3 Seconds at a Time, Ocean Pines 1993

My father was a genius in autonomic programming. He wouldn’t have called it that. He would have just said, “You need to make that automatic. Practice. PraCtice. PRACTICE!” One practice was never enough to make his point. Modern autonomic re-programming is the idea of using your internal dialog to redefine your automatic functions. My father’s genius was knowing when to have an internal dialog and when to not. He once told me, “an extended internal dialog can be a handicap, and when speaking to yourself you should speak with kindness and always tell yourself the truth. If you don’t expect that from yourself, how can you expect it from others?”

No matter how wacky your internal dialog, there is a way to practice good autonomic re-programming; PRACTICE.

My Dad once showed me how to get back in the game in any sport. In golf, intense emotional highs and lows make it hard to swing the sticks consistently 72 times in a row. My Dad said, “In golf, after you hit your second bad shot in a row, take a 30 second time out and then get back in the game. (30 seconds is an eternity for me to focus 100% on just one thing; the ball). Address the ball, 30 seconds to clear your mind, you know where to stand, you know how to swing, you know how hard to hit it; trust your body to do what you have programmed it to do. And play!” At 30 seconds, the average adult attention span, I would usually gulp a frustrated deep breathe and swing for the fences.

The thing I am most deficient in is attention. I am very ADHD. I also had pretty bad dyslexia. When I was growing up ADHD had yet to be clearly defined. One doctor wanted to put me on Ritalin and Valium, but my Mom wouldn’t hear of it and let me loose on an unsuspecting world. At thirteen, 30 seconds of concentrated focus of attention would be almost enough to make my head explode.

“Andy, take a 30 second time out and then get back in the game!” I would stand there through all eternity staring at the ball for 30 seconds and then fire the ball irretrievably out of bounds. That brings me to dumb dumb daddyoism # 7, “How much does a golf ball cost these days? Anyways.” A thousand times.

He knew he had attention deficient boy as a son. I remember him limiting me to only one 30 second time out a hole. He developed the 3 second rule for me to get back in the game. “One second, stand still. One second, focus on the ball. One second, breathe in; then play.”  I remember when he said, “Take a 3 second time out and then get back in the game.” He sounded so sarcastic so I hit the way I wanted to hit and hit it well. In the golf cart he said, “The 3 second time out worked pretty good, but what do I know, I’m only your Dumb Dumb DaddyO!”

“Son, you need a 30 second time out and then get BACK in the GAME!” A thousand times.

"How much does a golf ball cost these days? Anyways!"

"OOOh...hardly worth looking UP for!"

A thousand times.

After his second stroke I moved back home with my Mom and Dad and my dog, Sam in Ocean Pines. The summer of 1993. I was 26. Single. And very unhappy. I helped him with his physical therapy and he set me free. June was pretty rough. July was pretty cool and by August we were playing golf! He had very little balance and was disey all the time, so on his drives we would try a 3 second approach. One second for him to loose his balance forward and lean on his club, bending it. One second to breathe in. One second to spring back up into the peak of his stance; then swing! He could still stick it 225 with his driver. An amazing feat considering six weeks earlier he had forgotten how to walk. He’d take a whack at it, swing his club back from his back swing, flip his club, and use it as a cane to get back to the cart. He say something like, “Did I get it? Felt like I got it!” Unbelievable.

Sometimes life is worth living 3 seconds at a time.

At the end of the summer he told me, “I don’t need you anymore. You are a very lucky man. You get to do something you may never be able to do again in your life.  You get to pick a place to live that is perfect for you and only you. You can do anything you want to do. If you move there you will have no trouble making a living, people will like you, and you will be happy. For me it has always been the other way around.”

So I surfed Hurricane Emily and then moved to Aspen!

Soundtrack #1

undated

Click on letter to enlrge.

undated b

Love is the most powerful force in the universe.

I always thought the Cleveland years, before Karen got sick were the happiest years of my Dad's life. I was wrong, it was the first year he met my mother.





Seventeen posts and I finally call my Mom for some clarification on a few things. I asked her if my Dad had had a good game in the Gator Bowl? She said, "Oh. Freshman year was the Gator Bowl and your Dad led the defensive and did the long snapping. All his games freshman year were good games. His best game was the game that sent them to the Gator Bowl, Michigan (she couldn't recall the U or State), but either way Maryland was a big underdog and your Dad at Linebacker shut them down. Had an interception to win the game. I have a newspaper clipping with his picture laid out, ball in his fingertips. Unbelievable!



His Senior year was the Sugar Bowl. I learned my Dad was still in the service, in the reserves. He was about to be called up for active duty to serve in Korea. My Mom said Colonel Byrd and Dr. Byrd wouldn't have it, said, "Your father was a Sergeant in the Marines, but the Byrds made him a Colonel in the Air Force and he worked out of the Pentagon for five years." Unbelievable.



Some of the clarification I was looking for was about his letters. December 31, 1948 was the last letter in the series. Where there any other letters from Jacksonville? Why are there only letters from the Gator Bowl, what about the others?



"That's easy, my Father wouldn't let me go. It was only Freshman year and I had only been dating him less than a year. I went to the rest of the Bowl Games because we were married."



That's amazing because these letters are like you were already married? "Well, we were already in love and from there we were always together."



I returned to my collection of letters from the courtship of my parents. There had to be a letter after the game. There has to be a letter with the score or how he played or how tired he was. After reading several letters during summer vacations or spring breaks and after every dated letter in my possession I finally found this. A letter from my Dad that says more about the man than any speech or eulogy or compliment ever could. I don't know what I was doing when I started this project, but now I know, he needed to teach me a little bit more about love. One of the greatest forces in the universe, you know.



My Dad writes this letter after winning the January 2, 1950 Gator Bowl. It's undated. The only one in the box. Somewhere within 36 hours of this game he writes this letter and drops in the University mail box. No stamp, no post mark, just, "Miss Nancy C. Penrose, Box 2584 U of Md."



The letter blows me away. He says nothing of the game. He is definitely not tired and he seems to have made his mind up about a great many things. "Tonight climaxed what has so far been the happiest year I have ever spent anywhere anytime. I have never known such happiness as I have had since we have been going together." OMG.

"For once in my life I really have the desire to make something of myself...with you helping me hill nor high water wont stop me!"



"Thanks a million for being so sweet to me. Not many girls would do the things you have done for me."



"..worthy of what I will get when I marry you. All my love_always, Jeff"



This was his inspiration. He went on to win an Orange Bowl and a Sugar Bowl for the National Championship, but what did I hear over and over. "Best thing I did at Maryland was marry your Mother!"

My Dad's 1952 Sugar Bowl Watch

This is my Dad’s Sugar Bowl watch. I remember him wearing it to Terps games. He had all the regalia, but my favorite two I ended up with is this watch and his old Maryland Letter Jacket with a National Championship Patch! My Dad’s senior year at Maryland he won college football’s National Championship Game, but years earlier he was dating my Mom.

I’ll return to Jacksonville in his letter dated December 31, 1949.

“My Dearest Penni,”

He is tired. He opens with, “…last practice session today and I am really glad. I have had more football this year than I bargained for. I was really tired when we finished practice yesterday…Seems like we have been here a month…The team went to Marineland and the fountain of youth this morning but I thought I could use the rest more”…a poker game in his room until 5:15am made him sleep elsewhere…he went swimming yesterday and it was cold…Jville doesn’t get much of the sunshine state’s sun…He will spend New Years Eve playing Bingo for money! (Something I would have lost my scholarship for and my school would have been suspended by the NCAA). Just for the record, my Dad hated the NCAA. He was running NPCA at the time when he told me this.


“I love you and will see you in about 3 ½ days.”

12/31/1949

Cick on letter to enlarge.

12/31/1949b

My First Day on the Home Team

My Dad wore a tie when he brought me home from the hospital. Makes me wonder if he had to work that day or whether the occasion called for dressing up. My Dad once wore a silver tuxedo to a state dinner at the White House, there's a framed picture of him in it with my mom in the Lincoln Bedroom. It was 1966 so a silver tux was probably pretty hipp at a black tie event.

This picture blew me away when I unearthed it. It was a kind of a Field of Dreams moment when Costner finally gets to see his dad as a young strapping ball player and have that game of catch he so foolishly denied himself toward the end of his father's life. This is the man I hardly knew. So young. So vital. Black hair. Lean. Father of four. Thin black tie. Clean shave. Proud smile. Not beaten down by life nor disease. …ready to take on and concur the third sector. My Dad was the Executive Director of the American Metal Stamping Association (AMSA) and soon to be Chairman of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) when this picture was taken. Carol must have been 9 and a half and Karen 6 or 7, a year before she would be diagnosed with leukemia.

My second child C was a terrible sleeper as a baby. For a year and a half she never slept past a couple of hours and she would scream like you would not believe possible. After doing everything medically possible we were finally comforted by a nurse at the fussy baby clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Denver. She said, “Your way past waiting half an hour or an hour before going in to pick her up. You need to let that baby cry it out! She will never remember it. She will cry herself to sleep!” And she did, eventually. Why do I bring this up? This picture proves to me I don’t remember a thing about those first five years or so except for what has been re-told in pictures. Man on the moon, road trips to California and Disney Land, trips from Ohio to Ocean City, Maryland, the opening of the Chesapeake Bay Bridges, the Brown’s Games, trips to Alabama, Funerals. But this picture, what is on the wall? Who is this thin young, guy holding me? What is it to have just been born? I don’t know, can’t remember a thing.

So I went back to the letters of my Mom’s and skipped ahead to December 28, 1949. Sixty two years ago my Father wrote my Mother a letter from Jacksonville, FL five days before he was to play in the 1950 Gator Bowl. He writes of two long practices and a lot of scrimmaging. “I must be getting old or something because I am really stiff. Will probably be pretty sore in the morning.” I know that sore, intimately. He went to the Dog Races and has to go to a dance at the Bath Club, “It’s required’ yeh, right Dad. He wishes he knew he could have gotten her a room; she could have come like Patti did. Maybe that’s why there are no any other letters from bowl games like these. My Mom went to the rest of the bowl games in his career. I will scan and post this letter and hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have.

Big J holding me, so little was he at three.

December 28, 1949

Clink on letter to enlarge.

December 28, 1949 (Cont.)

Click on letter to enlarge.

md terrapins 1950 search

Unbelievable! A few clicks away and I found some footage of my Dad's Gator Bowl team!

Black and white Maryland Terps Greatest Team
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EafoLNXP1U

Raw footage of 1950 Gator Bowl team.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHynIf7kiI4

fight song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMiV99MZdk0

Marine Corps. Band
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRmFS1nNmtQ

You Suck! nothing but class is where I'm from.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Q0ywtyRFo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YWCXpmrjnc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTkL6xw768o

big J

Spent the weekend in Snowmass with the person I admire the most, my big brother J. He is the best big brother ever. As we were re-hashing the glory years he said, "I think we were raised by two different men." It breaks my heart to have to agree with him. He was hard on my brother. And my brother was hard on him. I guess that can happen when you share the same name. He said the only advice he ever got about football from Dad was, "Hit the other guy first and hit him hard!" Pretty good advice, but not enough to keep him in the sport past sophomore year of high school. J quiting football taught me a lot about how to handle two very influential men in my life, my Dad and my Coach. J taught me everything I know about treating people with love, respect and kindness when they don't give any in return. By example and with candor he taught me everything from throwing a curve ball to appreciating good music. For most of our childhood he was three times my size and had no qualms about reminding me of the fact that he was the BIG brother, but my Dad had no qualms of letting him know he was BIGGEST of all. Many times when these giants clashed I had to run and hide to keep from being squashed. There is comfort in knowing your brother was the biggest kid in the neighborhood and your Dad was the biggest guy around. I remember seeing him beat up two big guys at a Cleveland Browns football game for stepping all over his kids while cutting through our isle, but that is neither hear nor there.

Looking back, J taught my Dad a lot about fatherhood and what he learned he used on me. Now we are both fathers and I am so grateful for his example.

By the time I was playing ball his, hit them first and hit them hard advice had evolved into a lesson in the greatest forces of nature. He taught me the greatest of these is love, “but this will take you a lifetime to appreciate.”

The summer before my sophomore year of high school he told me the secret of besting men far bigger than me in football. He taught me the two greatest forces in nature as applied to football. The forces of leverage and momentum, used properly, you can move or stop anybody and you can stand your ground or blow someone up. In football it was simple, whoever is lowest has leverage and who ever gets moving fastest first has the momentum. He said, “Standing still and upright on the field will get you killed.” He said it in his way that meant he meant it. In his eyes there was something I wouldn’t decipher for years. Later, I would recognize that look as his fear for me to face things he could understand, but not explain. Twelve concussions and a college education later and I got it. I wouldn’t want my son to play football either.

My dad said after one game that I was a force of nature, “I always thought you were overly emotional until I saw what intensity it can spark in you. When you get mad you are unstoppable. There is a rage in you that I never had. You need to learn how to tap that. Tonight you were a force of nature!” He said that.

Keith's Cottage, Ocean Pines, MD 1976

My Dad and I must have played more than 10,000 holes of golf. Every weekend in the summers at the Ocean Pines Golf Course, rain or shine the Keith's always made their tee time. To be late is a major breach of proper golf etiquette (to him more important than any score). I hear his voice so clearly when I'm playing now I end up talking to him. His favorite DaddyOism was to say, "Hardly worth looking up for!" Whenever I would take my eye off the tee to watch my drive sail and in doing so duff miserably. In sports there is always exception to the rule. Keep your eye on the ball is the secret to every sport known to man, but with golf it will get you in trouble. In golf, keep your eye on the tee until your follow through is complete. "OOOh.... Hardly worth looking UP for!" Must have heard it a thousand times. Once, I through it back on him after a particularly embarrassing hack and was the recipient of a full force blast of the Jefferson Donald Keith stink eye. That man could throw a look that could make you want to crawl in a hole. When my Dad was mad it was best to just stay out of his way. He would usually cool down by the next hole and say something like, "Your dumb dumb daddy o really lost it back there didn't he?"

He loved golf.

He took us to the Kemper Open at Congressional Country Club and I couldn't help but think of him during the U. S. Open this year.

Some bumb dumb daddy-Os

This blogg is dedicated to my beloved Gracie. Best dog ever! 2000 - 2011

She joins Henry, Birkley, Sam, Pepi, and Bootsie wherever my Heavenly Father keeps best friends who taught the most valuable lesson of unconditional love. I miss her so much:(

My Dad,

Don't get me started, my Dad taught me how to soak cat-tails (the tall reed like plant with the flower similar to a corn dog) in gasoline over night, let them dry out, then light them on fire! They make impressive flaming torches, they burn bright and long until they burned through there stems and fall to the ground emitting a shower of flaming sparks. Awesome. Once, I grabbed one that was still soaking in the coffee can full of gasoline, lit it with a match and ran around the back yard being trailed by a flaming waterfall. In mid stride the torch burned through the stem and sent the torch head bouncing off my thigh. A considerable amount of burning gasoline splashed my leg and instantly I was ablaze. Stop, Drop and roll wasn't in the vernacular yet, so predictably, I ran screaming my head off. My Dad, who was inside reading the paper, materializes, tackles me, wipes the flames away with his bare hands, an it's over. Maybe a first degree burn here and there and a bunch of singed hair, but I was fine. My Dad had no hair left on either arm from below the elbows (and he had very hairy arms), but was burn free, miraculous. He apologized to me for not showing me what could happen if you don't let the cat-tails dry. "Just call me dumb dumb daddyO!" This was back in Cleveland so that's third grade or earlier, so I was nine years old or younger playing with matches and gasoline! DDD

My Dad taught me how to smash up the rocket engines we used to shoot off our Estees Model Rockets, take the powder rocket fuel and make smoke bombs with it. Once, during a big party, I made a huge smoke bomb that was meant to impresses my parents party goers (3 "D" rocket engines, enough rocket power to launch the three stage Big Bertha or a three stage Enterprise! for those who know or care). As I bent down to light it with a match and the moment I struck the match, my smoke bomb exploded in flames! I ran through a mushroom cloud of smoke and ran as if my head was on fire, BECAUSE IT WAS! My Dad again materializes with a ice cold, soaking wet towel and extinguishes the inferno that was my face and hair. I had no eyebrows, no side burns and my bangs were burned to the scalp, but other than that amazingly unscathed. Again this is back in Cleveland. DDD

My Dad made mini-bikes with old bicycles and chain saw engines! One such bike was so fast that the first official test drive burned out the brakes. It was a pretty tall bike so I couldn't reach the ground, the brakes were out and I couldn't drag my feet so to stop so I would run at my Dad at about twenty miles an hour and he would snatch me off the bike. I wasn't supposed to ride it without him, but of course I did, and learned how to crash into the shrubs to stop! I was probably 7 or 8 years old. DDD

My Dad loved fireworks...that makes for about a dozen DDD posts, but I will have to save those stories for another day.

Our Dock and the "Happy Happy" Ocean Pines, MD 1976

The Keith's on our dock in Ocean Pines, Maryland. This canal leads to the Saint Martins River, a short ride up the tidal river and under the first Route 90 bridge into the Assawoman Bay, up the bay side Ocean City Channel (to avoid sand bars) under the Route 50 draw bridge into the OC inlet to the Atlantic, cross the inlet to the bay side of Asseteuge Island to chase wild ponies, build beach bon-fires and surf deserted beaches, fish for flounder and sea trout and bring them home for Mom to cook, water ski the cove at the end of Saint Martins at sunset to get the perfect glass (calm water), this would be a typical summer day for J and me as teenagers. We grew up on the water, literally. What a great way to grow up. Thanks Dad. He commuted on weekends from DC to share in the family fun.

This was Karen's last summer. There's not much else to say.

This Is Going To Be A Lot Harder Than I Thought

Yes, that's me. Karen is in the background. We were on a road trip to California (at least that's how remember it). I used to do this same dive off the high dive and my Dad would laugh and laugh. This is going to be a lot harder than I thought because my memories turn out to be factually incorrect and as of yet I haven't figured out how to spell check on Blogger.

I am emotionaly fragile right now because tommorrow I must put down my beautiful Golden Retriever Gracie. Last year I had to do the same for her brother Henry, who I still miss and may never get over. I don't think we ever "get over" the loss of the ones we love. We just learn to live with it. I mention all this because I just read the first of a box full of letters my father had written to my mother and after scanning and posting it I realized I barely remember and maybe never knew the man my father really was.

In the first year they were married my Dad left Maryland on a month long trip to visit his family in Alabama and to play in the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fl. He wrote her every day. Can you imagine? I was randomly filpping through the letters and grabbed this one beacuse it was written on Christmas.

It opens with him lamenting not being able to reach her on the phone for their first Christmas. He had already tried for hours to get through and said he would continue to try, "That's all I need to make my Christmas complete." He goes on to tell her about her alcoholic father in law who has been teasing him about writting his wife every day. He loves his Mom's home cooking and is excited his little brother Cecil will be coming to the game.

What struck me was that his letter sounded just like he talked and his hand writting is the same as in the notes he had written me. He is 21 years old writting a letter to his wife from a home he left five years earlier and he sounds like the man he would be for the rest of his life.

While looking for pictures of him recently I realized I don't have very many of them. As a Dad I now realize why, he was taking all the pictures. As I look at the pictures I've taken recently of my little ones I understand how much he must have liked this one of his "Biddy Buddy" flying mid-air on the way to yet another perfect belly flop. I remember hearing him telling stories about me doing high dives with a float belt and not even getting my backside wet.

The one thing I learned from the news article I posted was that their only loss in his four years was only by one point.

Hello My Dearest, Dec 25, 1949

Click on letter to enlarge.

Gina and my Dad! Best Man Maid of Honor Dance. 1999!

My Dad had bad heart disease and had already had had two strokes, two new hips and about to loose his foot and leg to diabetes and here he is at 8,400 feet above sea level in the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Jerome in Aspen being my Best Man! When he gave the best man toast my big brother J stood behind him in case he lost his balance during his performance. He set the one page toast on the music stand in front of him, but never look at it once. He had it down cold. Word for word. After the toast we hugged and he gave the sheet that I have scanned and posted. How could he possibly put so much content and meaning in such a few amount of words? His advice to me was to drink of the sweet nector of life and he had spent my whole life showing me how to do it.

Best Toast Ever!

Click on toast to enlarge.

The Keith's in Cleveland, 1969

This is the short version of my Dad's story.

There once was a boy named Jeff. He was born poor in Alabama in 1928. He didn’t know he was poor because everyone was poor. On Christmas he got socks. His older sister saved all year and bought him a rifle. One day he killed a rabbit. His mom killed chickens in the back yard and his dad drank bootleg whiskey. He played baseball, basketball and football and played them well. He learned how to type. At sixteen he graduated from high school and left home to join the Marines and fight in World War II. He was too young to become a Marine so he became a Merchant Marine and with a rifle he road banana boats up and down the Panama Canal where the spiders were bigger than your out-stretched hand and would climb onto your face when you slept. For two years he did this and was lonely and scared. He became a Marine. He was the only one who could type so he became the company clerk. He sailed on many war ships in the Pacific. While there he boxed and beat many men bigger than he. Because of this an officer approached him at the end of the war and asked if he knew how to play football. This officer’s father was the athletic director at the University of Maryland and was looking for a few good men. When he got there the coaches thought he was too skinny and would never make the team. As a freshman he played as an outside linebacker, center on the offensive line, and long-snapper. They went undefeated and won the Gator Bowl. He was awarded a scholarship and had the GI bill. He worked summers building the Chapel and the Stadium. He joined a fraternity and befriended the first rich person he had ever known. His name was John and he took him home on holiday to his family’s cattle ranch and introduced him to a world he had never known existed. They went to Ocean City and had fun at the beach. He did well in school, won another bowl game and fell in love with the most beautiful girl on campus. Her name was Penny. His junior year they won the Orange Bowl and she fell in love with him. He wrote most of her papers and she took him to meet her parents at the Kenwood Country Club. Her dad was a lawyer and lobbyist and was not easily impressed. In the summer they got married at the Chapel he helped build and had a reception at her sorority house. It was very hot. His coach was really mad. His senior year they won the Sugar Bowl for the 1951 National Championship. He went home to Alabama and they had a parade. He got a job during the day and went to the George Washington Law School at night and Penny was a teacher. Jeff and Penny had a baby girl and named her Carol. Jeff got his JD and they moved to Connecticut. He road the commuter train into the big city and worked for the Lumberman Association. They had another baby daughter and named her Karen. At three years old, Carol got spinal meningitis and almost died. She lost her hearing to the fever. They moved to Cleveland and Jeff became the Executive Director of the American Metal Stamping Association. They had two sons and named them Jay and Andy. It was the happiest years of Jeff’s life. At eight years old, Karen got leukemia. She suffered greatly and was so very brave. We moved to Maryland and Jeff became a lawyer and a lobbyist. Jeff and Penny had dinners at the White House. We had a big house in Potomac and a beach house in Ocean City. We bought a boat and named it the Happy Happy. Late that first year, at sixteen years old, Karen died. I was ten. My mom and dad and sister and brother were so very sad.