MY FATHER, I wish I knew him

Frederick James Verity with me, Maryland, 1965

We lived in the same house; we ate at the same table; we went to church together but I didn't know my father.  He was a quiet man of few words, a brilliant man, an educated man, a spiritual man, a dedicated family man, and he loved my mother with all his heart.  He was devoted to her.  She was the center of his universe.

I remember the first thing he did every evening upon returning home from work.  He would walk into the kitchen, with his engineering magazine in his back pocket, and kiss my mother on the nap of her neck as she stood before the stove cooking.  She, not he, was the voice of the family - and he liked it that way.  He was slow to anger but had the wisdom to know that his temper could get the better of him if not contained.  Usually he just let our gentle mother handle the discipline and decision making.

Sometimes we witnessed his temper.  Occasionally he took my brother and me with him to play golf.  We weren't very good being so young but he was patient with us and taught us all the fine points of the game. I remember well the day he hit his ball out of bounds and into the trees.  Three times when he tried to hit his ball out the woods and back onto the course, his ball hit a tree and ricocheted back.  My brother and I made the mistake of laughing the third time.  He yelled at us and then threw his club whirling into the air and worst of all he said a bad word.

He scared us so as soon as we got home, we told on him and you know what?  Momma didn't even get mad at him for swearing.  We were shocked.  I don't know what kind of punishment we thought he'd get but we were sure something would happen "to teach him a good lesson".

Our father usually didn't speak to me or to my siblings unless he was instructing us in one thing or another.  That sounds strange but that was his way.  I don't know if it was because he didn't want to speak to us or because he didn't know how.  I suspect it was the latter.  He was, as I said, brilliant and often times those with superior intellect have difficulty with interpersonal communication.  Their minds are so logical that issues of emotion are baffling and discussions about the mundane workings of life are to them unnecessary.

Still he made a great impact on my life.  He taught me wondrous things.  The first, and the thing that I found most frustrating at the time, was he challenged my thinking.  He made me use my mind to develop my own views on the world and the people in it.  He taught me there was beauty and power in knowledge.

He also could make me madder than any other human being on this earth.  When I learned something new and exciting at school, I would be anxious to share it with the family at dinner.  He would anger me with his questions regarding where the information came from; was it fact or was it a theory; and before accepting information that was told to me, I should check it out for myself and make a determination as to if I wanted to embrace it or not.  Hey! it's school Dad where I go to learn! The information is suppose to have already been checked out.   I cannot tell you the number of times I stormed away from the dinner table to my parents dismay.

As angry as he could make me, he did teach me to question and to seek out answers.  He showed me the value of using logic to reason through problems; and he taught me, by example of his own cold, detached logic, that there was also a place for emotion in problem solving.  Our mother taught us empathy, compassion, and how to love.  She was the one that taught us the value of communicating with one another and communing with nature.  And although my father was a deeply spiritual man, it was she that showed us how to walk and talk with God.  Together they were the perfect balance.

One of the other things my father did was teach us about the Bible.  He would read us a Bible story every night after dinner out of this beautiful old book with the most breathtaking illustrations.  He made the stories come alive.  He also showed us maps in the Bible so we would know where the stories were taking place.  It was the most wonderful of times.

Both of my parents believed in the power of education through experience.  They took us to battlefields, museums, historic buildings, national monuments, the Smithsonian, to concerts, and we learned and explored as we traveled. My sister says there was never a capital building that our mother didn't love and need to see.

As wonderful as all those things were, and as glad as I am that he helped mold me into the person I became, I am sad to report that during all those years we spent together that we never had a personal conversation.  Never had a spontaneous conversation, a casual conversation.  We never had a revealing conversation of any type.  He knew as little about me as I knew about him.

I knew nothing about his childhood, his parents, and nothing really about his brother or sisters except what his sister, Aunt Grace, told me and she told me very little.   He was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York.  Like others in a big city, they lived in an apartment (I didn't even know what living in an apartment entailed.)  They took the subway to school (sounded really, really scary to me). They had black friends while growing up and Aunt Grace didn't even know her mother was prejudice until she was a grown woman herself.

I know how that sounds - pointing out that they had black friends - but during the days prior to the Civil Rights Act being passed in 1964, segregation was everywhere in the United States.  An ugly part of our history but it was our reality at the time.  The majority of the time it prevented interracial friendships from forming.

I never knew how much he favored and endorsed equal rights for all men until after he passed away at age 51 of a heart attack.  It was because of his belief in financially supporting black business owners that I had my first and only encounter with Martin Luther King Jr.

While traveling from Maryland to Georgia we stopped at a black gas station.  It was also the day I discovered that Dr. King had maroon-colored eyes - as he stared down at me a little annoyed.  I was blocking his way.  I was so stunned it was him, I didn't move for a minute as I stared back into those eyes.  Those hypnotic eyes.  I think my mouth might have been hanging open.  I don't know for sure but I think it was.  Picture it.  A tiny, blue-eyed girl with messy dirty-blond hair ( messy because cars weren't air conditioned, the windows were down, and air blew in at hurricane force), with her mouth hanging open blocking the doorway.  Yup! I made an impression on him alright.  Annoying little bug.

It is sad to me that even though we spent a lot of time together as a family that I never got to know my Dad.  Sad that we never got to have a real conversation.  I'm sad that he never got to know who I was.  I so wish I had had the opportunity to know him on a personal level.  I think I would have liked him not just as a dad but as a human being.


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RECOMMENDED READING TO ANYONE THAT WOULD LIKE AN UNDERSTANDING OF SEGREGATION IN THE DEEP SOUTH:

BLACK LIKE ME by John Howard Griffin

The history-making classic about crossing the color line in the segregated South.

"The Deep South of the late 1950's was another country; a land of lynchings, segregated lunch counters, whites-only rest rooms, and a color line etched in blood across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. White journalist John Howard Griffin, working for a black-owned magazine Sepia, decided to cross that line.  Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man.

What happened to John Howard Griffin---from the outside and within himself---as he made his way through the segregated Deep South is recorded in this searing work of nonfiction.  Educated and soft-spoken, John Howard Griffin changed only the color of his skin.  It was enough to make him hated... enough to nearly get him killed.  His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity every American must read."

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Linda Verity DuBos:  This is a powerfully written book that will change everything you thought you knew about segregation in the Deep South.  It is shocking, disturbing, and enlightening.  I couldn't put it down once I started reading.  You will find yourself immersed in a world that you didn't know existed unless you lived it yourself.  Get this book, read it.  It will give you insight that you never imaged possible.