Did you know dad was in the FBI?

Yes, I did. He would of gone back, but they didn’t want him going to law school. So he worked at the Pentagon and was given rank of colonel in the Air Force. I asked mom how that worked and she said Colonel Byrd set him up as an attaché to the CIA, but that he never really said much about it. From what I can tell he was a spy working the iron curtain up until he got his job with the Lumberman’s Association. My only evidence tho are his passports you gave me from the late 50’s and early 60’s loaded with stamps from Eastern European countries. 

I think there’s a ton of stuff we’ll never know about him because that’s the way he wanted it. Especially his service in the Pacific Theater at the end and after the war. Did you know he was a Sergeant in the Marines days away from leading a company on a beach landing of mainland Japan when we dropped the bombs. When I said I thought you were just a clerk and typest. He said was and his eyes watered up.

He was pretty far gone when I started asking the hard questions. 

I asked him a lot about his dad and I think he had more PTSD from him than from his service or football. 

Thanks. I have found a lot of random papers form different branches of the military. I’m sure there is more to the story

Can you believe this letter is addressed to Hoover? 

It was a little surreal 

Mom’s call

I printed some pictures of the fam for my mom as she doesn’t do digital. As almost an afterthought I also printed this old Keith family photo I had posted about recently. Mailed them off to her and forgot about it. So my mom calls last night and that’s very special for a lot of reasons. First, it’s the first time in a long time she has actually called me. Second, it’s the first time she’s called me in a very long time when nothing was wrong. 

She just called to say thank you for the pictures! Especially the old black and white one. Where did I get it? What made me think to send it to her? How wonderful it was to see it. "Your father never looked more handsome than he does in that picture!" She just couldn’t stop looking at it. It has made her day. Thank you for sending it.

Made me take a closer look. He was rather handsome. So young. So thin. So much like I used to look before I got old and fat and bald and started looking like the old DDD I used to know.

Figure it’s about time I got serious about this trend of getting older and fatter. Not to worried about the balder thing, but I need to start getting thinner and younger and healthier before it’s too late. Thanks for the call Mom. And your welcome. 🙂❤️👍

Yep

Fear dad

Dear dad, fear’s the thing, I was afraid of loosing you. You were always so brave. Brave enough for all of us. Always. I know you had plenty to worry about and had your fears, but you had courage. Real courage. You always knew things were going to work out. That things were going to be ok. Even when it wasn’t. 

I’m afraid. Mostly afraid of being afraid. I’ve told the kids a couple of times that nothing scares me. I’m not ticklish and nothing scares me. That was you dad. More than anything I want to be brave for them. Like you were for us. 

Nothing takes more courage than facing the one thing in life that is sure. It will end. While you were dieing I wasn’t willing to face this truth. When Carol died I avoided this truth with passion. 

When you died I wasn’t there. I was home with Suzy and she was about to have Chloe. I was so scared. Terrified. I wish I were there. I guess it wasn’t meant to be. The time after you died and before Chloe was born is anathema to what I’m trying to say. It all worked out. I was ok. Even tho I wasn’t. But I had to be. 

If I could actually talk with you right now I would tell you how grateful I am to be your son. You were as imperfect as I am as a father, but the legacy you’ve left in me burns bright. Fatherhood. For better or worse I am trying as hard as you did to be a good dad. 

Hope. Hope born of love. That’s what you gave us. That’s what you gave me. Something to truly believe in. That life is worth living. That no matter how bad it gets things will eventually get better. No matter how rotten life gets it is always worth fighting for. You always helped me focus on what was possible. Hope for a better tomorrow will always make anything possible. I think of all you went through in your life. The incredible highs and the incredible lows and through it all you lived in the moment and looked forward to what was next. Life. 

I’ve come back to add a few words. I left some things out. When you died I was very sad, I grieved. I was so worried about Suzy being so pregnant and Kayla being so young and missing your funeral back in Maryland. I woke up Thursday morning and I was wreck. Literally a nervous wreck. I was still working. Selling groceries to restaurants for commission. I had to keep working so I could take a week off after Chloe was born. I woke up really early to go to men’s fraternity at my church. I know. I almost skipped it, but knew I need help. I needed something. I shared what I was going through with a bunch of older men at our table. Good men. Wise men. Holy men. At the end of the gathering they put their hands on me and our pasture lead the whole gathering in a prayer for me. It was powerful. Literally a miraculous experience. Allgram was his name. His words washed over me. He asked God to take away from me my troubles. He instructed me to trust in God to put me where He wanted me to be. As we prayed the words melted away and waves of comfort washed over me. Like water, Love, flowed around me. Through me. A baptism of Spirit. I was healed. Made well. You were there. I left that morning a different person. A man. I spent the day arranging my affairs. Freeing myself for what was about to happen. 

That night Chloe’s journey into this world would begin. Suzy was amazing. Kayla too. They were so brave. Kayla was so mad when our friends came to take her away. Suzy walked herself up to maternity while Kayla and I parked the car. We hurried but never did catch up to her. Suzy labored through the night and into the morning. Shortly after Suzy’s mother made it to us from St. Paul Chloe was born. I was so happy. I was in Love. I knew You were there too. You were so proud of us. The next day I would attend your funeral and share this happiness and Love with our family and friends. The following day I would return home to bring Suzy and Chloe home from the hospital. I was truly grateful. I am truly grateful. For Love. For life. Existence. Being. Life.

I think therefore I am. I love therefore I live.

Unafraid to be Happy

Love this family portrait. The Keith family 1967 in Cleveland, Ohio. We look happy. Unafraid. Proof positive that I, in fact, was the baby of the family. 

Today I was delivered a brand new file cabinet from my new employer and as I was transferring some files from my old one I ran into this picture along with some clippings from my dad’s old wood box of wisdom. One clipping in particular caught my attention. Dated 1947 this clipping was read and clipped by my father twenty years before this family portrait was taken. As it was in a file and not in the wood box I must have pulled it years ago to post, but never got to it. Better late than never.

From the catchy title to the Lincoln paraphrase this clip is very intriguing. But the premise, the premise is pure gold. You can choose to be happy. Or as Abe put it, you can make up your mind to be happy. You may also choose to be unafraid. Unafraid of life. Unafraid to be happy. These choices are made easy to swallow as they are for only one day, as we can do anything for a day. That one day being today. Now. 

Enjoy the beautiful! I find joy in seeing beauty everywhere. To enjoy the beautiful you must first recognize it. In people. In nature. In life. So much of it goes overlooked. I really enjoy capturing unexpected beauty with photography. I find joy in sharing it. 

The more I read this clip the more it intrigues me. The trying not to solve the problem of life all at once sentence for instance. What is the problem of life? Is there only one? If there is can it be solved over time then? I guess if I had to answer my first question I’d say finding the meaning of life. And that thought brings me directly to a DDDism, "Life is not meant to be understood it’s meant to be lived." My dad said this to me a couple of times. Usually when I was overthinking things.   Or overwhelmed by life’s many problems. 

Lastly, the title. How to Enjoy the Happiest Day of Your Life. Not how to have it, but how to enjoy it! Now there’s the trick, enjoyment. How to enjoy. A day. A life. A moment. Beauty. I once wrote a small piece, Joy. It will come if you let it. I wrote it at a low point in my life. I didn’t find joy that day. I let it find me. When I made up my mind to let it in I was literally overwhelmed by joy. Humbled by it. As I am now. 

I guess where I’m headed with this thought is anyone can enjoy their happiest day, but finding joy on a bad day is the trick to living a happy life. 

Iris

Karen once painted this plate like a peddle of an Iris flower. Not the whole flower, just one of the peddles. It was beautiful. I never really knew what it was until long after she was gone. I think J still has it. Now every spring when the Iris start to bloom in my garden box (which I inherited with the purchase of our house) I think of her. Her favorite color is purple, mine too.

It’s like God is setting off fireworks in my backyard every Spring in her honor. 

Home

The sweetest word in the English language. Home. Love is the greatest, Home, is delicious. Even just the idea of Home warms the heart. The place all of us wish to return. Not a place really. Or a space. It’s much, much more than that. To me anyway. I’ve been blessed with many homes. Half a century of homes. Some better than others along the way, but there has always been one for me. That true North. An anchor. A refuge. The end to every journey. A place of rest. The soft place to land. Where you can scratch where it itches (total DDDism).

As I am currently away from home on business, again, I long to be there. Sick to be there. Truly homesick. 

What makes a home? Love. It’s where your love is. It’s where you long to be. It’s the one place in the world that transcends it’s reality, time, space and circumstance. When it’s no longer there It exists in your heart, mind and Soul until it is once again replaced anew. 

The first time I was unmoored from my home was in the 3rd grade. We moved from Cleveland to Maryland. A magnificent house above the Potomac River in a magically beautiful area in a neighborhood full of other children and adventure. It would take quite some time, however, before it would become a home. My eldest sister stayed back in Ohio to finish her Senior year of high. My other sister was so sick with leukemia and my father started a really big job. We also bought another house at the beach and even got a boat! It was quite a year. Shortly after that first summer in Ocean City Karen died. Carol moved off to college and then Bootsie died. There were times there that my big brother and I curse the day we left our home in Richmond Hights. Hard to believe the privilege of living in Potomac, Maryland paled to the little Home we left behind in Cleveland. But we had each other and Mom and Dad and Carol and Pepi! 7100 Masters Drive. The Home I grew up in became a wonderful home. While in high school my parents moved into Bethesda to down size. Hard to believe a house on Tulip Hill of Mass Ave was a downsize. Blows my mind actually, but they kept me in the Whitman school district and life moved on. When I went away to college my parents kinda became homeless. They lived in the basement with all their furniture and stuff in the garage oh my mom’s childhood best friend, Peggy’s house. They eventually got a town house in Rockville before settling down permanently in the beach house.

Dinner with Jefferson Donald Keith II

Had dinner with J tonight. Having a big brother like him is a blessing beyond words. I guess there actually is only one word that fits him. Love. 

At dinner we talked about a great many things. We talked a lot about Dad. And our sisters. And CPAP. 

I told him about my previous post that I had written the night before. I told him I thought it was the CPAP that has refreshed some of my memories and has begun to heal my battered brain. I started to tell him about the post and said he probably didn’t remember and shouldn’t remember because he wasn’t there, but my first game at Miami...and he interrupted me with, when you were knocked out on the first kickoff return being the middleman in the wedge. It struck me dumb. Literally. He asked if I remembered my first concussion in the sixth grade when I knocked myself and that big running back out and scared the shit out of dad. He made you quit he said. Said that’s why I didn’t play again until my sophomore year of high school. He asked if I remembered the Senica Valley game? I said sort of. He knew of most all of my concussions, most, not all.  I told him the Senica Valley game was one of my pure rage games. I got my bell rung early in the game then someone took a cheep cut at my bad knee and from then on played like a mad man. Literally like I was insane. Had like ten sacks and a couple touch downs. That game alone got me my scholarship. And he was there. I was kind of overwhelmed by the flood of memories this discussion was bringing back to me. I remembered he had come late to that game so a I asked him if he had. He said he got there at halftime with a friend and I had yelled at him for being late. Kinda freaked out his friend, but he knew it was going to be a good second half. And it was! 

I told him I’m a little worried about all the concussions and the damage to my body and what the future may bring. He said in typical big-brother fashion, "you’re looking and sounding pretty good to me now little brother, not like we can go back and change anything. And if you could, would you?" No I guess you’re right. I wouldn’t change a thing. Well actually! Remember that one night you and I...

The Wedge

This post may be a little different. A memory mostly just about me. My Freshman year at Miami is as big a blur as my whole college experience, but a significant experience has recently resurfaced in conscience memory and I wish to capture it while I still can. It was a miracle I was able to report for football on August 1st to begin with. Thanks to a month long hospital stay I showed up twenty pounds lighter than I was when recruited the year before as a defensive tackle. I had a limp and a horseshoe of scar tissue around my right kneecap from the surgeries and staph infection from months earlier in the Spring. Even with the limp I was able to make my 800 and 400 track times that first morning and avoided dawn patrol knowing it would've ended my career at Miami before it even started. If you didn't make your times you had to report for dawn patrol at the track until you made your times, quit or died trying. Rose's weeder class for those unfit, unable or too fat to make the team.

Because I showed up too skinny for coach Hat's defensive line or for him to even look at me or acknowledge my presence, the quick decision was made to make me a tight end. I was told I was too skinny to be a long snapper too, but during special team drills I was tied for first string long snapper. Me and another true freshman where the only two who could consistently toss a dart between our legs, no one else was even close. To everyone's surprise I could catch and stone people cold with my blocking. So by the end of that miserable first summer camp as a skinny little true freshman I had made third string tight end and second snapper. Which meant I made the traveling team. I made varsity as a freshman. I say miserable because it was. Not just because of the grueling physicality of the whole thing, but mostly because of the homesickness and heartbreak. I had broken up with my girlfriend before leaving thinking it was unfair for her to stay for her senior year of high school while I was  most likely off at college being unfaithful. 

I can safely say that that first week of camp was one of the most challenging experiences of my life. The level of physical, emotional and psychological pain was higher than anything I have experienced to this day. And I have not lived an easy life. In that first week at least twenty guys much tougher than I had quit, walked, or disappeared in the night. At the start of the second week a few miracles happened. My limp went away. I think the pain in my knee was drown out by the pain in the rest of my body. My dad said it was OK to quit, in fact he and my mom started to encourage it. And my ex-girlfriend started calling me. Tina said it was OK if I wanted to breakup and all, but she missed me and wanted to talk. Honestly, without her I would have never made it. 

That brings me to the moment or event that has inspired this post. Against all odds, at our home opener, as the 3rd TE (we had a three TE set for short yardage and goal line making me the starting wing back in those situations) and starting Long Snapper and Center Wedge-man on kick-off returns I was slated to get considerable play time in the first game of my freshman year. This being the case my parents decided to make the 500 mile drive to come see me play and they brought Tina! They would get there late Friday night and I wouldn't get to see them until Saturday afternoon after the game. I must have seen them before that, but my memory of that is unclear. I do remember seeing them in the stands stands during warm ups. And looking and waving to them just prior to heading out for the kick-off.

If you're not familiar with the position of Center Wedge man it's because it no longer exists. The Wedge has been banned. The NCAA has made setting wedges for kickoff returns illegal. The job of the Center Wedge man was to judge where the return man was going catch the kickoff and as the ball was in the air set up five yards in front of him. Two other Wedge man would swing in and lock arms on either side of the center man. When the ball was caught I would start up field with my arms locked with teammates on either side forming a wedge and at first contact with the defense the return man would break either right or left of the wedge.

For every great offensive plan or strategy there is an equally great defensive plan or strategy to counter it. In this case for every kickoff return team who sets a wedge there is a kickoff team who has a Wedge Buster, or Bomber, or Hammer to bust the wedge. 

I don't remember who we were playing. I don't remember if we won or lost (probably lost because we sucked until my junior year). I don't remember much. I do remember it being a beautiful day. I remember taking the field. It was the first home opener in Miami's brand new stadium. The field was in perfect condition. Deep plush green Kentucky Blue Grass, perfectly groomed, freshly painted gridiron on a perfectly clear Fall day in Oxford, Ohio. Literally a perfect day for a football game. As the Center Wedgman I also set the huddle on the 50 yard line just inside the sideline. I called the break, such an honor for a freshman, and we sprinted out to our positions for the kick-off return. I was positioned in the middle of the 15 yard line. It was a high, rolling, kick that came down around the 5 near the right hash mark. I had done the hardest part perfectly positioning myself 7 yards in front return man just prior to the catch and locking arms with my teammates just as the catch was made. We were moving up field just as we heard the go go go call, a perfect wedge, 600 pounds of bodies moving, a giant arrow head, I was the tip of the spear, a formidable mass, an irresistible force, invincible. This is what I remember. Being Locked arm in arm with my teammates accelerating. With every stride forward I was pulled further into an upright position. Every step forward my arms were pulled outward and I stood further upright. Crucified. I saw him coming and I was completely defenseless as the Hammer came down. Helmet to helmet. An immense explosion of sound and a brilliant flash of white light and nothing. Out. Down. Being Unconsciousness really isn't so bad. It's the waking up that sucks. 

Waking from the dead is definitely better than the alternative, but not by much. It wasn't the first time I had been knocked out. In fact I was good at shaking something like that off. It was different back then. Being able to function after your bell was rung was an expectation. I walked off the field, but could tell by everyone's faces and the applause from the stands that it was really bad. I remember being on the bench and being examined by the team doctor when the call for the punt team was made and I struggled to grab my helmet to run out there to long snap. The training staff had to practically wrestle me back onto the bench. I would be the second string snapper for the remainder of my career. Concussions are crazy. As the adrenaline starts to ware off and the symptoms start to set in its a little scary. The tunnel vision. The ringing in the ears. The vomiting. The pounding in your skull. The inability to think straight. All these things start to wear on your resolve to keep those who love you from worrying so much. Eventually you start thinking you may die. Usually I would start wishing that I would.

My parent had had my whole life to get used to me destroying myself and my near death experiences. My girlfriend had only a couple years. I remember all three of them being really shaken when I came out of the locker room after the game. As the evening wore on their unease and my suffering would only get worse. 

I played the rest of the year and three more after that. I wonder sometimes about the toll that was taken. The price I paid for my college education. It's thirty years later and am I still proud I got my degree, but was it worth it. I wonder. Still I wonder. 

Unexpected Gift

Played golf with Kayla and Suzy today. More like I played golf with Kayla and then Suzy. Played the first 13 holes with Kayla and when we reached Suzy's parent's new house on the 13th fairway Suzy came out and took Kayla's place to finish the round. Quite a special day. While we were walking down the 18th fairway at dusk a little old man came through his gate shuffling out in front of us with a couple of clubs and handful of balls, but when he saw us he turned and hurried back into his yard. Amused, I waited until he turned back around and I waved to him and then waved for him to come out and join us. He suffled back out a little embarrassed and said he thought he had the course to himself it being so late in the day. I told him to join us and he said he hadn't played in a while and has to play in a tournement tomorrow and just wanted to chip a few to see how'd he do. I told him to go right ahead. He chipped three near the front fringe and Suzy and I played our balls. He chip his on the green and my ball got mixed up in his three and he picked mine up by mistake. He started to get a little flustered and I assured him it was nothing to worry about. As we were sorting through his three balls to trade out mine I felt a huge change in his demeanor and emotion. He was turning over one of the golf balls and it was marked with initials for tourney play. He took a deep breath and said It's funny. I just grabbed a few balls out of an old bag and who'd a figured I pull out this one. As he rubbed his thumb over the hand written initials I asked who's they were. He said my wife. She died in August. I asked her name and he told me. He said her named with such love and tenderness. Said her name twice, like he hadn't heard her name in a while. Tears welled up in his eyes and took another deep breath and let out a sigh. Then said, wow. We smiled at each other and he patted me on the back. Suzy walked up and he wished us a good evening. We wished him good luck in his tournement tomorrow as he was walking away. I sunk my put and as we were walking off the green Suzy asked me what that was all about. It took me a few minutes to be able to talk without crying, but eventually was able to tell her about his wife and what an incredible moment it was to share with a complete stranger, a very special moment. As I was walking off the course with my wife I knew what a special gift that little old man had just given me. He gave me the gift of appreciation. I was so grateful for my wife. So grateful for my life. So grateful for our kids and our family and that we still had so much life left to live. So much golf left to play together. So grateful. Amen.

Mary (9) on her grandparent's new back patio.