These are the notes I made for when I spoke at Dad’s “Celebration of Life” service earlier today.
- One of my father’s favorite activities was walking. He would go out for hours at a time, and on any given day, if you were to visit Linthicum, there’s a good chance you’d see him. He kept walking for his entire life, as long as he was able. It’s not too surprising, then, that some of my earliest memories of him were of taking walks around the neighborhood, hand in hand. I don’t remember much of what we talked about, but I suspect that, like most 5- or 6-year olds, I asked a lot of questions, and he did his best to answer.
- Another of Dad’s loves was mathematics, and he was eager to impart his enthusiasm for math on his children. On many evenings, instead of reading us books, he would give us arithmetic, algebra and geometry lessons. This would have been the late 1970s in my case, about the same time the Atari 2600 video game system was becoming all the rage. Like every kid my age, I wanted one, and I let my parents know this in no uncertain terms. My dad’s response to this was “if you get a computer instead, you can program your own video games”. A few years later, in 1981, our parents bought us a home computer for Christmas, thus setting both my brother and me on our eventual career paths.
- I think it’s fair to say that my father was a private person. But even though he might not have said it in as many words, there was a way you could tell if you were in his “inner circle”, and that was if he had a nickname for you. Dad rarely called anyone in the family by their [given/real] names. When we were kids, his name for me was “Kiddo”, my brother was “Ditto”, and my mother was affectionately known as “Cheed”, although more recently, she became simply “The Boss”. Dad also had a strange affinity for spelling words backwards. Among others, birds were “dribs”, raisins were “snisiar”, and milk was “klim”.
- Then there were the rides. When I was very little, Dad would entertain me (and, later, my brother) by holding me upside down by the ankles and swinging me back and forth like a pendulum. He called this a “pickle ride” (as an aside, I’ve often wondered if this was one of the reasons I got carsick so often as a kid). Another one was the “stupid ride”, where I would stand on Dad’s feet and he would take my hands and walk me around the room while chanting “stupid ride” over and over in sync with his steps. That one definitely lived up to its name. Years later, when grandchildren appeared on the scene, Dad trotted the same rides out again, providing plenty of laughs and eyerolls, and no doubt enjoying reliving that part of his life.
- Although most thought of him as an academic, Dad was also a sports fan. He made a few futile attempts to teach me football, first sending me out to run passing routes. When he figured out that I wasn’t very good at catching the ball, he switched to the ground game, playing defensive lineman and challenging me to run past him. That was also a failure. A few years later, thoug, he was somewhat more successful at teaching my brother, John, how to play catch.
- When I was 13, Dad took me to Memorial Stadium for my first Orioles game. It was August 25, 1983, and the opponent was the Toronto Blue Jays. The only reason I remember the date is because the day before, August 24, was the game where Tippy Martinez famously picked off three baserunners in a single inning. We missed seeing that by one day, but our game was exciting in its own right. We had great seats along the third baseline, courtesy of Dad’s stockbroker, who gave him the tickets. The game was scoreless until the top of the 10th, when Toronto went ahead 1-0 on a solo home run by Barry Bonnell [rhymes with tunnel]. In the Orioles’ half of the inning, “Disco” Dan Ford came to the plate with 1 out and runners on first and second. Dan Ford was probably most remembered for being injured. He spent about half of his Orioles tenure on the disabled list. That night though, he hit a 2-run walk-off double to win the game. I still remember watching Al Bumbry’s helmet fly off as he rounded third at full speed to score the winning run, and then the deafening roar of the crowd. I think my ears are still ringing.
- During summer in the 1980s, we would often vacation in Ocean City, MD. I remember being super excited about going to the beach every summer, but I always had the sense that my father did not share my enthusiasm about these vacations. As a kid, I could never quite figure out why that was. After all, what’s not to love about being cooped up in a tiny, single-bedroom condo for a week with 2 teens during the peak of the summer beach season? To his credit, he was always a good sport about it, although I’m not sure he had much choice in the matter.
- Most people who knew my father would probably describe him as “practical” and “frugal”. Put another way, he was always looking for ways to save money. As kids, my brother and I knew that if we spent more than a few seconds rummaging around in the refrigerator, we would be swiftly admonished to “close the door”. In the 1980s, in an effort to save money heating the house, Dad had a wood-burning stove installed in the living room. Every morning, he would build a fire, and when he got home from work in the evening, he would check to make sure the radiators were cool, and then spend a couple of hours rolling old newspapers up into logs to feed the next day’s fire. I think he enjoyed it, but let’s just say my mother did not share his love of the wood-burning stove. After a year or two, Dad did a cost-benefit analysis and determined that his marriage was worth more than however much he was saving in energy costs, and the stove was history.
- In spite of his reputation for austerity, Dad did occasionally splurge. In his late 20s, he bought a 1965 Ford Mustang, which he kept long enough for it to be considered a classic. In the end, though, his sense of practicality won out, and he used the Mustang as partial payment for some work we had done on our roof. After that came a parade of questionable car purchases: a 1974 Pinto, a 1978 Fiesta, and later a 1987 Escort. I still remember burning myself on the Pinto’s black vinyl seats on hot summer days, and getting stranded when the Escort’s timing belt broke. It kind of made me wish he had kept the Mustang. It would have been a lot cooler standing on the side of the road with a broken-down Mustang than a broken-down Escort.
- My father had a life-long love for classical music, as well as opera. In the years leading up to his Parkinson’s diagnosis, we had season tickets for the Baltimore Symphony, and he and I would attend 3 or 4 concerts a year. Although we didn’t talk too much during those outings (like father, like son), they were a great way to share our common interest, and I did eventually learn that his favorite symphony was Beethoven’s 7th. Later, as his disease progressed and his mobility began to decline, he still was able to attend several son Michael’s concerts with the UMBC Wind Ensemble. I suspect he enjoyed any opportunity to get out of the house for something other than a doctor’s appointment.
- Last few conversations were about taxes
- When Cathy and I moved into our current house in 2001, my father bought us a pool table. It was his idea, and I have always wondered about his motivation for buying us one, but I never got around to asking him. My working theory is that he always wanted to own a pool table himself, but never had a good space for one. Then, when one of his kids bought a house with a finished basement, the rest was history. For many years, though, the pool table didn’t get much use, other than to sort and fold laundry (which I’ll admit it worked pretty well for). Curiously, Dad didn’t use it much when he was visiting us, either. Not too long ago, though, something prompted me to uncover the table, brush it off, and shoot a few rounds. Ever since then, I’ve been using it regularly, taking a shot or two each time I walk by. I’m not exactly what you would call a pool shark, but every now and then, I’ll surprise myself by sinking a rather difficult shot. Whenever that happens, I always joke to myself that Dad helped that shot go in. I think he’d be happy to see us using the pool table, and I’m happy to have it as a way to remember him.
1/23/2026: I’m going to add more random things here as I think of them.
- I remember walking with Dad to the local high school and jogging on the ¼-mile track that circled the football field. There were bleachers and a grandstand on the north side of the field, and a hand-operated scoreboard at the west end. Being a football scoreboard, it had a spot that showed the line of scrimmage, aptly labeled “ball on”, which I always read as “balloon”. The track was my first introduction to running, which later became a large part of my life. Dad explained the basics of running a footrace, keeping a sustainable pace for most of the race and then going all-out at the end. I don’t quite recall when this was, but I suspect I would have been somewhere between 9 and 11. I later attended the high school, and the building is now used as a middle school.
- (TBD) learning how to ride a bike on the path near the elementary school
- (TBD) walking through the undeveloped park/woods at the end of Sycamore out to the woods near the Ferndale water tower
