My Reminiscences of Our Father

Mike, the hero of this Odyssey, was not only my beloved father, but the beloved father of my five siblings.  I think I can speak for our mother and my brothers and sisters when I say that our father's early death on June 25, 1969, at age 49, was one of our greatest shared losses as a family.  I am going to paraphrase a statement our mother often makes, "There is not a day that goes by, in these past 46 years, that we do not think of our dad in some way."  This is true whether it be through one of his favorite, oft repeated, jokes; a lesson we all shared from a family trial of some kind; or the many words of wisdom our dad gave us in is very short life on this earth. 

I can clearly remember that one of dad's favorite sayings was, "Life is too short to argue or fight about anything.  Life is too short period."  Now that all of his children are several years older than he was when he died, I think we can all see what a prophetic statement that truly was and is.

As I mentioned earlier in this work, and I think it can be seen between the lines in dad's letters, our dad was truly a remarkable man.

In this section, I would like to share some of my memories of our father in small stories that dad related  regarding his WWII experience, and experience after that most defining event.  Some of my memories are very clear, and some are a little bit murky, but I'd like to share to provide a little more detail to dad's war experience, and about this amazing man.

Like so many WWII Veterans, our dad did not talk much about his experience during that time to me, and I'm betting to anyone else.  I could be wrong on that assumption.  The reason for this reticence might have been a desire to put all that behind, and get on with life, or it may have been that he felt his children were too young to grasp everything he had endured.  I rarely overheard any conversations between dad and any friends on the subject of his war experience.

The following memories of mine will somewhat follow the sequence of events in Mike's WWII Odyssey and after.

The first memory that I am going to relate has to do with Mike's hitch hike home to the farm from OSU after he discovered that he had to report to Cleveland on February 11, 1941 for his physical and induction into the army.  Many years after that hitch hike home, I'm going to estimate about 1960 or so, dad was driving his wagon load of kids with mom in the front seat, on our way to or from New Straitsville from Akron.  At the stop light of State Routes 13 and 3 just north of Mount Vernon, Dad commented, "You know it was right about here when I was hitchhiking home from OSU to the farm that it hit me that I was drafted.  I started to cry, and I had a hard time stopping."

I don't think any other comment was made, but I remember being deeply moved by the thought of  dad being brought to tears.  This was especially touching for me also, because in the short time that I new our father, I don't ever remember him showing tearful emotion.

A second memory I will simply call "The Knife".  The last home we all lived in together was at 235 Graying Drive in Akron.  Dad used to cut all three of his boys hair in the basement of that home, and one of his favorite jokes (much to the chagrin of his sons) was "There is only one way I know how to cut hair, and that is short."

Well, after one of those short haircuts, I was surprised to see dad reach up for something wrapped in burlap amidst the floor joists.  When dad unwrapped the small bundle it was a dagger with about a 5" blade and a 4" red rubber handle.  I asked dad where it came from.  Dad then described the story that surrounded it.

When dad was getting ready to leave for the army, grandpa Halaiko gave him this homemade knife that looked very professionally made (remember John Halaiko was a grinder at Steel Products in Akron and made much of the cutlery at the farm from ground down files).

Dad then went on to describe the dialogue that transpired between himself and his "world traveler" father.  Dad said that grandpa said in his broken English Accent:  "I made this to protect you.  I hope you never have to use it."

This next memory I will call, "The Auction".  

Our family moved to Clyde, Ohio, when dad took a job with Whirlpool Corporation back about 1957.  Our family was a little smaller back then, with three boys and one girl.  One weekend afternoon, dad and mom loaded up the wagon and we went for a ride in the country of northwestern Ohio.  I'm not sure if this was planned or not, but we came upon something called an auction, which was a new word for me, and dad pulled off the side of the road with some of the other cars parked there.  

We all exited the car, crossed the road, and started across the farmyard.  We no sooner made it half way across the yard, when we heard a car come racing down the road, a screeching of brakes, and a sickening thump.

Dad immediately ran toward where the impact came from, while mom hurried all of us kids back to the wagon.  We all sat tensely, as we heard people shouting to call for help in the direction where dad had run.  Finally, we heard  the eerie sound of an ambulance siren approaching.

By that time, dad returned to the car, and with as little detail as possible,  he explained that an elderly woman had been struck by that racing car we had heard earlier.  He told us that everything possible was being done to attend to her, and we should leave.

As we pulled away, Dad said quietly to Mom, "I haven't felt like this since I saw a plane go down next to me.".

In addition to these events, it must be mentioned that we had several of what I will term family traumas that occurred along the way that play a big role in my memory as signs of being very Blessed by God's Providence:

Grandma Halaiko lived briefly with us at 975 West South Street (now Russell Avenue) in Akron in February, 1963.  I think leaving the farm brought  the onslaught of a heart attack for Grandma Halaiko.  Dad shouted orders from the back bedroom where this was happening to mom by the phone in the kitchen, as mom quickly found the number for an ambulance.  None of us had ever witnessed something this frightening.  After a brief stay in the hospital, grandma returned to the farm, where she wanted to be, to live out her final days, until her death on March 22, 1963.

When our sister Mary Beth contracted Sydenham's Chorea, Mary Beth (and the entire family) was in a panic.  Mom attributes Mary Beth's quick cure from this to a Dr. Kroger in Akron, who induced a fever in Mary Beth, and that rid her of this disease.

Second youngest sister, Jeannie, contracted spinal meningitis when she was three which led to her being quarantined at Akron Children's Hospital with an IV in her ankle.  My parents were not permitted to enter her room for an extended period of time, but had to peer at little Jeannie through a small glass window in her room door.  With great sorrow and pain for all of them, they had to watch as their little daughter cried out for them from her hospital bed.  They did not dare let Jeannie see them, but had to look at an angle through that window until it was all over, and Jeannie miraculously recovered.

Sometime after both of these very frightening events, again, as the family was traveling in the wagon, Dad turned to Mom and said something like, "Somehow, I just knew we were going to get through this OK."

The next small vignette, I will call "The Morning Ride to the Bus Stop". 

After we moved to Graying Drive in Akron, there were many days that dad would drive my brothers and me to the city bus stop which was two miles from our home.  One day, there was a rare reference to the pressures that dad withstood in his role as plant manager of Hobart Manufacturing in Medina, Ohio.  I forget the exact way in which the subject was breached, but I do remember dad's comment.  He said, " It's a good thing I went through all I went through in the military, because it prepared me for what I am facing in my work life today."

As can be seen at many times in this tale of endurance about dad, he always did his best to stay positive even during the most trying of circumstances, and even exhibited a great sense of humor.

This next vignette I will call The Management Survey.

I started as a freshman at Kent State University in the fall of 1968, exactly 30 years after Dad had been a freshman there when he started in the fall of 1938.  I was seventeen my freshman year, and because Dad took a year after high school to work on the farm, he was nineteen when he was a freshman at Kent.

I remember feeling very strange attending an educational institution that my father had also attended.  It seemed like such a very long time before my attendance that Dad was there.  This may have been somewhat ominous, but I felt closer and more attached to Dad that freshman year of mine than ever before, and I spent lots of hours calling him from my dorm room at Manchester Hall.  When I walked across Campus late at night back to my dorm room, after the Library closed at midnight, I often thought of my dad standing on the steps of Molton Hall with his freshman class back in 1938.