Pop

Blessed at and grateful for both ends of fatherhood

Oscar Wilde wrote, "Who being loved is poor?" By that definition, my father, Joseph Kavanagh, was a wealthy man. He would have found that ironic. He never owned his own house, never owned a luxury car, and never traveled too far for too long from home.

Pop never considered himself wealthy in any material sense, never even aspired to affluence or dreamed of striking it rich. It wasn’t important. He was an unpretentious man of simple tastes and desires. He didn’t need much and asked for even less. What he had was enough for him, but he worked very hard for everything he gave his wife and children. What he had he unselfishly and unhesitatingly shared. And what he left us can’t be measured or counted.

Pop was no ordinary Joe. He was rich in virtue. He was honorable and generous and utterly lacking in malice. He was never envious of anyone else’s better fortune, never resentful of another’s higher station in life. I never heard him speak ill of anyone. Never. Think about that for a minute. I never heard him utter a profane word. He was a gentleman: an honest-to-goodness good and honest man.

He made friends easily because he was so easy to like. He was outgoing and warm and funny. He always had a story or a joke. Even as his cancer advanced as he grew weaker, he maintained his sense of humor. Drinking his daily Glucerna for diabetes, he told my son, Peter, “It’s in a Schlitz glass but it’s not Schlitz.” Shortly before that, he had had to give up what he called his “Robitussin.” That was his code name for scotch.

Toward the end, the medication that was prescribed to ease the pain he never complained about caused him to hallucinate. I overheard conversations he was reliving with family and friends from long ago and not so long ago. In every situation in that surreal state, which was out of his power to control, he was in a good mood, smiling and happy where he thought he was and whom he was with. That was Pop.

 
Growing up, I remember a lot of the colorful things he used to say:
“What’s for dessert?” we’d ask.
“Dessert the table,” he’d say.
Or, “Pop, do you want a cup of coffee?”
“No, thanks. I just had my shoes shined.”
I never knew what that meant, but it always made me laugh.
That was Pop, too.
When his birthday would roll around and we’d ask him what we could give him, he’d always say, “A kind word.”

Every year he announced that he was giving up orange layer cake for Lent. That, of course, couldn’t compare with the genuine sacrifices he routinely made for us.

He wasn’t perfect, as he would have been the first to admit. He was too normal and down to earth. But even the imperfections had their own charm. Not the most patient man, Pop always seemed to be in a hurry, as if he were double-parked. Hurry up and wait, we used to say. If you were at the wheel of the car in front of him at a red light and didn’t have the reflexes of a racecar driver when that light turned, you’d get the horn. “That light’s not gonna get any greener, Buddy,” Pop would say.

He wasn’t much for chitchat or small talk, either. Whenever the families would get together for a birthday or christening or some holiday or special occasion, Pop wouldn’t be sitting with the adults. He’d be playing hopscotch with his granddaughters or having a catch with one of the kids — and showing them how to throw a knuckleball —shooting baskets, or volunteering to pitch a wiffle-ball game. And he couldn’t be bothered to remember the names of our friends or the kids’ friends. He got around that by calling everyone “Herbie” or “Gwendolyn.” He carried that off for two generations.

I don’t ever remember Pop complaining about anything. He was never bitter, not even when all the cruel infirmities and indignities visited him with ever-increasing frequency later in life. It could not have been easy for him. Little by little, he began to lose his independence. His worsening eyesight, brought on by a stroke and glaucoma, forced him to give up his car. Rather than lament the loss, he adapted. He always made the best of a situation. That was Pop. This was a man who, as far as I remember, never missed a day of work.

Later on, he wouldn’t hear of using a cane. That was for the “old folks,” he’d say. But my sister Kathie got around that when she came up with the brilliant idea of getting him his Irish walking stick. That gave him even more character. He loved retelling the story on himself of the time when his youngest grandson, in a hurry to get out the back door but stuck behind Pop, cried, “Move it, slowpoke!”

Pop loved sports, especially the Yankees. The night of my wedding rehearsal, when we had everyone at our house, Pop would sneak out to the kitchen to listen to the radio for a few minutes and then give us all an update on the game. Even with his poor vision, he watched every Yankees game on network television in his final summer. He’d confound us with what he could and could not see, but apparently he could detect when Derek Jeter waved futilely at a pitch in the dirt. “What’s he swinging at!” Pop would say.

Pop himself was a tremendous athlete. Not that he ever mentioned it. That was another thing about him: He never bragged, never talked about himself. He was old school that way. If he caught anyone starting to boast even slightly, he’d say, “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.” He had an athletic scholarship to St. John’s that he never received after a new athletic director that summer, with his own agenda, reneged on the promise of the previous A.D. Without the scholarship, Pop couldn’t afford to go to college. He wasn’t bitter, but he did take great delight forever after whenever any St. John’s team lost. When I dribbled out the remaining seconds of a 17-point beating the St. Francis freshman basketball team gave St. John’s in 1971, he sat happily in the stands in Alumni Hall.

Pop was New York City Catholic schools’ single’s champ in tennis in 1937 out of St. Francis Prep. He never mentioned that to me. I discovered it when as a kid I saw his varsity letter in his drawer and asked my mother about it. He as well as the public and private school champs then met in a three-man tournament to decide the city’s overall champion. Pop defeated the public school winner. Immediately afterwards, he was told he had to play a kid from Poly Prep, who, thanks to a bye, had sat and watched the first match. Pop lost. I asked him about that one night toward the end when just the two of us were together. Did he think he would have won if he had had the bye, or if all things had been equal? Sixty-seven years later, he said he didn’t know. Modest and honest. That also was Pop. 

The first time I played tennis with him, I must have been a teenager. I hadn’t played much but thought, How hard could it be to compete against someone more than 30 years older? I better take it easy on him, I told myself. Don’t want him to get hurt at his age. Little did I know. He ran me into the ground while he never broke a sweat. 

At the Surf Club in Breezy Point, which for years was his summer vacation, Pop, at age 47, was the starting shortstop and leadoff batter on the club’s all-star team, a team mostly of players in their late teens and early 20s! This was incomprehensible to me, 14 years old at the time. That activity lasted until he tore a knee ligament hustling out of the batter’s box. He then turned to the more sedate game of bocce, where he competed in the Surf Club’s annual tournament.

The original Pop with his Dolly

After his forced retirement from sports, he dutifully attended his grandchildren’s Little League, soccer, and basketball games and then graduated to the school sports. Pop had come to all of my youth games. He was supportive without being an obvious presence. That was in the day when parents didn’t micromanage their children’s careers. He never interfered. Sports was fun, not a job. You figured things out on your own and you learned from your mistakes. That was the way it was.

With his grandchildren he became a more vocal fan. Any of us who sat next to him in the stands at Pearl River’s Anderson Field held our breath when he offered unsolicited advice on what some Little Leaguer needed to do to improve. Often, the youngster’s mother was sitting within earshot. He attended so many of his grandchildren’s games, but he drew the line at some extracurricular functions.

“Pop, are you coming to my dance recital?” Lauren or Paula would ask him.

In his sweetest voice, Pop would say, “I have to work that day, honey. When is it?”

Pop was always working. Even after he officially retired and moved from Brooklyn, he worked. He was always available to baby-sit. He put a lot of miles on his car over the years, chauffeuring his own kids to various places and functions when we were younger, and later on continued to do the same for his grandchildren. Pop always said he worked more after he retired than he did before he retired. He had two jobs in Pearl River: as school crossing guard and as cashier/ambassador in his friend’s photo shop. There he was able to meet and make even more friends.

Pop was a real man, and a man of great faith and great love for his wife and children. I have memories of him telling my mother how good dinner was, of making a demonstrable show of his affection, of appreciating all she did for him. You remember those things. He had a policy of never going to bed mad. Consequently, he never carried a grudge. 

I remember a lot of the good that Pop did, much of which he performed quietly and without fanfare. He took in his sickly brother-in-law and helped support him for years, generously making room for him and sharing his own time and limited space. Looking back, I can see now where that could not have been easy. I couldn’t see that at the time because he never complained, never called attention to it. That was Pop. He did the right thing simply because it was the right thing to do. What a role model! And he never would hear of any praise about himself.

Pop made us all richer by his presence, and we have been left poorer by his absence all these years. A day does not pass that I do not think of him. After he was gone, I never prayed for him. I figured, if he needed help getting into heaven there was no hope for the rest of us.

I wish I were more like him. He was so outgoing and personable and never took himself too seriously. What I remember most about Pop, and what I’ll always cherish, was his cheerfulness. When he'd drop by on a weekend afternoon, I’d ask him if he wanted a beer. He would never simply say yes or no. “Is the sun over the yardarm yet?” he’d ask. “I’ll have a pint, Guv’nor,” he’d say in this corny Cockney accent. Then he’d raise his glass and announce theatrically, “First of the day!”

Later today, on this Father’s Day, my favorite and proudest day of the year, I will raise my glass and toast the memory of a good man, my father — the richest man I ever knew.