Milestones

Today is a milestone in my life. My father lived exactly 44 years 3 months and 8 days. Today I have lived 44 years, 3 months and 9 days. I was 14 when my father died. I knew at the time that he wasn't old, but I don't think I ever realized how young he really was.

My dad lived in a different time, different culture. He left home and joined the Navy when he was 17. It was his only chance to escape the poverty of his family home. The Navy gave him stability he never had and taught him that if he showed initiative he would be rewarded. He became an Electricians-mate and completed his high school education. He married young and started his family while he was in his early 20's.

He was functionally illiterate when he joined the Navy. When he retired 22 years later he was an avid reader and loved going to the library with his children. He relished learning interesting, yet useless facts. He used to call himself a "warehouse of worthless information". He passed that loved onto me. Very frequently he would challenge us to trivia contests. At dinner he would say something like, "The first one of you that can tell me who invented the toilet will get $1." This was long before the internet, so I would race to the library to find that little nugget of information. In the early years of our contests, my sister, Laurie would be right there with me, and would usually win. Once she moved out it was just my brother, John and me. I could never beat John in feats of strength, but I mopped the floor with him in these trivia contests. Maybe that's the way it was meant to be. He and John had sports. But he and I had the library. When we first moved to Altus, OK, the library was in an old house on Broadway Street, about three blocks from our house on Commerce. He and I walked those three blocks time and time again. I remember we once had an encyclopedia salesman at our door. The man was passionate about the merits of encyclopedia ownership. My father listened to his whole spiel, then politely said "I've got a whole library around the corner and it's free." That was the end of that sales-pitch.

When my dad retired from the Navy as a Senior Chief Petty Officer he was only 39 years old. So this young retiree and avid reader started the next phase of his life. He became a part-time college student. His dream... become an elementary teacher. The first few years he worked full time as and electrician and took a couple classes per semester. He and my mom decided it would be better for him to go to school full time so that he can finish up and start working. So that's what he did. In the fall of 1980 he became a full time college student at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. He was gone a lot and we missed him, but somehow we all understood it was for the greater good. In the spring of 1981 he started his student teaching at Wilson Elementary School in Altus. He loved it and was offered a teaching job to start in the fall. All he had to do was finish his last two classes over the summer session at SWOSU. He never did. He started feeling sick at the end of June but pushed through it. By the ninth of July he realized he was very sick and checked himself into the hospital. He died the next day. It was that sudden and unexpected. What we thought was pneumonia turned out to be end stage lung cancer.

As my own life passes this milestone I have to compare my life to his. I wasn't born in poverty. It was an unspoken expectation that I would go to college. Seeing my father work so hard and fall short of getting his degree made me that much more determined to follow through on mine. I even entertained the idea of being a teacher. Somehow I felt like I owed it to him. When I changed my major from Elementary Education to Journalism I feared I was letting him down. Then I realized he would want me to find my passion and make a career out of it. Educating young people was his passion, not mine. My dad influenced almost every aspect of my life and I think about him all the time.

He died a young man, but in his 44 years, three months and eight days he changed lives. He made the most of his life and he always pursued his dreams. I have to think that each day I live from now on is a gift that I should cherish. I owe it to him to pursue my own dreams. His life and untimely death taught me to take opportunities as they arise. You never know how many days you have left.

John Henry Weatherly, April 2, 1937 - July 10, 1981