Dad was a war hero. In 1943, he was drafted in the army at age 18 however he was given a one year deferment because of being the last son working on the family farm. He went in the service in 1944. He was wounded in the Battle of the Colmar Pocket, February 5th, 1945. He should have died in the Ardennes. His femoral artery was severed by mortar fire however the wool uniform and mud packed the wound and kept him from bleeding to death.
Dad was a student, duh, what teacher isn’t also a student. After two years of rehabilitation he married my mom and went to college on the VA bill. They had children, a boy and a girl. He graduated with a degree in Agriculture Education and a minor in Engineering. After graduating, he and my mother, who had her degree in Home Economic Education, went to teach school in Hope, Ks. They lost children (my sister Carolyn was killed in a car accident at 1 year old). They moved to Kansas City and my dad went into engineering, he was the guy who designed production lines, because of people like him; we have "how it's made". They had more children, my sister and four years later me.
Dad was an entrepreneur and started his own business, Fire Electric Safety Demonstration Kits. Still the teacher... they were purchased by fire departments and school districts to teach fire and electric safety i.e. how to put out a grease fire. We moved to Galena, Mo, this is where I remember growing up. Galena is a small town, pop 300, on the James River near Table Rock Lake. My brother was already in college and never moved to Galena with us.
Dad was an avid fisherman and golfer. As I talked about in my previous post, dad was a story teller. After all what's a fisherman (or golfer) without a tale to tell! There were too many fishing stories to even begin to share them all!! Add in the “almost hole in ones” too.
Dad was a jokester. He loved the stories that ended in laughter. He would talk about growing up on a farm in Kansas... flying model airplanes off of John Brown's Lookout... getting into mischief with his best friend Durbin... Boot camp at Fort Hood Texas, catching an armadillo and putting it into an annoying guy's tent... Being on guard duty one night in Alsace, France and reporting to the CO that there were spies in town because two women were speaking German. (The area was bi-lingual)... His engineering experiences... He designed a chicken packing plant in Arkansas. Frozen chickens were difficult to process because the frozen legs and wings would break off when they would try to wire them. However, if the chickens weren't frozen bacteria would grow before they could get them processed. His solution was to put the whole plant under pressure. The chickens were supposed to be held by the leg, when they first turned on the production line it was on too high of speed. The chickens were flung around the plant at such a high rate they couldn't get to the off button! Dad would howl with laughter every time he told this story, mimicking dodging and weaving to try to get to the off button while being pelted by chickens.
Dad was a history maker. Because of that factory design, dad invented vacuum sealed cans. It was for a product call "Spreadables". Basically, tuna salad in a can, again to prevent spoilage he put it under pressure. Spreadables were on Apollo 13 and after the disaster and the water tank blew, it was the only food the astronauts could eat. (I haven't called Tom Hanks yet to ask why that fact wasn't in the movie) Just think of how many "shelf stable" foods we now enjoy because of vacuum sealed cans! That was my dad!
Dad was a genius and taught me the simplicity of genius. There was a time in TV between vacuum tubes and microchips, TVs used crystals. They were man made crystals and they needed to be sawed and sanded into thin slices. The saw blade was 3 times the final thickness and then the cut was so rough that they had to sand 2 times the thickness off. So for every crystal slice they wasted 5 times as much crystal. That's if it went perfectly but about every third crystal would crack or catch on the saw tooth and fly off. Dad's solution came from watching his mother make cinnamon rolls. Any baker knows what I'm talking about, once you roll up the cinnamon roll pastry, you take a thread wrap it around the log and slice off the individual rolls. Dad designed a similar machine to "slice" the crystals, using fine piano wire. Not only was it much thinner than the saw blade but the crystals needed little to no sanding and there were no cracked or destroyed crystals. Simply genius!
Dad was a constant tinker. I don't know how many patents dad has his name on, not to mention, his home rigged inventions. Every time we visited, there were simply things around the house that just made every day easier. When he was in rehab, he showed his physical therapist his "chair exerciser". He had designed a couple of devices out of rubber tubes and wood blocks which basically made a bow flex out of his easy chair. The physical therapist said, "Wow, you should patent that!" He just chuckled, I'm sure dad can't even count the number of times he's heard that one!
Dad was a craftsman. His last couple of projects included a replica of a Canadian fur trader's canoe and wood flower pots. He has built so many beautiful and practical wood projects and furniture. My son's bedroom furniture includes a desk and dresser that dad built for my brother's nursery in 1948.
I'm living on the eighth day, right now!
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