Our Farewell to My Father

I’ve been away for longer than I’d have liked to, due in large part to my Dad’s declining health and recent passing.  The family and I have been putting our all into taking care of Dad and visiting him as often as we could, and lesser priorities have necessarily fallen by the wayside.  I’m glad to be posting here again and reconnecting with you all, but sad about the reason.

Dad was a member of the “Greatest Generation” that we so aptly celebrate here.  As we are all acutely aware, we are losing them daily, and they aren’t making any more.  His 93 years of life spanned a range of eras and events that is difficult for me to comprehend.  Born on New Year’s Day 1927 in New York City, he grew up during the Great Depression alongside 3 brothers and a music teacher mother, absent a father who was rarely around for them.  Dad rarely spoke of his Navy service, which was brief and in the non-combat role of Electronic Technician’s Mate, Second Class, but as readers of Bill’s first magnificent essay “Honor” know, the details don’t matter when your time comes.  White-gloved men in immaculate dress blue uniforms awaited us at silent attention at his burial site, and he was laid to rest with Navy honors with a brotherly reverence that it still chokes me up to think about.

Everyone who knew my Dad – many by his middle name, “Clark”, others by his first name of “Francis” or childhood nickname “Fritz” – knew there was something unique about him.  He brought an extraordinarily friendly enthusiasm into people’s lives.  He had a remarkably unguarded, candid, open curiosity about the world, and took great satisfaction and profound joy delighting in the wonder of it all.  He delighted in people – in family and friends, in getting to know the people he met in his life, family, work, and travels, in learning about their interests and stories.  He treated people kindly, and took an interest in getting to know them.  He asked questions, wanting to know the answers.  He was an enthusiastic traveler who brought us back fascinating souvenirs of his work trips, kindling our own interests in seeing the world, and giving us the delight in sharing in seeing it through his eyes and experiences.

Ever the optimist, he lived with true appreciation and gratitude.  It was not in his nature to focus on the negative, hold grudges, or blame others – to “focus on the hole”, as he put it, rather than on the donut.  It was in his nature, as the song goes, to ac-cen-tu-ate the positive, and e-lim-in-ate the negative.  Dad did not mess with Mister In-Between.

My Dad was creative, inventive, and imaginative, like his father before him, and I have tremendous admiration for both the undaunted dreamer he truly was and the way he deliberately balanced his creative pursuits with devotion to us.  He never gave up on pursuing the projects that gave him life and made him who he was, but the thing is that we, that our family, was one of those projects, too, that he cared deeply about.  As someone who inherited the same restless, creative mind, together with awareness of his father’s irresponsible absence and its impact, and knowledge that Dad’s second wife left him over his entrepreneurial pursuits, I’ve wrestled with finding the right balance throughout my own adult life.

Dad was good-natured and fun-loving.  He did things for us no other parent we’d met would do, driving us places and picking us up at all hours with never a complaint.  When I wanted to learn something, he didn’t hesitate to make sure I had the books I needed.

Dad had an incredibly even keel.  He was ever patient and supportive with us growing up, through our school careers, and in our wanderings in life in search of our bearings.  Even when we took seemingly obtuse paths, he exhibited rare patience, being there for us without insisting that we take particular approaches or produce particular results.  Perhaps because he’d lived quite a storied life before we even showed up, he seemed to deeply trust the school and process of experience.

He supported our interests.  He parented gently and generously.  He made sacrifices so that we could learn, grow, succeed, and thrive.  And for all that he did for us, I will be forever humbled and grateful.

I remember one of my favorite treats (and in hindsight, probably Mom’s too) was when he’d take me in to work with him on a Saturday.  I remember wandering the hallways of Britt Corporation, this fascinating small medical laser startup he was part of where things where invented and in various stages of assembly.  I remember the drone of the vacuum pump in the tube room, the simple lunches we’d share together, the skeleton crew who kept things going on weekends, all of them deeply interesting and friendly people.  He took the time to find genuinely interesting things for me to do, while needing to make sure he got some work done himself.  Isn’t it amazing and wonderful that it’s not necessarily grand gestures but often the simplest things in life that we end up treasuring with such deep, heartfelt gratitude.  Simple moments shared together, regardless of what we happened to be doing.

Dad’s easy, joyful attitude toward life has impressed me greatly in light of the challenges he lived through.  Growing up through the Great Depression, in a family of modest means, with a father who was rarely there.  In sorting through Dad’s things I was touched by a note he had written his father in 1935, thanking him from afar for Christmas presents received, and reaching out across the distance with hopeful love.  That boy grew into a devoted man with a big heart who made sure he was always, always there for us.

Clark loved music his whole life and found a deeply spiritual experience in it.  John Barry’s “Out of Africa” score was one of his enduring favorites. My sister and I were fortunate to be at his side holding his hand when he passed, and we played its soaring themes softly for him as he took his final breaths in his peaceful deep sleep – taking his leave as gracefully as he lived.

Dad loved doing puzzles to music.  It was a way he relaxed and went to a very happy place.  I enjoyed sharing in that with him as we put the pictures together – be they old cars or majestic mountain scenes.  He taught me to start a daunting, 1,000 piece puzzle by gathering the corner and edge pieces and working from there.  I’m sure there’s a deep life lesson in there.

I’ll never forget going to movies with Dad.  He loved and was often deeply moved by the magic we experienced there together.  It was all part of his unguarded, candid appreciation of life.

Dad taught me how to dream, imagine, and create – not by speaking about it but by his example – and his enthusiasm was contagious.  

When I remember Dad, I think of him enjoying good food with great passion: twirling his fork, closing his eyes, and intoning, “Mmmmm!”.  Thanks to our mom’s and aunt’s renowned talents in the kitchen, he had a lifetime of occasions to show such sincere, unselfconscious appreciation as was his way.

When Mom passed of Alzheimer’s in 2016, Dad delivered some very touching remarks at the service.  I found his notes folded up in the pocket of the blazer we dressed him for burial – one last gift from him, one last reminder.  In those notes for his eulogy, he remarked how incredibly fortunate he felt to have met her and to have lived himself, in light of all the things that had to happen and all the ancestors who had to find one another to make such things possible.  And I can’t help but feel the same profound sense of how fortunate and humbly grateful I am, a child of second and third chances, to have lived and to have been their son.

We laid Dad’s remains to rest in about the closest place I can imagine to Heaven on this Earth: nestled among majestic mountains at Heber City Cemetery in Utah, not far from where Dad and his brothers worked, played, and grew up on their grandpa’s farm.  Per Dad’s wishes, we interred most of Mom’s ashes with him (we will take the rest to her family’s tomb in Les Gannes, France), along with those of the infant daughter they lost in childbirth in 1969 – the big sister we never had the chance to know.  He’s interred alongside his brother, Bill, and their mother, Nellie.

Thank you all for letting me share a bit of Dad’s story here.   I count myself very fortunate and grateful to walk among such fine people and to have your company at a time like this.

Obituary: Francis Clark Stephens: January 1, 1927 – February 29, 2020