Harry died on Monday, August 6.He was ninety-nine years old.
He had a good, long run.
We celebrated his life at a mass on Thursday.
This is an adaptation of the eulogy I prepared in his honor.
Of the many remarkable attributes about our father, one sticks out in my mind: for over eight decades, he sported the same haircut. Everyone who knew Harry will always remember the sharp jib of his hairline. That, and his disdain for the French. He hated the French. He had a term for the French that I’m not sure I can repeat in church without the rafters collapsing. Suffice to say, it was foul.
Our father. To understand Harry, one needs to understand the somewhat complicated relationship he had with his father, our grandfather, Opa.
Opa was a wanderer.
We know this both from first hand experience, as well as stories that Harry used to tell us about him.
Opa lived in Florida. He would visit us in the summer. One morning, he went for a walk. He didn’t come back for lunch. He didn’t come back for dinner. The children were, of course, upset and worried by his absence. My father, however, was not alarmed.
“I’ve seen it before,” is what Harry said.
Here is what happened: Opa walked to the town dock, boarded a boat, and came back the next day. The police were never called.
When my father was a boy, Opa did the same thing. He went for a walk. He boarded a boat in Miami, landed a job as a cook, and didn’t come back for three months. For much of his life, my father lived alone with his mother while Opa traveled the world.
Opa was a wanderer.
He was not a provider.
Oma was left to fend for herself and her son.
It was from this die that Harry was cast.
Harry hardened early by necessity.
He worked odd jobs as a boy and teen.
He suffered, as many did, through the Great Depression.
He understood that distance from poverty was gained by dint of hard work.
He recognized that to be leaned on, one had to be present.
He gained strength.
He learned to survive on his own.
Harry would harbor a lingering resentment of his father for as long as he lived.
It colored his world.
Made him angry.
Opa’s presence in our lives was surprising on some level, given the animosity my father felt for him.
When Opa died, and he died old (he was ninety-six), Harry made all the arrangements from afar. He paid for everything. But he did not attend Opa’s funeral.
Harry enlisted in the Army when he was thirty years old – one of the oldest men to do so. He waited that long because he wanted to make sure his mother would be provided for in his absence. He waited until Opa came home and was able to secure steady work (which he did, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, working as a sous chef under the legendary Oscar). Leaving Oma in the company of Opa was one of the hardest decisions he ever made.
Harry served in the Army for three years, five months, and eleven days before being honorably discharged.
He was involved in battles in the major European theatres.
I will never be able to comprehend what that experience was like for him.
I know that he grew to love the soldiers and combat nurses he served with.
They were proud Americans fighting a just war – their lives dependent on each other.
Still, combat was ugly.
He lost friends.
He killed enemies.
And, like many of his era, he refused to talk about it.
With one exception: whenever he swore, and he swore all the time, he would blame it on his experience overseas.
“If you saw what I saw,” he said, “you would understand.”
He did capture some of his experience on paper. This, from his journal:
“The party was getting rough on the beach. A low flying Messerschmitt gave us fire. A burst from the guns caught a couple of LST’s carrying gasoline supplies, and then a blast lifted me in the air and slammed me inland. I was stunned. I gingerly tested various bones. It seemed I was still in one piece. Smoke and flames enveloped the shoreline. I could see figures moving back and forth. Men were burning. GI’s. I sprinted forward and tripped over a body. I looked down. His jaw was blasted away. I felt his pulse, a flicker of a beat, then heard a horrible rattle in his throat. He was gone. We worked feverishly to save the injured. The dead we left where they had fallen.”
The war ended.
Harry came home.
He found it difficult to work.
Being confined in an office made him edgy.
He could not live with his parents for the same reason.
He left New York for Florida, where he spent eight months working on a boat by day and sleeping on a porch by night.
He was, by the measure of men, adrift.
These were the days, not the war years, that most frightened my father. They frightened him because he could not find joy in anything. But then something magical happened: he met Rose.
This eulogy is not a love story.
But it is a story about love.
My father loved my mother.
His love was unequivocal.
But it was not always reciprocal.
Indeed, there were moments when my mother hated my father.
And she had good reasons.
Reasons that were not apparent to me then, but are now.
First of all, he was older.
A lot older.
The exact distance: two decades.
When I was in college, I used to tell friends that if I were to follow in my father’s footsteps, I would be dating an infant.
Also, his sense of adventure had been tapped out by the war.
Domestic travel suited him fine.
And he was not social.
He was content at home.
If I were to generalize, I would say Harry never came to understand her needs.
“What the fuck does your mother want from me?” was a question he was always asking himself.
Finally, there was her cancer.
It would come later, but when it came (and it came early) it was ruthless.
Our father was old to be starting a family. He was having kids when others his age were having grandchildren (he was fifty when he had me). People, in fact, often mistook him for our grandfather. But unlike many other fathers, at least Harry was there. He was present.
My father was blessed with an innate athletic ability. This was evident when he was growing up, and during his time overseas. The Brooklyn Dodgers gave him a look for the shortstop position before he enlisted. And after he enlisted, all the GI’s wanted Harry on their team.
Athleticism, however, was not an attribute he passed on to his son. A swing of the bat during my first little league baseball game resulted in a hernia. I broke my nose playing running bases. I broke my leg sitting on the bench during football game (Todd Merriweather, on his run out of bounds, literally ran over me). Whereas other fathers might distance themselves from a son who was so divorced from sport – my father dedicated even more time to me. He would shag baseballs with me. We would toss the football together. He taught me how to play golf (“Son, this is a relatively safe sport. I think this could work out well for you.”) He put the time in because he knew how tough others could be on a kid like me.
He also took my sister Michelle to baton twirling tournaments. Trust me: you didn’t see a lot of fathers sitting in the bleachers during those events. But even with all of his proximity to family, some of the comments about my father made my mother uncomfortable. She was an attractive woman. And men would approach her, even when my father was around, uncertain of his relationship to her.
I suppose the last straw in the marriage cocktail was a boss that my father hated. He carried that weight around with him everywhere. It often made him grumpy and miserable at home. But with three kids and no college degree, his options were limited.
All of these tensile elements created friction in their marriage. Occasionally, they fought. But even when my mother was throwing salad bowls at Harry, calling him a cradle-robbing piece of shit, he never stopped loving her.
As families go, we were a solid unit.
Two daughters and a son.
My father, unlike his father, understood his role.
My father was a provider.
He felt the weight of responsibility was his alone.
He took great pride in his work as production manager for an educational film distribution company. He cared deeply about his employees, even as his company took his own contributions for granted. When colleagues got into trouble, it was Harry’s counsel they sought. Of all the things that have been said about my father, this statement rings truest: he was a good man to have in your corner.
He took in stray cats at his company warehouse. He gave juvenile offenders a second chance, putting them to work under his supervision. One of them, Georgie DeCaro, came to view Harry as his father.
I stand before you as another juvenile offender. Candidly, I am not sure how my father put up with my transgressions, especially as there were so many of them. I was a teenage thief, dope dealer, and embezzler. When my parents found a cache of stolen watches in the basement, my mother said to my father, “He’s your son. I can’t deal with him anymore.” My father sat me down. He said to me, “I have no doubt you could be a very successful criminal. You already are a very successful criminal. But that would be a great disappointment to your mother and I.”
We had longer subsequent conversations. Whenever I made a mistake, Harry was there to pick me up. He was a great listener. He always offered good advice.
When I was struggling in college, I called him, told him I was going to join the army.
“You would make a terrible soldier,” he said to me.
Then there was the time I called my boss one of the very worst names you can call a woman (and did so in front of the entire company). People were shocked. Speechless. There were whispers about the police. The next morning, the President of the company called me into his office.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked.
“Well,” I said, “I was actually thinking about my father and one of his greatest regrets.”
“And what is that?” he asked.
“The fact that he never called his boss a fucking dickhead.”
I was fired immediately. When I told my father what happened, he was, I seem to remember, fairly beaming.
“Never let anyone push you around, son,” he said to me.
Then there was the dinner where I introduced him to Laura.
“She’s the one,” he said, “marry her.”
And, of course, the days when we were having meetings with President Clinton.
“If you publish that two-timing piece of shit,” he said, “I will disown you.”
My father did not speak to me for several months after learning we had acquired his memoirs. The fact that he learned about it on page one of that “commie fucking rag” (that’s how he referenced The New York Times) made it even worse. Harry was a Newsday man through and through.
Eventually, Harry and Rose separated.
To be clear, she left him.
It happened when we were teens.
For as long as they were apart, Harry was convinced a reconciliation was on the near horizon.
“She’ll come back,” he would say.
“Pop,” I would respond, “She’s not coming back.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she hates you.”
“Why does she hate me?”
“Because you never want to do anything.”
My father never quit on Rose. And he never quit on me, or on any of his children. He believed in me when I had no belief in myself. He taught me the most valuable lesson of all as a parent: never give up on your children. Because once you give up on your children, they give up on themselves.
There is no question about the debt I owe my father. And I think that goes for my sisters as well. He instilled in us a sense of accountability and responsibility. He demonstrated the value of a work ethic. He showed us true north on a compass: always be there for your family and friends. Provide them with a post to lean on.
Our father worked hard so that we could have a better life. All of his planning was built on the supposition that Rose and he would spend the rest of their lives together. Cancer, of course, robbed his intentions. It came hard on all of us. But it came hardest on Harry.
As our mother lay dying, Harry gave Rose his word: “I will take care of the children.” He made good on that promise. He gave us what little money he had to pay for college. When the question of medical school came up, he spoke to Rose. He was always talking to mom after she died. “Find a way,” she told him. I saw my father cry twice in his lifetime: once when my mother died, and a second time when my sister Michele graduated from medical school.
Rose saw Harry cry once: when his mother died.
Harry never remarried.
And he had ample opportunity to do so.
He was a good looking elder man.
“What about Ruth Firkser?” I would say to him.
“Not going to happen.”
“Why?”
“George was my best friend.”
“George has been dead for ten years, Pop. Ruth is rich. Ruth owns beachfront property.”
“I hate Florida.”
Harry did look around.
He had an appreciation for attractive women.
But for some reason, it never clicked for him.
He chose to spend the rest of his life as a widower.
Harry had time.
He retired early.
“To do what?” my mother would say.
Well, he did read.
In fact, he read all the time.
As such, he was proud of my chosen profession.
He used to visit me in the office.
“Why are there so many good looking broads in publishing?” he would ask.
When he got older, he moved into an apartment across the street from the Port Washington Public Library.
He would spend hours in the great room overlooking Manhasset Bay.
“Don’t become a fucking librarian,” he would say, “The broads are not nearly as good looking.”
Harry would have been one hundred-years old next month. As much as I love my father, and as much as I hate to see him gone, it was time. He lived a long life. He was tired. And he was ready. I heard him say to Terri earlier this year, and then to Michele: “I love you.” He was proud of his children. And that pride provided him with a measure of peace.
Of course, even as his time drew near, flames of his former self would surface. That was the thing about my father: you were never quite sure what he was going to say. And in my view, that was perhaps his best attribute: his ability to express himself with candor.
Just last month, an aide at Brighton Gardens was examining a fluid secretion from Harry’s eye. As she leaned over to look at him, I caught Harry staring at her chest, smiling. He told her she had “lovely breasts.” Then he called her “cupcake.” That was his signature these past few years. He called all the pretty gals “cupcake.” His spirit, even in decline, was oddly gratifying.
Harry was Harry until the very end. A one-hundred year old man still thinking about sex. If you are looking for evidence of God in this world, that would seem to be it.
We will all miss you Harry.
Rest in peace.
