Passing Dad--Dec. 20, 2008

One of the experiences most remembered by boys is when they "pass" their fathers in a variety of ways. The first "way" is the reality of "gaining" on dad in height. Then, one day, you find yourself 'looking down' on dad. This kind of passing dad is emblematic of other ways of doing the same--through physical strength, athletic accomplishments, and then a variety of other things. In fact, the experience of "passing dad" as a teen-ager fuels the desire for a young man to excel in what he does, to make his father proud and, one day, to surpass him in career or other success as he already has in strength.

My experience of "passing dad" which I write about here is of a different kind, a sadder kind. Yesterday I passed my dad in the number of days lived on this earth. He was born in May 1925 and died December 21, 1981, at age 56 years, seven months and four days. I was born two days later than he in May (1952), and so I reached 56 years, seven months and four days yesterday--December 19, 2008. I never realized until a few months ago, when all this dawned on me, that this kind of "passing" of dad would evoke such strong emotions in me. The rest of this essay is devoted to his memory, to those emotions--and to my future.

Meeting Dad

My father was born the fourth of seven children, the youngest of whom died in infancy, to the Long family in Lewis County, NY (Constableville). This small town drew its lifeblood from the soil and from a few of the industries that served agriculture. He grew up on a farm outside of town, "Up Mohawk Hill," as they used to say, where four generations of Longs had preceded him. When he left the area for WWII in 1944, at age 19, he set his face towards the world and his back towards his hometown, confident that a new and better future awaited him. After the war he attended and graduated from St. Lawrence Univ. in Canton, NY, where he met my mother. He always told me that he didn't go to Cornell, which also had accepted him, because the tuition deposit to St. Lawrence was 1/2 of his life's savings. He and my mother married at Christmas 1948, moved to a prosperous CT suburb of NYC and he began work, in 1949, at Metropolitan Life Insurance Co in NYC. He was not an "agent," and in fact, he never really sold anything in his life. But he worked with and grew up with the computer revolution that was, at the time, very important for Met Life and other "data-intensive" businesses. So, his contribution would be in the computer or data-processing area, as it was then called. He rose quickly through the ranks and earned plaudits and promotions which probably came more quickly than for most people his age.

He always was a sort of intellectual visionary, even though one of the sadnesses of his life was that he never fully brought his ideas "to market" in ways that would benefit him. Early in the 1960s, I remember him pointing out to me the huge Univac Computer which Met Life owned and then said, "Someday, Bill, people will each have their own computer." But his real contribution was to wed his growing knowledge of computer technology with something that was present in the life of every American family--income taxes. After we moved to the West Coast in 1967 and he left work to follow his own ideas, he developed what he referred to as a "computerized income tax service," which would allow him to input tax data, feed it into the computer and, presto!, have people's income tax returns fully done. This idea would fully be implemented several years after his death in the popular "Turbotax" program, though Turbotax wasn't even a glint in anyone's eye, I am sure, at the time of his death.

Well, he died in 1981 from smoldering myeloid leukemia, probably due to a combination of bad personal habits and the pesticides which were fed into the ground on the farm where he grew up. He was aware that he died much too young, with so much still to be done. It made and makes me sad to think of his life, so full of promise, that ended before he had really had "time" fully to see it come to fruition.

Writing and My Own Future

I, like my father, didn't successfully stay in the "big institutions" my whole working life but was lured by the promise of other things and other visions. Nothing as practical as developing a new income tax-return process has been my goal. My three brothers, all of whom have "passed dad" in a number of ways (economically, musically, managerially) have been the ones to develop more practical contributions, even as it has been tough for them to work in institutions. But I have taken my father's legacy in a different direction. I, too, am an intellectual visionary, able to conceptualize new ways of promoting learning, able to give helpful consultative advice on a number of areas, able to "see" many things before they happen in our culture, able to give sage and insightful comments in a number of areas, able to bring ideas to life through writing and speaking.

Ever since I was young I wanted to write, and that desire was fueled in college and graduate school. Yet, rebel that I am, I never really "bought into" the academic model of writing. It isn't that I couldn't do it; indeed, I have some "scholarly articles" and even books to my credit. But I wanted to write in an interdisciplinary way in areas that struck my fancy, without feeling I had to offer the "last word" on a subject to people. That is, I looked at writing as an adjunct to learning, fulfilling the Latin proverb: Qui scribit, bis legit--"the one who writes, reads twice." Though I wrote extensive notes on the Bible, beginning in 1974, which I circulated to students in classes I was teaching, I really didn't launch my book projects until my 40th birthday. Like OW Holmes, Jr., I felt that anyone who really wanted to make his mark in the world needed to have written a book by his 40th birthday (mine actually came out when I was 41).

It was only with the dawning of Internet technology in the mid-late 1990s and my decision finally to learn it and become an internet writer early in 2004 that a new focus to my life emerged. I worked day and night for nearly five years (ending with this essay) so that I could write more about more subjects with more insight (I hope) in that period than anyone alive. When I was churning out my essays at a clip of about 15-20 per week I thought I would never stop. The writing gave me such joy, and I felt I was learning so much and trying to redefine the nature of learning in a way that was satisfying to me. But something began to happen to me as I approached the anniversary of my father's death. I somehow began to interpret my frenzied and focused writing as an attempt to "match" or to "pass" dad in intellectual and visionary achievement by the time I reached the age at which he died. Now that time has come, and I don't feel the same pressure to "produce" anymore. I have, if you count my essays as "books," written 71 books now--more than anyone in my generation. I am satisfied that I have "produced" enough books for a lifetime.

I will still keep writing, no doubt, but now my focus will be on sinking my roots deeply into knowledge without the pressure of "summarizing" it for popular consumption. In a sense I am moving intellectually from the third to the fourth stage of a Hindu life--from the time of giving of sage counsel to that of deep spiritual and intellectual discovery. So, now that I have "passed" dad, the pressure is "off." My life, as I see it, has reached its zenith, too, and every day and example of productivity from here on flows from a sense of a life that has been fully-lived.

You will see me occasionally on these essays again--as I continue and complete this year's Supreme Court term, for example--and when I have something that just needs to be said, but by and large I will be sinking deeply into thought, mastery, internalization of knowlege and some avenues of expression of it. But I wouldn't trade the last five years for anything. After all, I was just wanting to "pass" dad.

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