Not that Dad wouldn't have liked more time. He died at the age of 74 in 1977. Too soon, but in just the way he would have wanted--in his sleep. He still had "all of his faculties" as people used to say, and could get around without assistance. Still, if you asked him, he'd probably say that while his life ended too soon, it still had an amazing arc. Born in 1903 when the Wright Brothers first flew an airplane, he lived to see the moon landing in 1969. A gift of history--never imagined by earlier generations.
I was 30 when Dad died--and for all of my previous years, really considered myself lucky in the father lottery. John was kind at heart, gentle, funny, a father who took time for his family. With my mother, he gave me the great gift of freedom. In my childhood, "free range parenting" was the norm. I was not driven to lessons, but rather spent time outside playing with friends, watching TV, reading books. He was also a great storyteller ("Your father has the gift of the gab", my mother said often). His stories were entertaining, and before I grew older and wiser, never suspected how embellished they were. For awhile, he convinced me that his estranged family of birth were all horse thieves. He had left the Kansas City of his youth for Chicago, where all the jobs were, and could spin stories of "Two-gun McGann" and other infamous characters of Depression-era city life.
John's early life was not easy, but he always made his life a series of stories, not complaints. His mother left him, his three siblings and their father when he was 9, and he was farmed out to Aunt Mag, a woman with a heart of gold, and her stingy husband, Uncle Jim. Dickensonian stories masked the pain he must have felt. Enrolled in Catholic school--not a kind and gentle place in that era--he "dropped out in third grade", in his words, and ended up in reform school, as it was called then, certainly not a kind and gentle place either. In 1918, as World War I was reaching an end, he and his older brother Clarence decided to join the Navy. John was only 15 and had to lie about his age, and apparently the recruit-starved Navy was not too particular about proof. He and Clarence were assigned to a ship sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a memory he savored for the rest of his life--the freedom of adult life, the beauty of the water and island. The war ended just a few months after their enlistment. Dad had never seen a minute of combat, yet was honorably discharged with a lifetime of veterans' benefits. Benefits that eventually saved his life when he developed tuberculosis and was treated in a veteran's hospital--one of the first places to get life-saving antibiotics.
Jumping ahead a few years, here's John with my sister Joan, circa 1976.
John was opinionated--a strong supporter of unions, including the one he belonged to: Local 150 of the Union of Operating Engineers. He was a construction worker, starting in the 1940s. Too old for military service in World War II, he went to Alaska to help build the Alaska Highway, an event that he described as a great adventure: the beauty of the Yukon and Dawson Creek, like nothing he had seen before in Kansas or Illinois. Returning to Chicago, John met my mother, his second attempt at creating a family. An early marriage ended in divorce after the birth of a daughter, Bernice, who along with her family, remained a part of his life until he died. At the age of 41, when he married my mother, Angeline, he was ready to give family life another try.
John and Angie moved to Hammond, Indiana, in 1952, when I was 5. The highway construction business was booming, and jobs paid enough for a man to support a family and buy a small house. It was the first house they owned, the only house they owned. There they raised me and my younger sister, Joan. Usually laid off in the winter (with unemployment benefits!), Dad worked spring through fall, doing work that he made to seem important.* There was a right way to grade a road, he said, and from his stories I intuited there was value in doing it well. An important lesson for a child to learn--along with the other ones: the adventure of travel, the value of unions for working people--and oh yes, the necessity of buying only what one could afford. No credit cards in those days; if you didn't have the cash, you didn't buy. And oh, yes, education is a good thing. Both John and Angie went to parents' nights at school; they took me to spelling bees and bought books. I felt their pride when I did well.
In 1n 1962 John made what he considered one of the biggest mistakes of his life. He and my mother sold the house in Hammond and returned to Chicago, where they bought a small card and variety store with living space in the back. It was a financial disaster from the beginning, and John blamed himself. Before long he and Angie unloaded it and picked up the pieces. They rented a modest brick house nearby, and John retired, settling into life as the family cook while my mother worked. A rather handy guy, he also did odd jobs for widows in the neighborhood. And he also spent a fair bit of time on a system for winning at the racetrack. I sometimes went to the Arlington Heights racetrack with him, enjoying the outings very much--the beauty of the horses, the colors, the excitement of the races. Dad never found the perfect system, usually breaking even at the end of the season, but he taught me an important lesson about gambling. Every summer he would remind us that he didn't put money into sports or betting pools. Rather he would take a set amount of money--maybe $400--and when it was gone, it was gone. Doing something you enjoy and putting limits on it--that was the message.
As I grew older, entered college and became involved in civil rights and the antiwar movements of the 1960s, Dad and I often argued about politics. And this is the part that is hard for me to describe without making excuses. Is there always that tendency--to minimize the faults of those we love? Without doubt, his beliefs and actions were racist. While not hateful, he was still a white man, born in Missouri in the early 1900s, one who believed races were best kept separate and integration should never be "forced". (In fact, our move from Chicago to Hammond had been based on racism as much as economic opportunity. The Great Migration had brought thousands of African-Americans to Chicago, and John and Angie did not want to live next door to Black people.) We often argued, neither side backing down. In 1968, Dad voted for segregationist George Wallace, the Alabama governor who carried 5 southern states that year. I volunteered for Eugene McCarthy, the independent who tried for the Democratic nomination, losing to Hubert Humphrey who then lost to Richard Nixon. As I look back on our heated arguments, I wish I had tried to understand more and argued less. I've since learned all about cognitive bias, the near impossibility of changing committed beliefs. And I might then have appreciated his treating me as an equal conversation partner. He never berated or bullied me.
It's been 43 years since John Riley died. I wish I had thanked him before his death and told him how much I admired his strengths as a person, beyond the gifts he gave me as a father. He survived a difficult childhood in a working-class culture without the educational opportunities we take for granted today. He was honest and hard-working, a great story-teller, an excellent cook. He lacked what I consider some of the most annoying human faults: self-pity, self-absorption, arrogance. He was generous with his time and his affection. How lucky I was to be his daughter. Happy Birthday, Dad.
*Dad's working life was not entirely in road construction. I believe he also worked for U.S. Steel in nearby Gary, Indiana, where in his later years he had the graveyard shift monitoring "pumps." He also spoke of the now-defunct Bethlehem Steel Corporation, but they did not build a plant in northwest Indiana until 1962 (according to Wikipedia).
