and was upset that my father could not attend school in such a rural setting...there were no schools for forty miles. On Lucy's insistance, Kathryn let my father go to stay with her and dad began attending school at Saint Callistus in Kane. My father seems to recall spending weekends with his mother, while his father worked overtime in the fields. He seldom saw Clarence. He remembers that Kathryn would have gentlemen callers from time to time. Of course, I am not sure what these gentlemen did with Kathryn--if anything.

Dad had only one interest and fascination as a child--airplanes, or aeroplanes as they were called in the day. He spent most of his waking hours watching the skies for these rare mechanical birds. He jokingly tells me that, "...I always had my head in the clouds." He was determined, even as a small child, to one day sit behind the controls of that winged machine.

One Autumn day in 1933, my dad was called to go back to the small rural home where he was coldly informed that his father, Clarence, was ill. Within a very short time, Clarence would be dead--a victim of infantile paralysis, otherwise known as Polio. His brief memories of his father in an iron lung were the last living memories of Clarence Boylan for my father. Dad was eight years old.

The next memory my father had of Clarence was his cold, lifeless body...laid out in his family's parlor. Dad was forced to kneel over the coffin, where the small child was told to lead the family in a Rosary. For those of you who aren't Catholic, praying a Rosary is a lengthy process. My father performed the prayers robotically as he cried tears that he didn't fully comprehend and time seemed to stand still. When it was over, he was whisked to Lucy's, where he would be raised away from his mother and siblings for the next several years.

This is how life started for a little guy who always had his head in the clouds, and I cry as I retell the story.

A rare photo of Clarence a few years

 before his death. Pictured with him are 

my dad and my Aunt Jane.

Thomas Boylan · Howlittleweknow.WAV

The Manhattan Project

My father was stationed at an Air Base in Salinas, California in 1945. He was with a buddy partying in a neighboring town and they hitchhiked back to Salinas, getting a ride from a pipe smoking old man in bib overalls. "Where you fellas headed?," he asked. Dad told the old man that they were on their way back to the base and the elderly gentleman informed him that he couldn't take them all the way, but that he would be able to take them most of the way. "We're about to head out to Hawaii where we'll be training as flight officers," my father said enthusiastically. The old man pulled his 1937 Chevy truck to the side of the road and looked my father in the eye. "How long you think this war's gonna last, son?"

"Hell, I don't know."

"Well, I don't think it's gonna last much longer...I don't think you fellas will be goin' anywhere," the rugged old man said with a self-satisfied smug on his weathered face. "You ever hear of the Manhattan Project?"

"No," answered dad. The man pulled back onto the road.

"Well, you will," he smiled. "You will."

Two days later, as my dad chowed down at a Chinese restaurant in Salinas, news came over the radio that the Japanese surrendered after a second atomic bomb exploded over the city of Nagasaki. It had been a top-secret project labled "Manhattan."

Dad still doesn't know who the old man was.

(scroll to the bottom to hear an audio version of this story)

Thomas Boylan · Themanhattan Project.WAV

Tough Questions To Ask Elderly Parents

According to the Financial Literacy Center, from an article in "New Man" magazine, there is a list of nine questions children of elderly parents should ask. I've no doubt they are important things...after all, the article is based on--centered around--financial issues. But it's amazing to me that these are touted as the tough questions. Questions such as "Do you have up-to-date wills?" and "Do you have hidden assets or liabilities?" It seems to me that these questions are fairly easy. The tough questions, in my opinion, are much more personal. Things like "Can you tell me about your past disappointments, accomplishments?, What do you fear, if anything, about growing older?, What is your biggest regret in life?" It seems to me that these are the really tough questions--and not always because a parent is reluctant to answer them. I think the real reason they are so tough is that we--their children--don't necessarily want to hear the answers.

Dad's Story: Part I

(an audio version of this essay can be accessed at the bottom of the page)

I've been interviewing my eighty-four year old father for the past several weeks because he wants me to write a book about his life. Unlike the numerous biographies of famous people--dead and alive--who are fortunate enough to have their lives scribed by someone who has superb writing skills, my father's story will not be a great piece of writing...of this I'm sure. I'm also certain that there will be people who say that my father's story isn't all that extraordinary. Well, that may be true, but my father does have a story to tell. The sad thing is that the story is slipping from his memory a little more each day, since he is suffering from some type of idiopathic dementia. We all know that it's getting worse. Though he's scheduled to see a neurologist soon, we aren't sure if anything will halt the onset of it's insidious progression. When I was visiting my parents in our tiny home town of Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania this past May and June, I looked into my father's eyes one evening as he told me of his plans to have his story told. I was touched and honored that he found me capable of carrying out the task. But, just to be certain for himself--in my father's typical fashion--he asked my companion Carlos, the next day, if I was capable of doing it. Dad, who's never been a respecter of titles, seemed to suddenly value the credentials of someone who had a "doctor" in front of his name. It was almost in a placating sense that I agreed to the task, because I love my father, and wanted to do as he wished. Back in Texas, I heard reports from my siblings and mother that dad had been growing agitated about not being able to obtain medical records from more than fifty years ago. I knew something of his story about a night in November of 1950...we'd all heard about it. He had been nearly killed in a horrible traffic accident. His neck was broken. They weren't sure if he'd ever recover, much less live. He was trying to obtain the records--long since vanished--from this hospital where a talented surgeon saved his life. In between bouts of dementia and moments of lucidity, dad talked with me over the phone about that night...and I began doing some research. Something wonderful happened as I scoured the internet and searched library databases based on vague information that I had about the surgeon and hospital. I started to believe for myself that my father's story wasn't just worth telling. It was worth much more. It was my story as well. And it was the story of my family. You see, my family wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for this doctor, whose name just happened to be Fortune. I found out as much as I could. The orthopedic surgeon, Clayton Fortune, M.D., was prominent in his field by 1950. He had a growing practice located in Erie, Pennsylvania. When the small town hospital in Kane couldn't take care of my father's serious injury, he was rushed to Erie and into the hands of this capable man. My dad's surgery was involved for its time. His broken neck required a cervical vertabral fusion--as the fifth cervical vertabrae was fractured. Fortune's skilled hands operated, with his partner, Dr. John Euliano, for four and a half hours. My twenty-five year old father drifted in and out of consciousness prior to the surgery, but was conscious during the actual procedure. He would later recall that through the entire surgery, he felt as though he were being stabbed repeatedly by a red hot poker as the burning sensation seared through his neck. He was put in a full torso cast immediately following the operation. And he remained in this cast, and in the hospital, for a whole month. When he was released, he had to wear the cast home. There, he had some time to think about things. I think my father gave mortality much thought during that time. As I gathered pieces of information about this accident, I discovered that my father had a life prior to this surgery. I guess I knew that he had a life, of course--but I'm talking about more than that. I discovered that my dad's life was a difficult one...even compared to the most depressing stories of the Great Depression. There was so much to learn, and, sensing the urgency in my father's recollections, so precious little time to learn it all.

Thomas Boylan · Dadsstorypt1.WAV