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On Father’s Day, CJN readers share stories about their dads
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From bike to chopper ... with dad
I will never forget the first bike my father, Harlan Felder, bought for me.
It was a thing of strange design from some exotic foreign country, and while it appeared to be no more than a bicycle with rear shocks and a tiny motor, to me it was a chrome-plated, horizon-expanding beauty. Its top speed of 18 mph was quite enough for a 12-year-old.
Things changed as soon as I got that bike. My comic books gave way to motorcycle magazines. I would point out to Dad every Harley Sporster and “King of the Highway” model I saw. A year later, he bought me the Green Monster, a larger, shinier and fancier bike. Its two-speed gearbox granted me top speeds of 40 mph and opened the possibilities of further adventures.
Then, as if to say, “I’ll join you,” Dad bought himself the Blue Beauty, a sleek, four-speed, electric-start model that could actually carry a passenger. Many times that passenger would be me. Riding behind him was wonderful. I would climb onto the passenger seat, position my feet on the buddy pegs, and put my arms around his waist. Partially, they were there to let him know I was in position, ready to go. But mostly, they were there to let him know I loved him.
As fate would have it, we had a slight mishap one day. Blue Beauty went down. It was nothing serious, but Dad hit his elbow on the curb. He retired the machine and never rode again. I, on the other hand, was hooked. For the next 28 years, I would go to his house and show him my newest motorcycle and ask if he wanted a ride. He always declined.
Years later, after I had moved away, I was talking with Dad about coming out to visit his grandkids. I’m not sure what prompted me to do it, but I suggested he arrange the date so he could ride with me during a charity event. To my surprise, he said, “I’ll join you.”
That Saturday morning ride took me back nearly three decades. After all that time, we were in the garage getting the bike ready, just as we did so many times and so many years before. As my cycle approached the freeway, I could feel his hands around me. I knew why they were there, and I suddenly knew how he must have felt all those years earlier.
That was to be my last ride with him. He died shortly afterward.
Mike Felder, Concord, Calif.
(formerly of Shaker Heights)
Following in his footsteps
My dad, Dr. Barry Friedman, is the former chief of orthopedic surgery at Mt. Sinai Hospital. He obviously had a fantastic influence on me, as I followed his lead into the field of medicine. (I am a podiatrist.) However, he also influenced me with his love of music.
In the late ’50s, my dad would sit at the Hammond chord organ after dinner and play popular show tunes. I now perform locally and sometimes nationally as a jazz pianist.
At almost 91 years young, my dad is still going strong, and he still beats me at golf!
Roger Friedman, Westlake
Advice from a dad ahead of his time
My father, Max Jacobs, was a man who was well ahead of his time. He believed in opportunity for women long before “Women’s Lib” or “Shattering the glass ceiling” became part of the American vocabulary. In the early 1950s, he gave me advice that directed the course of my future: To handle any situation in life, a woman needs a good education, and she should train for a profession.
I followed his advice and enrolled in Smith College in 1952. I also took education courses at Flora Stone Mather College and became a teacher, before realizing the dream of every 1950s girl and marrying in 1959.
Once my two daughters were in school, I remembered my father’s words and decided to become a student again. I obtained a master’s and a Ph.D. and became an English professor at John Carroll University. I later taught at Ursuline College and now Cuyahoga Community College, Eastern Branch. My students are of diverse backgrounds, and most of them are the first in their families to go to college.
My last conversation with my father was two days before he died at age 88, more than 10 years ago. His last words to me were, “How are your classes? Do you have some good students?”
As a result of my father’s guidance 60 years ago, I have had a rich, fulfilling life, combining marriage, motherhood and a 35-year career as a college professor. And hopefully, I have been able to make a difference in some people’s lives.
Carole J. Lipton, Beachwood
Standing up for his little girl
My father, Paul Siegel, always felt that I was capable enough to do anything. In 1960, before the “feminist movement,” he fought for my right to help my brother Lloyd.
Lloyd was to begin bar mitzvah lessons and had to find someone to substitute for his Cleveland Press paper route. My father thought I should take over the route, since I knew it from following Lloyd many times. The route manager came to our home, and my father made the proposal. The manager said no.
Dad asked why.
“Because she is a girl,” the manager replied. Plain and simple.
Dad argued this issue on my behalf for at least half an hour without a positive result. Although I didn’t get to help my brother, I have always known my dad had confidence in me, no matter what it was that I wanted to do, even if it was out of the ordinary. He always believed that girls and women have a right and power to accomplish anything they set their minds to do. I will always love him for that.
Helene Siegel, Lyndhurst
Dad’s famous jump
My father, Joe Selzman, was not a large man, nor was he an athlete. But, as he grew up in Montreal, he learned to ice skate, often using his skates as a means of transportation.
When I was in elementary school in the ’40s, most every winter Sunday afternoon, my older sister and I skated with Dad on the pond at Forest Hills Park. The teenage skaters liked to line up large logs they collected in the park and jump over them n first two logs, then three, gradually increasing to as many as seven or more. Each week we watched our dad, a good 30 years older than these skaters, line up on the ice with the young boys, ready to “take them on.”
The kids eventually recognized Joe as a regular and would invite him to share in the contest. Dad rarely fell and often won their challenge. My sister and I gawked in wonder at this short but sturdy man, crouching fearlessly in his racer skates, in readiness to jump the hurdles. We were so proud of his prowess, and of course, we always were rewarded after his win with a cup of hot cocoa topped with whipped cream, served at the fireplace shelter near the pond.
Marcia Selzman Rosenbaum, Cleveland
Daddy’s little lovely lady
I was about 4 or 5 years old when I was given the most beautiful hat I’d ever seen. It was a red felt, heart-shaped hat, and I felt very grown up and glamorous wearing it.
On the following Sunday morning, I wore the hat as I walked with my father to the nearby bakery to pick up bagels and crullers. On the way back, I asked my father, “Do you think someone would tell Mommy that they saw you with another woman?”
Without missing a beat, he told me, “I’ll tell her that the lady who was with me was wearing a beautiful heart-shaped red hat and that she was our daughter, all dressed up.”
Tybee Zuckerman, Beachwood
On the road with dad
Summer 1941, when a short trip meant Geauga Lake and a long one, Cedar Point, my father and I embarked beyond the borders of Ohio! The Pennsylvania Turnpike was only one year old, and I was 14.
First, we went to New York City, which I gamely described as “a bunch of Euclid Avenues.” From visiting relatives in New York, we went on to Philadelphia and Atlantic City, and then to Washington, D.C. Visiting the Senate, we ran into Sen. Harold Burton, former mayor of Cleveland, who would ultimately become a Supreme Court associate justice. My father introduced me to this luminary, and I was dazzled that my father knew a U.S. senator. I was wrong n he didn’t know Burton at all!
Harold Ticktin, Shaker Heights
Messages I want my son to remember
My Beloved Caleb,
You’re 10! I can’t believe a decade has elapsed since I wrote the first of these annual letters to you.
“You are only 16 days old,” my first letter began, “and virtually everything about you is still a mystery.” I marveled at the emotion I felt for an infant I barely knew and prayed that life would bring you many blessings. But the real point of that letter was that I was already thinking about your character and how much I wanted you to grow up to be decent, kind and honest. “Like every parent, I want you to do well,” I wrote. “But more than anything else, I want you to do good.”
Ten years later, I know so much more about you than I did then. I know that you have a good mind and are an avid reader. I know that you love vanilla ice cream but recoil from grilled-cheese sandwiches. I know that you will try to brazen your way through even the most obvious lie. I know that you’re an uncomplaining patient when you’re sick and a champion sulker when you’re angry. I know that you dote on your little brother.
I also know that your formative years are speeding by. Before long, you’ll be an adolescent, then a young adult, then off on your own. For better or for worse, your upbringing is half over. But the message of that first letter n character matters, and I want yours to be good n is one that I still try to communicate to you. You’ve certainly heard me say it often enough. When I asked you a few weeks ago to tell Micah what I want both of you to be when you grow up, you knew the answer: “A good person,” you replied with a here-we-go-again roll of your eyes.
About a year before you were born, I reviewed a book by Calvin Trillin called Messages from My Father. It was a heartwarming memoir of Trillin’s immigrant father Abe and the assorted lessons n some wise, some quite mad n he had conveyed over the years to his son. When I read the book, I wasn’t yet a father, but as I think about it now, I can’t help wondering which messages from your father will stay with you through the years.
Some messages I try to convey through behavior more than words.
I want you and Micah to become loving fathers and husbands, so I make sure that open affection is something you see and get a lot of. Some men are inhibited about kissing or hugging their wives or addressing them with terms of endearment; you’re growing up in an environment where your father makes no secret of his love for your mother.
I hope your children will grow up in a similar environment.
Speaking of your children, I have been shamelessly propagandizing you for years on the advantages of marrying early and having lots of kids n two things I didn’t do but wish I had. “When you’re 22 years old and you get married and have five children,” I remember asking you when you were about 4, “what will their names be?” (As I recall, you said they would all be named Caleb.)
Another message I hope is getting through via example is the importance of apologizing when you’ve wronged another person. When Mama or I think we’ve treated you unjustly n perhaps by blaming you for something that wasn’t your fault or overreacting to something that was n we make a point of sincerely saying, “I’m sorry.” Some people would rather chew glass than say those two words n but learning to do so is part of being a mature and decent person.
Of course I try to teach you to be nice to your family and friends, but I also want you to learn to empathize even with strangers. Some years ago I adopted a practice that I first encountered in an essay by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin: Whenever we are startled or inconvenienced by the siren of an ambulance or fire truck, I offer a prayer that the EMTs or firefighters arrive in time to help whoever is in danger.
“By accustoming ourselves to uttering a prayer at the very moment we feel unjustly annoyed,” Telushkin wrote, “we become better and more loving people.”
In some ways you are well on your way to becoming a “better and more loving” person. In others, you n like I n still have some distance to go. But at the 10-year mark, Caleb, I’ve got to say: You’re a pretty terrific kid.
All my love,
Papa
(Jeff Jacoby)
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby grew up in Cleveland. Each year he dedicates one column to his son Caleb.
I will never forget the first bike my father, Harlan Felder, bought for me.
It was a thing of strange design from some exotic foreign country, and while it appeared to be no more than a bicycle with rear shocks and a tiny motor, to me it was a chrome-plated, horizon-expanding beauty. Its top speed of 18 mph was quite enough for a 12-year-old.
Things changed as soon as I got that bike. My comic books gave way to motorcycle magazines. I would point out to Dad every Harley Sporster and “King of the Highway” model I saw. A year later, he bought me the Green Monster, a larger, shinier and fancier bike. Its two-speed gearbox granted me top speeds of 40 mph and opened the possibilities of further adventures.
Then, as if to say, “I’ll join you,” Dad bought himself the Blue Beauty, a sleek, four-speed, electric-start model that could actually carry a passenger. Many times that passenger would be me. Riding behind him was wonderful. I would climb onto the passenger seat, position my feet on the buddy pegs, and put my arms around his waist. Partially, they were there to let him know I was in position, ready to go. But mostly, they were there to let him know I loved him.
As fate would have it, we had a slight mishap one day. Blue Beauty went down. It was nothing serious, but Dad hit his elbow on the curb. He retired the machine and never rode again. I, on the other hand, was hooked. For the next 28 years, I would go to his house and show him my newest motorcycle and ask if he wanted a ride. He always declined.
Years later, after I had moved away, I was talking with Dad about coming out to visit his grandkids. I’m not sure what prompted me to do it, but I suggested he arrange the date so he could ride with me during a charity event. To my surprise, he said, “I’ll join you.”
That Saturday morning ride took me back nearly three decades. After all that time, we were in the garage getting the bike ready, just as we did so many times and so many years before. As my cycle approached the freeway, I could feel his hands around me. I knew why they were there, and I suddenly knew how he must have felt all those years earlier.
That was to be my last ride with him. He died shortly afterward.
Mike Felder, Concord, Calif.
(formerly of Shaker Heights)
Following in his footsteps
My dad, Dr. Barry Friedman, is the former chief of orthopedic surgery at Mt. Sinai Hospital. He obviously had a fantastic influence on me, as I followed his lead into the field of medicine. (I am a podiatrist.) However, he also influenced me with his love of music.
In the late ’50s, my dad would sit at the Hammond chord organ after dinner and play popular show tunes. I now perform locally and sometimes nationally as a jazz pianist.
At almost 91 years young, my dad is still going strong, and he still beats me at golf!
Roger Friedman, Westlake
Advice from a dad ahead of his time
My father, Max Jacobs, was a man who was well ahead of his time. He believed in opportunity for women long before “Women’s Lib” or “Shattering the glass ceiling” became part of the American vocabulary. In the early 1950s, he gave me advice that directed the course of my future: To handle any situation in life, a woman needs a good education, and she should train for a profession.
I followed his advice and enrolled in Smith College in 1952. I also took education courses at Flora Stone Mather College and became a teacher, before realizing the dream of every 1950s girl and marrying in 1959.
Once my two daughters were in school, I remembered my father’s words and decided to become a student again. I obtained a master’s and a Ph.D. and became an English professor at John Carroll University. I later taught at Ursuline College and now Cuyahoga Community College, Eastern Branch. My students are of diverse backgrounds, and most of them are the first in their families to go to college.
My last conversation with my father was two days before he died at age 88, more than 10 years ago. His last words to me were, “How are your classes? Do you have some good students?”
As a result of my father’s guidance 60 years ago, I have had a rich, fulfilling life, combining marriage, motherhood and a 35-year career as a college professor. And hopefully, I have been able to make a difference in some people’s lives.
Carole J. Lipton, Beachwood
Standing up for his little girl
My father, Paul Siegel, always felt that I was capable enough to do anything. In 1960, before the “feminist movement,” he fought for my right to help my brother Lloyd.
Lloyd was to begin bar mitzvah lessons and had to find someone to substitute for his Cleveland Press paper route. My father thought I should take over the route, since I knew it from following Lloyd many times. The route manager came to our home, and my father made the proposal. The manager said no.
Dad asked why.
“Because she is a girl,” the manager replied. Plain and simple.
Dad argued this issue on my behalf for at least half an hour without a positive result. Although I didn’t get to help my brother, I have always known my dad had confidence in me, no matter what it was that I wanted to do, even if it was out of the ordinary. He always believed that girls and women have a right and power to accomplish anything they set their minds to do. I will always love him for that.
Helene Siegel, Lyndhurst
Dad’s famous jump
My father, Joe Selzman, was not a large man, nor was he an athlete. But, as he grew up in Montreal, he learned to ice skate, often using his skates as a means of transportation.
When I was in elementary school in the ’40s, most every winter Sunday afternoon, my older sister and I skated with Dad on the pond at Forest Hills Park. The teenage skaters liked to line up large logs they collected in the park and jump over them n first two logs, then three, gradually increasing to as many as seven or more. Each week we watched our dad, a good 30 years older than these skaters, line up on the ice with the young boys, ready to “take them on.”
The kids eventually recognized Joe as a regular and would invite him to share in the contest. Dad rarely fell and often won their challenge. My sister and I gawked in wonder at this short but sturdy man, crouching fearlessly in his racer skates, in readiness to jump the hurdles. We were so proud of his prowess, and of course, we always were rewarded after his win with a cup of hot cocoa topped with whipped cream, served at the fireplace shelter near the pond.
Marcia Selzman Rosenbaum, Cleveland
Daddy’s little lovely lady
I was about 4 or 5 years old when I was given the most beautiful hat I’d ever seen. It was a red felt, heart-shaped hat, and I felt very grown up and glamorous wearing it.
On the following Sunday morning, I wore the hat as I walked with my father to the nearby bakery to pick up bagels and crullers. On the way back, I asked my father, “Do you think someone would tell Mommy that they saw you with another woman?”
Without missing a beat, he told me, “I’ll tell her that the lady who was with me was wearing a beautiful heart-shaped red hat and that she was our daughter, all dressed up.”
Tybee Zuckerman, Beachwood
On the road with dad
Summer 1941, when a short trip meant Geauga Lake and a long one, Cedar Point, my father and I embarked beyond the borders of Ohio! The Pennsylvania Turnpike was only one year old, and I was 14.
First, we went to New York City, which I gamely described as “a bunch of Euclid Avenues.” From visiting relatives in New York, we went on to Philadelphia and Atlantic City, and then to Washington, D.C. Visiting the Senate, we ran into Sen. Harold Burton, former mayor of Cleveland, who would ultimately become a Supreme Court associate justice. My father introduced me to this luminary, and I was dazzled that my father knew a U.S. senator. I was wrong n he didn’t know Burton at all!
Harold Ticktin, Shaker Heights
Messages I want my son to remember
My Beloved Caleb,
You’re 10! I can’t believe a decade has elapsed since I wrote the first of these annual letters to you.
“You are only 16 days old,” my first letter began, “and virtually everything about you is still a mystery.” I marveled at the emotion I felt for an infant I barely knew and prayed that life would bring you many blessings. But the real point of that letter was that I was already thinking about your character and how much I wanted you to grow up to be decent, kind and honest. “Like every parent, I want you to do well,” I wrote. “But more than anything else, I want you to do good.”
Ten years later, I know so much more about you than I did then. I know that you have a good mind and are an avid reader. I know that you love vanilla ice cream but recoil from grilled-cheese sandwiches. I know that you will try to brazen your way through even the most obvious lie. I know that you’re an uncomplaining patient when you’re sick and a champion sulker when you’re angry. I know that you dote on your little brother.
I also know that your formative years are speeding by. Before long, you’ll be an adolescent, then a young adult, then off on your own. For better or for worse, your upbringing is half over. But the message of that first letter n character matters, and I want yours to be good n is one that I still try to communicate to you. You’ve certainly heard me say it often enough. When I asked you a few weeks ago to tell Micah what I want both of you to be when you grow up, you knew the answer: “A good person,” you replied with a here-we-go-again roll of your eyes.
About a year before you were born, I reviewed a book by Calvin Trillin called Messages from My Father. It was a heartwarming memoir of Trillin’s immigrant father Abe and the assorted lessons n some wise, some quite mad n he had conveyed over the years to his son. When I read the book, I wasn’t yet a father, but as I think about it now, I can’t help wondering which messages from your father will stay with you through the years.
Some messages I try to convey through behavior more than words.
I want you and Micah to become loving fathers and husbands, so I make sure that open affection is something you see and get a lot of. Some men are inhibited about kissing or hugging their wives or addressing them with terms of endearment; you’re growing up in an environment where your father makes no secret of his love for your mother.
I hope your children will grow up in a similar environment.
Speaking of your children, I have been shamelessly propagandizing you for years on the advantages of marrying early and having lots of kids n two things I didn’t do but wish I had. “When you’re 22 years old and you get married and have five children,” I remember asking you when you were about 4, “what will their names be?” (As I recall, you said they would all be named Caleb.)
Another message I hope is getting through via example is the importance of apologizing when you’ve wronged another person. When Mama or I think we’ve treated you unjustly n perhaps by blaming you for something that wasn’t your fault or overreacting to something that was n we make a point of sincerely saying, “I’m sorry.” Some people would rather chew glass than say those two words n but learning to do so is part of being a mature and decent person.
Of course I try to teach you to be nice to your family and friends, but I also want you to learn to empathize even with strangers. Some years ago I adopted a practice that I first encountered in an essay by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin: Whenever we are startled or inconvenienced by the siren of an ambulance or fire truck, I offer a prayer that the EMTs or firefighters arrive in time to help whoever is in danger.
“By accustoming ourselves to uttering a prayer at the very moment we feel unjustly annoyed,” Telushkin wrote, “we become better and more loving people.”
In some ways you are well on your way to becoming a “better and more loving” person. In others, you n like I n still have some distance to go. But at the 10-year mark, Caleb, I’ve got to say: You’re a pretty terrific kid.
All my love,
Papa
(Jeff Jacoby)
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby grew up in Cleveland. Each year he dedicates one column to his son Caleb.
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