The Hero's Story

I've been wondering what this is all about lately and I have to admit not knowing. Deep inside me there is this need to tell the story. Not just any story, but his story. My dad's story. I love this blog because time and time again I've come here and tried and failed. I share a picture or a memorie that stirs in me some inspiration to give it another try. 

Recently one of those memories has surfanced from when I was really young. This memory is a faded picture. One of those 4x4 inch, rounded on the corners, 1970s, faded color photos, that may have never existed, but I think it did. Carol shooting the picture or maybe Karen took it but both are there. In the memory one of them took the picture with one of those little rectangular cameras with the plastic cartridge film that was easy load and not expose the film. One of the ones you could stick a little square disposable flash cube on and shoot 4 flash pictures with and the cube would rotate on quarter turn each time you pushed the film forward with the thumb slide thingy on the bottom. If I actually saw the picture it would have been over 40 years ago. 

We were in Birmingham, Alabama, where my father was born. It wasn't for a funeral which seem to dominate my memory of that place, but for a convention. An AMSA convention. The American Metal Stamping Association's annual convention, my dad wast the Executive Director. We were in the Presidential Suite on the top floor of the nicest hotel in town across the street from the Convention Center. We were looking down and across the street at the big sign out front of the Convention Center and it had a big flashing marquis that ran through the middle of it. The words would roll out and stop, "Birmingham Welcomes Home..." the words would roll off then the next line would follow, "Her Favorite Son..." then in all caps, "JEFF KEITH!!!"  I remember my sisters timing it so they could snap a shot of each of the sections of the message. 

That's about it. A snap shot memory. Of  my sisters taking a snap shot of my dad's hero's welcome home. There had been others before I was born. I remember a news clipping of when he came home from the University of Maryland before going off to play in the Sugar Bowl the honored him with a parade. Hard to imagine, but that's what the newspaper clipping had said. I'm sure when he came home from the war before going to Maryland there must have been some kind of hero's welcome then too I imagine. 

I remember him being a little uncomfortable about seeing his name up on that big sign. I vaguely remember him grumbling something like I'm really going to hear it from the board that that's why we're here in this sweaty little town instead of Las Vegas or New York or Cleveland. It's probably one of my earliest Penthouse Hotel Suite Convention in a big city memories of which there were a lot. Until I became a teenager and they stopped and my dad's life started getting a little rough. 

Telling the Hero's story is tough. It isn't easy to get right. You have to start in the right place. Here again I have failed. I needed to start at the beginning him leaving home a down-trodden son of an alcoholic ,16 years old, off to become a Marine, but being found out too young having to ride banana boats up and down the Panama Cannal as a Merchant Marine for two years before becoming a real Marine in the Pacific Theater during the Big One. Overcoming one adversity over another, achieving one unbelievable level of success after another and finally returning home the hero. Well, maybe I'll get it right next time. 

I remember one time we were at a convention in Dallas and Jay and I were up on the sun deck of this sky scraper hotel fooling around on these massage tables when one of them fell over and crushed my ankle. It was all swollen and black and blue but I still got to go out to the dude ranch and shoot shot guns and ride horses. Good times. Funny how writting about a memory somehow unlocks a few others.