June 2009 Archives

In 1929, three-year old William had learned the hard way what it meant to be a product of his father's English Protestant family and his mother's Irish Catholic family. It may seem hard to believe in today's society, but in those days religion was a barrier as wide as the seas. Due to the religious differences and other factors too adult for young William to understand, his parents had separated - though they never divorced.

Times were hard during the Great Depression, and following his parents' separation, William lived with his mother in a small room in her sister's attic. It had no heat or electricity, and winter nights in the Pocono Mountains where the house stood were brutally cold, while summer's heat rose making the air so stifling it was hard to breathe.

To "pull his weight" at his aunt's home, William worked alongside his cousins, carrying buckets of water into the house from the pump, gathering wood for the wood stove. He often visited his father at his grandparents' home, a home also shared by his Uncle Tom. The men in his father's family were coal miners and William quickly learned how to crack smaller pieces of mined coal in his hand, which embedded small black flecks in his hands that are still in his aging palms today.

In 1933, William's father died from kidney surgery complications. His mother was unable to care for him any longer, and with heavy heart she agreed to his entrance to a boys' home in downtown Philadelphia, Girard College for Boys. Girard was an institution chartered in the late 1700s by Frenchman Stephen Girard and its mission was to provide a home and education for orphans and fatherless boys from first grade to twelfth. William was just seven years old when his mother packed his suitcase and took him to his new "home." Two years later, at the age of twenty-nine, his mother died, too. The physical cause was pneumonia, most probably brought about by her living conditions, but it was said - and I believe - she really died of a broken heart.

Over the next ten years, William received an education; had ample clothing and food; but emotionally there was little comfort. He, along with dozens of other boys, slept in a dormitory on an uncomfortable iron bed. They were subjected to disciplinary rules that would not be permitted in today's society: Being marched through cold showers in the middle of the night to force someone to tell who had stolen answers to a test; being paddled for minor infractions.

Bound by circumstance, the boys at Girard became brothers in every sense of the word. They planned their lives after graduation; dreamed of families and homes of their very own. Many, like William, enlisted in the military and fought in World War II.

The Navy took William to the beaches of Iwo Jima on Day Two of the invasion, where his job was to pick up the soldiers who had sacrificed their lives. He saw combat at Okinawa and several other Pacific campaigns before the war came to a close and, miraculously, he survived. He came home to Pennsylvania at nineteen and headed to college on the GI Bill, earning a degree in Finance from what was then called Penn State College, the precursor to Penn State University.

William married at twenty-seven; raised two independent daughters - both of whom knew what a Nittany Lion was before they went to school - and had a successful career in business. He learned early on how to play golf well because he was small in stature and could level the playing field in business when he stood on the golf course, outdriving everybody.

Now, at the age of eighty-three and a widower for seven years, William's home is with his oldest daughter. While he embraces life each day, his living has been tougher without his best friend and partner of forty-nine years, his wife Jan, who succumbed to breast cancer just before her sixty-eighth birthday. It was Jan who gave him the family he had dreamed of so many years before as he lay awake at night in the darkened room of the dormitory, whispering with his bunkmates of life, love, and privacy.

If ever there were a man who had a right to abdicate his role as father; who could have made poor choices and legitimately used as an excuse being orphaned at an early age and the emotional scars of battle, it is William. Instead, this man of honor, integrity, and grace sought what he didn't have; valued what he never knew; and was a terrific husband and father who placed family above all else in his life.

I should know. William is my dad. And on this special day honoring fathers, I felt it only right to honor mine.

Intuitively Yours,
Nan O'Brien

The summer of 1972, our family was transferred to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Two years later, on June 8, 1974, I had just finished my sophomore year in high school and was happily grounded in school and friendships. That afternoon I left my job at the neighborhood pool and looked up uneasily. It was sunny, but something in the air just didn't feel right. The sky was filled with small, puffy white clouds, but I noticed that they were tightly packed together, as if God had placed a huge bag of cotton balls in the sky over my head. I felt restless without knowing why; but three hours later, I knew.

The sky quickly grew dark well before nightfall and it took on a sinister tinge of forest green. Somewhere in the distance, lightening began to slash through the sky in jagged bolts that reached like a hawk's talons down to the earth and thunder began to rumble. It was the lone sound in the air, the birds had stopped singing and even the bugs had stopped chirping. Then, the wind - which always blew a bit in Oklahoma - suddenly roared up, and the large tree in front of our house began bending in one direction and then another, and still another, as if it were bowing irreverently toward each direction on the compass: North, south, east, and west. Just then, the tornado sirens behind our house went off, wailing, pleading, warning of the chaotic monster that was soon upon us.

I grabbed our dog as my parents and I quickly went under the stairs into a closet. The roar of the wind was deafening, truly sounding like a train coming right through our home. I was shaking from fear as the sound continued for a terrifying ten or so seconds, and then was struck by the utter stillness that followed. There was no sound - none! The electricity was out, so even the hum of the air conditioner was silent. When all was said and done, two F-3 tornadoes had ravaged the City of Tulsa. Somehow, we were one of the lucky ones with barely any damage, but the damage in the city exceeded thirty million dollars in the 1974 economy.

It was a dark day in the city's history; but when I think back on the event, what stands out in my mind more than anything else is the amazing sunshine of the day after the tornado; of the outpouring of help from those in the community who had been fortunate enough to be unscathed by the storm's fury. The spirit of optimism and renewal, compassion and generosity, permeated the air more than the dervish winds of the previous night. Yes, it was a horrific experience, but from that came beginnings and a new sense of appreciation in a way that had not existed before for any of us.

So, during this time of Spring storms, if you feel beaten about, battered, even hailed upon, be strong in the realization that when you truly have nothing left to lose, it is at that moment - in a seeming contradiction - you will also have more than you have ever had; because you will have withstood your darkest moment, survived it, and you will then be perfectly poised for the beauty and appreciation of the renewal that naturally follows every storm.

Intuitively Yours,
Nan O'Brien