By: Wayne Head
He is 83 years old, his hair is white and balding, his upper teeth are mostly gone, he struggles with his hearing aids, and he walks with a hesitant shuffle. When he walks, his chin almost hits his chest as he says he looks like a human question mark. He has fallen a few times, once splitting his scalp on the curb leading into the café where he was going to eat his breakfast. His demeanor is sometimes waspish and brusque. He is my father.
When I see other people’s reactions to my father’s slow steps, his short business-like speech, I understand what they observe. Additionally, I see the man who raised me. I recall the family stories of him when he was a child, and I recognize a different man than the casual observer sees. He was the third child of a poor Native American working man and a woman who lived by her own standards. Those standards ended my grandparents’ marriage when my father was eleven years old.
Initially, six of the children chose to go with their mother to the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado when their parents parted ways. My father’s mother worked in a bar to support herself and her children in Alamosa, Colorado. My, then 11-year-old, father would stay awake each night then walk through the unlighted streets to meet his mother at the door of the bar to walk her home.
At 17 years of age, he talked his father into signing him to join the Marine Corps, following graduation from the Farmington High School in Farmington, New Mexico. His father had an older son in combat in the Korean War and did not want to see my father join the Marine Corps, but he eventually signed the paperwork. He told me that the top three Marines graduating from boot camp were allowed to choose any assignment anywhere in the world. He said that all three of them chose to be assigned to Korea. The war ended before he was sent to Korea, and he was then assigned to duty in Japan.
When I was a toddler, my father worked three jobs to support my mother, my brother, and myself in Flagstaff, Arizona. He worked tirelessly and was barely making ends meet, but he never cried about these circumstances and never thought of not meeting his obligations. He and my mother would save up for months to go out for one meal at a steakhouse in Williams, Arizona. During this time, two of my father’s siblings lived with us, one at a time. He and my mother housed his younger sister, Jean Head Cage, the last year of her high school experience so she could graduate and be able to get a good paying job. They gave his older brother a place to sleep when his marriage blew up and he drove from Farmington, New Mexico to Flagstaff, Arizona with only the clothes on his back.
One year, about 20 years or so after becoming an Ammunition Inspector for the Department of Defense, he submitted a report that was critical of practices at his duty station. An Army colonel took his report from him and an integral piece of the report was removed, drastically changing the import of the report. The colonel ordered my father to sign the altered report. The colonel was not in my father’s chain of command, and my father told him no, this is no longer my report. The colonel started to harass my father, calling him to yell at him to sign the report. My father told him no, and hung up the phone. The man then called at least three more times yelling, calling my father foul names. Each time, my father would hang up the phone. Finally, my father’s supervisor called asking my father why he would not take the colonel’s phone calls, and my father replied that the colonel was not calling for him. He was calling for a son of a bitch, a bastard, etc. Eventually, my father did not put his name to the altered report. My mother told me that what she respected most about my father was his integrity.
My father never went to college for a bachelor’s degree. He never went beyond his high school education, but he was able to retire as a GS 13. A rank equivalent to a one star, brigadier, general in the Army. He is one of the smartest, most intuitive person that I have ever known. He used a T-square when he attended the two-year-long Ammunition Inspectors’ school. His education in mathematics and science during these two years would probably equal a bachelor’s degree in mathematics or science. He was responsible for safely transporting and storing nuclear weapons, tomahawk missiles, nerve gas, claymore mines, and other deadly devices. Yet, he now struggles with working a smartphone.
My father is a man of his word, if he says that he will do something, or not do something, that is what will occur. When he retired from government service, he told friends that he would fish once each day for a year. Many folks told him that he would never follow through with this plan. It gets very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer in northwestern, Nevada. He fished every day for a year following his retirement.
My father and mother raised five children, all of whom graduated high school. Education was valued in my father’s home, and he supported us and encouraged us in pursuing post high school endeavors. I grew up with the credo that if you are going to do something, you should do it right. He was faithful to my mother right up to the day that she died, four months before their 50th wedding anniversary.
I have written this thumbnail sketch of my father to say that the next time you walk past an older person in the grocery store aisle, the next time you are stuck in a line behind an older person who is fumbling with their wallet or purse, and the next time you pass an older person driving slower than the other drivers, please understand that they carry with them a lifetime of experiences. These experiences have defined their lives and often limited their lives (physical injuries and personal sacrifices), resulting in the old, bent, slow and cautious person that impedes your fast pace in this world.
These people have often lived lives that we can only imagine, made sacrifices that would make us weep if we were the ones making the sacrifices, and have endured indignities that we would not wish on our enemies. Please, give them a smile when you see them. Give them five seconds of your time. Sit back and wait patiently while they fumble for their money and ask the clerk for the third time how much they owe. Lastly, give them a small amount of respect and empathy when your path crosses theirs.
