Charting His Own Path

It has been five years since my father passed away and I thought I said everything I had to say.  Then something happened that got me thinking about my father and a blog began to take shape. I picture him throwing prompts in my path to get my attention.

Recently I got an email from a development professional with Bradley University, She and the dean of the college of engineering were going to be in my community and wanted to meet.  Now I have a unique tie to Bradley and especially the engineering college. My father started the electrical engineering department and I grew up on the Bradley campus.  

As we sat outside at a café, enjoying our pleasant weather, the current dean commented on the rather eclectic career my father had. It was eclectic because he spanned different disciplines, letting his interests carry him from one to another all within the same university.  He began in engineering, started a public television and radio station and became the dean of communications and fine arts, returning as dean of engineering later in his career. Throughout his life he crossed the boundaries that we often build around career paths. He was considered a visionary in his day and among his many talents was communicating his vision which of course translated to fundraising, a skill that is quite appreciated on a college campus. He also had a definite philosophy of education that argued for not channeling students into specializations too early in their careers. The current dean was very interested in his philosophy and had heard tales about him.

“Were his parents academics?” the dean asked, trying to figure out this sometimes puzzling man. 

"No, they were immigrants," I replied. "His father ran a surplus store and didn’t really understand his desire for education. When my father was away at the University of Denver, going to school on the GI Bill, he got a letter from his dad. 'Why don’t you get a little shop off Main Street. I’ll send you some inventory. See what you can do,' It was signed, Ole Man Weinberg." As I think about it now, it occurs to me that he was indeed influenced by his father's profession.  Whether it was gathering equipment to start the department or setting up the TV station, my father was known for outfitting his creations economically with surplus equipment.

I related the story of the career counseling he received as an undergrad that suggested electrical engineering might not be the right fit and suggested he explore a career in social service as he had very high scores in that area. Those career counselors might have been right if they were looking at the profile of the typical electrical engineer, but my Dad most certainly wasn't typical. Needless to say, he continued into electrical engineering, but married it up to community service in his creation of the public television station. His pattern was to link different pursuits as he charted his own path. Of course, he opposed specialization in education, it was diametrically opposed to how he created his own career, moving between a wide range of interests that often informed each other. He modeled that for me as well.

As I talked about my Dad, I thought about his irreverence. That meant I couldn't share some of my best "Dadisms" which were seldom appropriate. He did things his way and with attitude. He was his own person and didn't see the world through the same lens as everyone else.

The dean told me about a new center on the Bradley campus called the Convergence Center.  I could hear my father chortling in my ear.  “Well it was about time they figured it out.” The Convergence Center brings together both business and engineering, moving away from specialization and into collaboration.  I could feel my father itching to jump into the conversation. We were talking about something that he cared about. "Yeah Dad," I thought, “Sometimes you’re just ahead of your time."

Our Imperfect Selves

Father's Day once again. I thought I was done with Father's Day when my Dad passed away four years ago. And yet, here I am with a crate of his papers, sorting through them, scanning them and learning new things about my father that make me regret that I didn't know him more fully. Does anyone ever know a parent fully? As a child I saw but a glimpse, fraught with parental authority and my struggles for independence and approval. I saw the clay feet of the man who walked on water in the eyes of the public. I knew the private person, not the man of accomplishment and eloquence. 

My father was a man of many talents who was often challenged by the everyday frustrations of dealing with children. Fortunately for us and for him, my mother was incredibly gifted with children. I wonder sometimes if he felt a bit like an outsider among us. His world was the world of work where he was esteemed and accomplished. In that world he had an innate understanding of how to assemble teams that stayed together for their entire careers. He could paint a vision and bring others into it by the force of his confidence. But he wasn't just talk, although he did that with eloquence that won my admiration. Where did this man who grew up in poverty, the child of immigrants, learn how to weave words together, bringing people together to create something lasting? He created educational programs, buildings and a public TV station, shaping both ideas and people's lives.

I didn't see that growing up. I was a child in my own world. I remember a child's memories; spinning around in a chair at his office, stomping on the metal flooring down the middle of the old engineering lab as I listened for the echoing sound in response. I remember the smell of his pipe tobacco back when professors smoked pipes. The smell of pipe tobacco still sends me hurtling back through time. 

He was impatient and driven. I imagine those qualities were somewhat tempered in a work world where he was forced to bring others along to accomplish his goals. In the world of family where he was king, we saw those qualities in their more unadulterated form, not always his finest moments. In hindsight I often recognize myself in him. I can imagine those recalcitrant children could be annoying. 

Just as I ask if we ever know a parent fully, I could as easily ask if we ever know a child fully. Did he know me or just the outward manifestations? Was he locked inside a parent's eyes just as I was in a child's? My father was a problem solver and sometimes brought that perspective to his children. That was actually when he was at his best. We taught each other. He once told me that he learned he had to deal with me differently. He couldn't spank me for misbehavior and assume that would resolve it. In fact, I would turn around and do exactly the same thing again to assert that he could not control me. We had warring temperaments, perhaps too much alike. I knew how to fight back, he created me after all. He told me that he had learned he had to reason with me. I silently chuckled. I remember my thought process as a child. "Don't let him think he can control you" I had told myself.

When I went off to college in the 1970s he took me aside and tried his reasoning techniques. He began,"I know you're going to experiment with things in college", his tone calm and rational. "But I would appreciate if you didn't try acid," he continued. "Did my father just say that?" I thought. I was a "good girl" in those days, but a cautious experimenter. He understood my curiosity about the world because he shared it. I was so taken with the respectful tone of his request that I agreed to it and later when the opportunity arose, I thought back to our conversation and took a pass. I must confess to being somewhat relieved that I had promised my father.

So now I go through his career papers to sort out what I will send to the library of the university where he spent his career. I consider what aspects of this man they will be interested in even as I reflect on our college send off conversation recorded only in memory. We are complicated creatures and my father more than most. At best we only get glimpses of each other filtered through one perspective. I am grateful for this chance to see him through other perspectives as well and to acknowledge the sheer complexity of our imperfect selves.

Happy Father's Day: His Spirit Lives On

Last year was the first Father’s Day without my dad who passed away early in 2012.  I thought about him frequently that Father’s Day, conscious of his absence.  All the Father’s Day marketing felt like a disturbance in my universe.

This year I find myself reflecting on memories of my dad.  I can still picture my dad pretty clearly.  I can hear his voice with a bit of gravel in it. “Don’t let the bastards get you down,” he says.  I think about his drive even long after his body had ceased to support it.  My mother and I have chuckled over the idea that perhaps he inhabits the spirit of her cat, her new and beloved companion.  Her cat sleeps on Dad’s side of the bed, uses his bathroom, greets my mother each morning and brings her the comfort of a companion far less demanding than my dad ever was.

I have come to appreciate over this past year how much of my father’s spirit inhabits me.  To my mother’s frequent refrain of “You’re your father’s daughter” I reply, “I hope I just got the good stuff”.  We are all a mixed bag and the qualities that help us achieve in the world are often the very qualities that can make us difficult to live with.   No doubt I got both sides of the coin with a bit of my mother hopefully to soften the edges just as she did in our family life.

I think of my father when I write and words flow, a gift he possessed.  And I especially think of him when I write a letter to a company to protest their handling of a matter.  My father was not one to suffer in silence and with a gift for words, he could voice his displeasure with some eloquence and often humor.  I chuckled at letters I discovered on his old computer after his death, again recognizing much of myself within them.  

I think of my father when I perform an exacting task.  He kept meticulous inventories of stamps in his tiny script.  As a child I watched him pour over his stamp collection with a focus that I now recognize in myself when I research family history.  With his inventories of books, videos and stamps filling his computers I conclude that number counting too is genetic.  Perhaps it is a way to exert some measure of control over the world.  If so, I possess that trait in common with my father.

And I think of my father when I look around my office, with its layer of clutter (this is the not so good stuff).  It is the clinging to information, inquiring minds want to know, I might need it someday gene.  The New York Times articles that he had torn out because the subject interested him, also interested me as I waded through his office after his death.  We shared an interest and curiosity in many things.

So on this second Father’s Day without my Dad, I realize that his spirit does indeed live on.  Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

A Personal Legacy

This blog was begun around the theme of family history.  This week I have been living a bit of my own family history as we laid my father to rest.  I delivered a eulogy at the service hoping I would get through it without triggering tears.   It felt important to me that I speak publicly about a man who was very much a public figure, but whom I knew through the lens of family.

I last visited my father shortly before he died.  As I walked into the room I was heartened when he exclaimed "Susela", to which I replied "Dadela", and he smiled.  That was our well worn path.  I sat with him and told him a little about what I was working on which ironically was a series of cross generational interviews in the Jewish Identity and Legacy project.  As I've written in these pages, I am interviewing elders and their children about the elder's legacy and its influence on their adult child. As I told him about it, it dawned on me that perhaps I should answer the same questions I was asking of others.

Sitting there with both my mother and father I began to tell my dad what I thought my legacy was from him.  I later wove much of what I told him into a eulogy.   What a wonderful gift to be able to share it with him directly.   A gift for him and a gift for me, nothing unfinished.

Among his many accomplishments, my father, Philip Weinberg, created the public television station that serves central Illinois.  He was a rather eclectic man with the ability to leverage technology to serve his love of culture and the arts.   He was a university professor, trained as an electrical engineer, but very much a visionary.  If something didn't exist that he felt was important, he didn't hesitate to start it.  He started the Electrical Engineering department at Bradley University and was its dean for twenty years.  Later in his career he founded and led the College of Communications and Fine Arts.  In between he built public radio, public television and numerous buildings and performance spaces. 

After his funeral the TV station interviewed me.  "Did you think it unusual that he went from being an engineer to communications and fine arts?" they asked.  "No", I replied as I thought of my own rather eclectic career spanning nonprofits, finance and the arts, a combination that never seemed unusual to me because of my father who encouraged me in all of my pursuits.   I grew up thinking you started things if they didn't exist, you loved your work and of course you would have diverse interests and explore them with passion.  Doesn't everybody? I took that for granted because that's what I witnessed every day.  Unlike the external world that saw what he did as extraordinary, I knew him in his everyday life as my Dad.  From the vantage point of that front row seat, I learned to view his perspective as the norm.  And that is quite a legacy.