Tag: Les Green

Random memory of my father

My father and I took a car trip, just the two of us, from Binghamton to Lake George. I was 9 or 10 and was supposed to be the navigator, but we got off course, and we ran out of gas somewhere called Speculator, in the middle of nowhere. I thought Dad would get mad, but he took it all in stride. We walked along the road, and the stars in the sky were huge, as he pointed out. He stopped at someone’s house, got us enough gas to get to a gas station, and we went on to Lake George. Truth is, I don’t remember that much about Lake George, but I do remember the night before quite well.

My dad would have been 85 tomorrow.

Visiting Dad’s Grave

Did we want to put anything else on the stone, for either of them? I don’t think anyone ever asked us 10.5 years earlier.

My father died 11 years ago today, and I was going to show you pictures of the gravesite, but in some home construction project, we’ve tidied up and I can’t find them. Maybe in six months, they will turn up.

In truth, those were pictures of my mother’s burial back in February that I wanted to show. Since my father died, I’ve been to his gravesite only twice since, before my mother’s internment.

When I’d go down to Charlotte, NC to visit my mom and sister, we’d talk about going. But it wasn’t just a hop in the car across town, it was nearly an hour away, at the Salisbury National Cemetery Annex, VA Section 8, grave 358. And once we got there, we’d tend to stick around for a while.

In any case, for a marker of such a relatively recent vintage, my father’s headstone seemed to have more than its share of wear and discoloration. At mom’s burial, the guy in charge of the cemetery told us that there would be a new stone prepared. On one side would be my father’s information, including his military service unit, and on the other side would be my mom’s info. Did we want to put anything else on the stone, for either of them? I don’t think anyone ever asked us 10.5 years earlier.

For my father’s side, it had to be short, for space considerations. We, surprisingly quickly, settled on “Renaissance Man” for him. He was a singer, guitarist, painter, writer, flower arranger, civil rights leader, church leader, (failed) businessperson, and general all-around force of nature.

For my mother’s side, we agreed to “The Wind Beneath Our Wings”, based on the related song my sister Leslie sang at both my father’s funeral (to my mom) and my mother’s.

The cemetery folks sent me a survey, asking how well they did, how the facility looked, et al. I must say that it was all great.

Father’s Day 2011

I appreciate the fact that the Daughter makes me something each of the last couple years.


The interesting thing about my mother’s internment this year is that it became the first time that my daughter had had the opportunity to see where my father was buried. She has seen pictures of him, and she talks about him fairly regularly, surprising considering the fact that she never in person. Somehow, it seems as though he became a bit more real to her. And this made me happy.

I also appreciate the fact that the Daughter makes me something each of the last couple of years, and takes pride in creating it. Maybe it’ll be a craft or a drawing – she’s actually a quite talented artist – but it comes from her own initiation. That makes me happy too.


***
From the Census Bureau:
The idea of Father’s Day was conceived slightly more than a century ago by Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Wash., while she listened to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909. Dodd wanted a special day to honor her father, William Smart, a widowed Civil War veteran who was left to raise his six children on a farm.
A day in June was chosen for the first Father’s Day celebration, 101 years ago, June 19, 1910, proclaimed by Spokane’s mayor because it was the month of Smart’s birth. The first presidential proclamation honoring fathers was issued in 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson designated the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Father’s Day has been celebrated annually since 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed the public law that made it permanent.

Pictures c 2009 Alexandria Green-House

Song: Passing Through

Pete Seeger learned ‘Passing Through’ and sang it throughout Henry Wallace’s 1948 presidential campaign.

I was listening to my favorite podcast not hosted by Arthur. It is a music podcast, which should be no surprise. The second tune in the set was a song called Passing Through. I went to the website to see to whom it was attributed as the original artist of the song, and it said, Leonard Cohen. I said to myself – I often talk to myself – “There is NO WAY that song was originally done by Leonard Cohen.”

My certitude came from the fact that my late father used to sing that song when he performed in my hometown of Binghamton back in the 1960s. While I didn’t know all of the specific origins, I did know that his song selection was established in the late 1950s and early 1960s from albums by people such as Woody Guthrie, Harry Belafonte, Odetta and Pete Seeger. Cohen came into prominence as a singer/songwriter later in the 1960s.

I thought maybe it was a song by Guthrie, whose Worried Man/Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way medley caught me unawares when I heard the musical Woody Guthrie’s American Song caught me unawares when I heard it at Capital Rep theater a couple of years after my father died.

But in fact, it was Seeger who initially popularized Passing Through. Reading this account about songwriter Dick Blakeslee: “In late 1947 or early 1948, he and Dick Crolley sent a home-cut disc of their compositions to People’s Songs in New York. Blakeslee’s ‘Passing Through’ was chosen for publication. Pete Seeger learned the song and sang it throughout Henry Wallace’s 1948 presidential campaign. Today, ‘Passing Through’ remains an enduring folk standard.” You can hear Cisco Houston’s early take and Leonard Cohen’s 1973 version of the song here.

My father did a wicked imitation of FDR as he spoke/sang “One world must come”, then sang “from World War II”. My sister Leslie and I would join my father on the chorus of Passing Through when we performed with him in the latter part of the 1960s. My father did not sing the added-on Lincoln verse.

Passing through, passing through,
Sometimes happy, sometimes blue.
Glad that I ran into you;
Tell the people that you saw me passing through.

Anniversary

“I may be a headache, but never a bore.”


My parents were married on March 12, 1950, in Binghamton, NY. I always found that very convenient to remember; I would often say that I was their early third-anniversary present.

When their 50th anniversary was coming up – in 2000 (easy math!) – my sisters and I were trying to plan a surprise party at my parents’ church in Charlotte, NC. The only trouble was that there was an occasional conflict with the date, which was a Sunday. It turns out that my father was ALSO planning a surprise anniversary party at the church, for my mother. Once we were apprised of that fact, we gave up trying to surprise them both and concentrated on her.

So my sister flew in from San Diego, and my parents-in-law, my wife and I drove down from upstate New York, staying at a local hotel. My father did most of the decorations of the room at the church. my father needed to rest more often than he did just months before when he was primarily in charge of decorating the church for Carol’s and my wedding in May of 1999.

The family did meet before that Sunday morning; I suspect my mother figured something was up even before that. But we managed to keep her away from the decorated room.


During the service itself, much to my surprise, and definitely to my mother’s, there was a renewal of my parents’ wedding vows. (Whether my father knew, I was never able to ascertain.) I’m positive that when the pastor brought her up and ask her whether she’d marry him all over again, she did think about it for a few seconds before saying, “Yes.” Undoubtedly, what ran through her mind is a quote she attributed to my father, which I heard him say once or twice, but which she repeated regularly: “I may be a headache, but never a bore.”

After the church service, we had a lovely party, and we kids DID manage to surprise both of them with a video of some still photos, put together with music. Interestingly, we never got a family photo taken, as we had in 1995 and in 1990, maybe because the process was too fraught with drama – a tale for another time. In any case, that was my parents’ last anniversary together – until now, if you believe in an afterlife – because my father died on August 10 of that year from prostate cancer.

This is what their joint headstone reads:
Leslie Harold Green
9-26-1926 8-10-2000
(Military Info…)
Les
Renaissance Man

Gertrude Elizabeth Green
11-17-1927 2-2-2011
Trudy
Wind Beneath Our Wings

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