My Father by Bea TIfton

 I got the call at 2:00 in the morning. Phone calls at that time of night are never good, and this one was devastating. My father had passed away in the hospital from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

When I was a little girl, I idolized my father. He went out of town for his work as a defense contractor and I anxiously awaited his return. Each year we went on vacation. We loved going to San Antonio, but we also went to Washington, D.C., California, Arizona, New Mexico, among other states. Dad often went to Europe for work and one year we went with him, visiting Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and England. Dad wanted us to experience every country we could, even if it was just for a day.

When he was younger, he loved to sing silly songs around the house, off key but with much enthusiasm. Before we went on vacation, he would always sing, “We’re on our way to somewhere, the three of us and you.” My favorite was “Be Kind to Your Web-footed friends, for the duck may be somebody’s mother. Be kind to your friends in the swamp, where the weather is very, very, dawmp.” I’m not sure where he got some of his little gems, but I just loved them. And I can’t hear Peter, Paul, and Mary’s song, “Lemon Tree” without hearing his voice singing it. Now it makes me tear up.

One day, out of the blue, when Dad and I were the only ones home, he asked, “Want to make popcorn balls?” Of course I did. He didn’t use a recipe; we made popcorn and he made syrup to coat them. After we had shaped the popcorn balls and triumphantly placed them on waxed paper, my mother came home. As she surveyed the piles of dishes and the counter that we had effectively shellacked, she gasped and grabbed her pearls. It‘s a good thing she didn’t have a weak heart or we would have lost her. Cleaning up the kitchen wasn’t as fun as getting it dirty, but the popcorn balls were delicious.

Dad loved to fish. Being a rocket scientist can be a stressful job, but when we were on the water he just let all that stress go. I didn’t fish and my mother sat and read. I looked for turtles, watched the birds, and just looked around at the peaceful lake. When Dad was through fishing, he would take a couple of laps around the lake and I loved that more than almost anything. We saw some amazing things when we were in the boat. When we lived in Florida, we saw a manatee and Dad carefully maneuvered slowly around him. And once we rounded the curve of the lake and an entire flock of flamingoes took flight. I still remember the sense of wonder as I watched the magnificent birds fly away.

Dad had an amazing life. He was extremely intelligent, and his interests included history, paleontology, archeology, especially of the Anasazi culture, Biblical archeology, history, astronomy, and meteorology. He would patiently answer my questions and he just knew a lot about a lot of things. He couldn’t talk about everything because of his high security clearance, but he still had plenty of anecdotes. He walked away from two helicopter crashes, he walked off one flight as some highjackers walked on (no one was injured on the flight and they went to Cuba), he had several patents for things that were used in his work and he actually invented a cow EKG to discover why cattle were dying on cattle trucks. He was headhunted to work for NASA for the first trip to the moon but he didn’t want to move to Houston. He was always fascinated with rockets and I wondered if that was why. And some fun things are he worked at the radio station in Lubbock when his classmate, Buddy Holly, came in to record. He rode on one flight with Elvis. Dad didn’t try to push through the entourage and talk to him but he said a woman sat in Elvis’ lap the entire way.

There are already things I wished I had asked him, stories I’ll never hear. I think, “Oh, I need to tell Dad,” or “Dad and I can watch that movie together.” Then I remember.

I love you, Dad. And I know you loved me, too.

 

 

Photo Credits: 
Dad with a baby Bea, personal collection
Manuel Munoz "Lemons Growing on Tree Under Sunlight" Pexels.com
Dad with a good catch, personal collection
Shuttercraftsman "Beautiful Flamingos in Turkish Wetlands" Pexels.com
Lilburn Smith 1937-2025