My father would have been 91 yesterday. If you ever had a chance to chat with him, you likely consider yourself lucky. He was a bear of hugs, pranks, jokes, and stories. He was kind, and he had the flirt gene. He was smitten with Mom almost from the minute he met her, but he also managed to have a lifetime affair with his endless parade of bees. I had so many mythic experiences with him, but here’s one I’ve never written about before. I don’t think I’ve ever told Suzanne about it.
In the late 90’s when I was teaching in Baltimore and living in Takoma Park, Maryland, Dad flew out to visit me. I wanted him to see some of the Washington, D.C. and Civil War sights he had always read about. We visited Harper’s Ferry and Gettysburg, and we hit all the major D.C. memorials: Lincoln, Jefferson, Vietnam, etc. One memorial was relatively new: the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. It had opened only a few months before Dad’s visit, and even I had not yet seen it yet. The FDR Memorial is what I would describe as people-sized, as opposed to the towering Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. At the FDR, you are encouraged to stand eye-to-eye with the people-sized sculptures in its four outdoor “rooms.” You are encouraged to read the braille and touch relief sculptures on walls.
Anyhoo…As we were checking out the FDR Memorial for the first time, I kept my eye on Dad to make sure he was being sufficiently entertained. At some point, I sauntered off to read a historical marker and when I turned around again, he was gone. I could not see him anywhere. I was briefly frantic, then remembered he was a grown man and could take care of himself in the bigly city.
To find him, I stood still and scanned the other sightseers in the same way Dad had taught me to look for deer: You look for the thing by NOT looking for the thing. If you look for everything else, the thing you’re really looking for will stand out. (It’s a handy trick, and it works with relationships too. Just sayin’.) I stood and listened. From just ahead and to the side of me, I heard what I can only describe as a loud whisper—the sound of an astonished little boy trying to not to call attention to himself. It was almost a whispered cry. I heard, “Fala!” (pronounced like “fall-uh”) I turned to see who had uttered that word in such a strange way. Lo and behold—it was my dad, but it wasn’t Dad. He was stopped in his tracks, staring off at a cluster of sculptures, but he didn’t resemble himself. His face looked like the pictures I had seen of him when he was a kid. The expression on his face made him look about 10. “Fala,” he quietly squealed. Was he having a stroke? I said, “Dad? Are you okay?” He didn’t look away from the sculpture scene, and once again, he said, “Fala!”
As I stood with him, he began to look more like his older self. We started to walk to the sculpture that had so surprised him. Now it began to make sense to me. I hadn’t known this bit of trivia before, but I would never forget it now: Fala was the name of FDR’s dog, and here it was in a sculpture, triggering some long-ago childhood recognition in Dad. FDR was the U. S. President of Dad’s childhood and teens. Dad had heard about/seen Fala in newspapers, magazines, fireside chats, and newsreels during FDR’s presidency, and he had remembered the name of FDR’s dog after decades had passed by. Dad then told me all about Fala. So that’s how, on that day in Washington, D.C., I got to see and hear my dad turn into a little boy for a few seconds. It was so dang cool!
Ronald E. Wright. The man. The legend. The beekeeper.
