My father grew up in Caguas, Puerto Rico, an American territory since 1898 when Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the U.S. after the Spanish-American War. As an American citizen, my father served honorably for this country in WWII. In post-war 1950s America, Latinos faced harsh discrimination from landlords and employers, were ostracized by society and often profiled by law enforcement based on their appearance or language (Hey, 2025…sound familiar?)
My father was a very quiet man, one of those people who only spoke when spoken to. I learned from my mother that he had a rough go of it early in their married life. He spoke mostly Spanish and had a broken English accent, which improved over the years. He was one of 14 children growing up in Puerto Rico and wasn’t a well-educated man, attaining only a middle-school-level education before having to quit to help on the family farm. I believe that quiet persona was the unfortunate result of the ostracism based on how he looked and spoke. For these reasons, I believe he preferred to keep his opinions and judgments to himself. We have all learned what the ravages of war can do to the human psyche. I’ve read many accounts of soldiers who don’t wish to speak of their experiences in battle. My father was one of those soldiers. In my teens, I finally got him to tell me; he was a field artillery infantryman, fighting in Germany firing cannons and killing human beings. It’s not easy to forget horrible events like those, especially for a man of quiet peace as my father was.
Growing up with my father, you wouldn’t know he had been through many trials and tribulations. He loved me and my sisters unconditionally, although admittedly, I was the “favorite” simply because I was:
a) a boy
b) I was the baby.
In European cultures like mine (Italian and Spanish) I’ve hit the familial lottery when it comes to favoritism:
My father LOVED baseball, as almost all Puerto Ricans do. Baseball was truly THE national pastime in Puerto Rico and naturally, my father was a New York Yankees fan growing up because the Yankees always won and their games were covered extensively in Puerto Rico. When he and my mom settled in Cleveland, Ohio, he was “sentenced” to listen only to Cleveland Indians (now Guardians) games, which at the time, was the sorriest team in baseball.
I remember him walking me down to the corner drugstore once a week—just he and I—to buy me some superman and Batman comic books, or, in his broken English-accented, “comedy books” (his accent always reminded me of “Ricky Ricardo” on I Love Lucy!) He taught me how to cut the grass (mow the lawn), how to tie a necktie, how to take care of our dog, how to fix things using only duct tape and string (he was NOT a handyman by any stretch of the imagination), and how to drive a car. And he passed on his love of baseball to me. One lasting image of my father is him sitting in our basement near the radio tuned to a Tribe game, lights dimmed and the burning ember of his cigar lighting the room like a beacon. My father occasionally suffered from migraine headaches, and I remember his self-treatment technique of sitting at the kitchen table with a towel draped over his head, breathing the steam from a hot bowl of Vicks VapoRub. My father didn’t really cook, but I remember his amazing oatmeal raisin cookies he would bake. Only he could bake them that well. Believe me, I tried. I remember he would let my daughters play with his hair—Nanu hair, as they called it—and he was just sitting in his chair, soaking it all in.
Of all the things I learned from my dad, I’m blessed to have learned how to be a loving husband, a proud father, and a good person to my friends and extended family. He was a kind and gentle soul, who loved his children and grandchildren with every inch of his huge heart.
I lost my father in 1993 to Alzheimer’s. Although, because of that terrible disease, I had lost him over a year before, when his memories failed and the genial man we knew retreated to stoic confusion and silence. Tomorrow, my wife and I will donate and participate in my third Walk To End Alzheimer’s event, dedicated to my father’s memory. This awful disease took hold and slowly stole his essence, his quiet, loving personality, but how he shaped my life and the great person he truly was, will be with me forever, and I cannot wait to see him again on the other side of the rainbow.