Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.
charles kettering
On a hot summer day in 1980, my Dad and I sat on one side of a small table in a cramped interview room in the Albany Park police station on Pulaski Road on the Northwest Side of Chicago. I was within a week or so of my 15th birthday – I’m not sure on which side. On the other side of the table sat three of my best childhood friends. As we sat there, a detective questioned me and my friends, trying to piece together a strange series of events that had transpired over the prior 24 hours, which culminated with me chasing two semi-professional burglars out of my house in my boxer shorts, wielding a baseball bat.
My Dad mostly listened. And then – as if someone had turned the spigot of a faucet – the tears came. He sobbed. His whole body shook and heaved. Disappointment came crashing down on him, driving him well beyond simple tears. I sat stunned. I’m not sure I had ever seen my Dad cry, and I definitely had never seen him sob.
I’ve thought about that day many, many times, and especially in the nearly 11 years since my Dad passed away. That afternoon is etched in my mind, and I think I’ve finally figured out the lesson I took away that day.
The Neighborhood
I grew up in a bungalow in a typical Chicago neighborhood, a neighborhood dotted by row after row of bungalows, two flats, and – typically on the corners – apartment buildings. Our day-to-day world was bordered by Irving Park Road on the south, Kedzie on the west, Montrose on the north, and California (and Horner Park) on the east. Thinking back to the summer days of my early teen years, my friends and I would wander outside on our bikes early in the morning after our parents went off to work, organize games of lob or fast pitch in the school yard, maybe hit up the corner grocery for a freeze pop, and just sort of pass the time.
None of us had much spending money. The neighborhood was firmly middle class, I guess. I am sure some of us had a few more bucks in our pockets than others. I vaguely recall getting a small allowance from my parents, but my greater source of income was the $10 or $20 my Grandpa would give me – along with a lunch of bratwurst and German fried potatoes – when I would cut his postage-stamp sized lawn as he pretended to tend to his rose bushes or tomato plants while supervising me.
As we hit our early teens, having a few bucks in our pockets became a bigger deal. We had started hanging out at a small Chinese restaurant/grocery store on Irving Park that was owned by a classmate’s family and happened to have a couple pinball machines. So part of our day, every day, was mining the neighborhood for bottles we could return for deposits that we could drop into the pinball machines. We’d find stray bottles or, maybe, figure out a way to liberate bottles stored on the back porches of some of those apartment buildings. And some of us had started umpiring baseball games for the Horner Park Little League, for maybe $5 or $10 per game. Pretty good money. We were hitting the age where we were getting a little restless, wandering out of the neighborhood a bit, wanting more than our daily lives had been serving up.
The Pirates
I’ll call my friends “Jimmy,” “Mike,” and “Patrick” here. We were part of a group of maybe 8-10 kids within a two-year age span that attended the same grammar school and lived within the half-mile square I mentioned above. And most of us had been Pirates.
The Pirates were the team we were all assigned to at the Neighborhood Boys Club. During the school year, especially, we spent most every day doing something at NBC, which was about six blocks away, halfway between my house and my Dad’s insurance agency on Irving Park Road. NBC organized team sports starting in September and continuing through the following July: football, basketball, floor hockey, 16-inch softball, and baseball. The teams were organized by neighborhood, and our neighborhood was divided up between the Pirates and the Buccs. The Buccs were our arch-rivals, and also happened to be some of our schoolmates and friends.
NBC was really all about letting kids play. High-school or college-aged “Leaders” ran the programs and refereed the games. With the exception of football, there were no coaches allowed, and in all sports there were strict rules about how much each kid played. Every kid got a fair shot to play. If the supervisors caught a team trying to cheat the rules, justice was swift and simple: a loss in the standings.
NBC allowed adult coaches in one sport: football. My Dad had volunteered to coach my brothers years before, and before I came along more than a decade later, he coached a team called the Hornets – from the neighborhood near his office. They called him Papa Hornet.
NBC football was tackle football for second- through eighth-graders – with a few modifications. Players who ran the ball had to be below a certain weight – white elastic arm bands distinguishing the “lights” from the “heavies.” The heavies could handle kickoffs and punts and receive passes – but those plays would end if they were tagged with two hands below the waist. Also, players were substituted in and out at the beginning of each quarter, and played both ways. A typical team would have maybe 15 players, and every player had to play at least a full quarter. Unless someone got hurt, there were no mid-quarter substitutions. And the kids called their own plays.
You might gather this was not the right place for a control-freak kind of coach. And that was perfect for my Dad. He was the biggest cheerleader on the fields, his voice booming encouragement and congratulations at every opportunity – especially to the two or three kids on the team who were the least athletically gifted. We would hold an occasional practice where we walked through plays. If it was too cold or rainy to practice, he’d gather us around the ping pong table in our basement and show us how to vanquish our rivals using checkers to diagram plays and defensive strategy. He taught us three or four running plays, three or four passing plays, how to line up in a stance and not jump offside, and how to position ourselves on defense. And he taught his quarterback – me – a little about strategy to help in calling the plays. And then Dad got out of the way and let us play.
Jimmy was our star and one of my best friends from kindergarten on. He was maybe the best athlete in the entire club. Mike was a lineman, better at floor hockey than football. Patrick was the center – the kid who snapped me the ball on every play. I’ll never forget one awkward practice when we were 11 or 12, after Patrick and I had gotten into a scrape on the playground. Prior to the shotgun era of quarterbacking, quarterbacks and centers were, let’s say, intimate on most every play. Patrick and I were initially in no mood to be intimate after our playground tussle. But we figured it out and got over it – for the team.
My Dad loved to coach, and he truly had zero ego about doing it. We typically had good teams – in part because we had a good coach and mostly because we had Jimmy. But Dad could not have cared less about winning or losing, he was all about doing what he could to see kids have fun. And my Dad loved Saturday morning games at 10 a.m. or later. After those games, he’d wedge me and an obscene number of my always sweaty and sometimes muddy teammates (still wearing shoulder pads) into his comically spacious Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight and take us all out to lunch – probably for pizza or hamburgers or hot dogs. His treat. And then he’d pack us back into the Olds and drop my teammates off at their homes.
A Bad Choice
There are bad people, but many more people who simply make bad choices, for which they should be forgiven. Jimmy, Mike, and Patrick made a bad choice on a summer day in 1980 that set off the chain of events that led my Dad to sob.
That summer, I was lucky enough to score my first real job. I applied and was hired at No-Frills Discount Foods, a grocery store about a mile from my house. I was 14 when I started, having fibbed and said I was two years older on my application. I was a stock boy, and pretty terrible at the job because it required a level of strength lugging boxes, moving pallets, and baling cardboard that my immature body could not always muster. But I worked hard, showed up on time, and earned my keep. If my memory serves me, I made $4.10 an hour – significantly better than the $3.35 minimum hourly wage in 1980. And it made me the richest kid in the neighborhood. And my friends knew it.
At this point in the story, I am going to start using Jimmy, Mike and Patrick interchangeably. Collectively, I’ll call them The Three.
On the day before we found ourselves together in the police station, I worked an afternoon shift. I remember it being a particularly hot summer week, and a particularly hot day. I cashed my paycheck at the store after work, and rode my bike home. In my bedroom, a small cardboard box on my desk was my piggybank. When I went to add the $100 or so I had netted from my paycheck, it seemed to me my stash of money was light.
A little puzzled, I ate dinner and then wandered outside, where I met one of The Three. Something was off, he was noticeably fidgety. Within a few minutes, he said, “Paul – I have to tell you something.” He then proceeded to tell me that he had been a party to a crime. The Three (and one more boy, who may have instigated the whole thing) had been idling away a hot afternoon – as broke as usual – when one of them got an idea: let’s go get Paul’s money, and split it up. I’m not sure if they were envious or resentful that I had found a job, or bored, or all of the above.
My house was never locked, my parents both worked, and all but maybe one of my siblings had moved out. My friends knew that if I was working, no one would be home. And they knew where I kept my modest stash of money. So in a manner of about three minutes, a couple of them dashed up the stairs and into my second-floor bedroom while a couple of them kept lookout. They grabbed maybe $80 or $100, got out, and rode their bikes to some nearby alley or the schoolyard to split up the money.
But one of The Three could not stand the guilt, and he spilled the beans. I immediately went home that evening and told my Dad what had happened, and who was involved. He had coached The Three for years. He did not fly into a rage. He did not call the cops. He did not get their parents on the phone. He thought a minute, and then told me calmly: “I think you need to go find your friends and get your money back.”
My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.
jim valvano
I was a little terrified about confronting my friends, but I got on my bike and rode to the house of the first of The Three. Nervously, I rang the doorbell. He answered and I asked him to step onto the porch and to close the door behind him. Protecting the identity of the friend who had told me what happened, I said: “I’m missing some money from my bedroom, and one of my neighbors saw you guys go into the house today while I was gone. We are not going to call the cops, but I want my money back.” Surprisingly, as I think about it, there was no denial. The first of The Three said, “I’m sorry. But I don’t have the money – I spent it. But give me time and I’ll pay you back.”
I moved on to the next of The Three. He was not around – I later found out he was at NBC’s annual carnival, a weeklong highlight of the summer. I have no doubt he was spending his take from my stash on rides, or games, or popcorn. But somehow word got to him that I knew what had gone down, and word got back to me that he would come to my house the next morning to pay back his share of what had been taken from me.
The “Semi-Professionals”
The friend who pledged to bring back my money the next morning followed through. But, unfortunately for him, he arrived just as the police were responding to a call after my house was robbed for the second time in less than 24 hours. So Friend Three was coming to pay me back and had not been a party to the second robbery, but he was the first to be taken into custody.
Here’s what happened.
As Friend Three was spending his take from my stash at the carnival the prior night he ran into a couple of kids who were maybe 16 or 17 years old, and for a long time had started to drift to the rougher side of my neighborhood. By that, I mean they were among the kids who had started flirting with drugs, petty theft, and possibly street gangs (street gangs on the Northwest Side were not as prevalent or menacing as they were in some parts of the city, but they were a thing, for sure). I knew who these older kids were, by name and reputation. They were well known to me as kids to avoid. My friend was better acquainted with them and was starting to drift a bit himself to the darker side, so when he saw them at the carnival he bragged about his heist – and told them what an easy mark our house was for a burglary.
So the next morning a little after nine o’clock, not long after my parents had gone to work, I was home alone sleeping in my boxers up on the second floor at the front of the bungalow’s converted attic. I woke up and heard some rustling downstairs – doors and drawers opening and closing in a more hurried fashion than made much sense. Through my fog, I thought, “is that Dad getting ready for work?”
Soon, I had my answer, when I heard people talking while bounding up the internal staircase at the back of the house that led up to the second floor. Sensing something was not right, I grabbed a baseball bat and opened the door to my bedroom, which opened up into a “middle” room that separated the staircase and me by about 20 feet. As I stood there in my boxers, Semi-Professional Thief 1 reached the top of the stairs and looked me directly in the eye. I didn’t get a great look at him. He immediately bounded down the stairs, nearly running over Semi-Professional Thief 2 in the process. I gave chase in my boxers and the bat – somewhat half-heartedly, because I had no idea if they were armed or would decide to confront me.
They likely ran out the back door and to the alley, and were gone. I ran to the front of my house, noticing a bit of disarray where the thieves had been seeking valuables. Frightened, I ran out the front door and to the neighbor’s house across the street, where I breathlessly tried to explain what had happened. We called the police, and my Dad.
By quick inspection, it looked like the Semi-Professionals had taken off with some jewelry, some prescription drugs, and some spare cash that had been in my parents’ room. They were probably disappointed with their take, but at least some of the jewelry was reasonably valuable and meaningful to my Mom.
Within minutes, the police and my Dad arrived, I put on shorts and a t-shirt, and I tried to explain what had happened – starting with the theft of the prior day and ending with my unexpected wake-up call from two neighborhood punks/budding criminals.
The Interrogation
The explanation of the two incidents led the police to round up The Three (and maybe a fourth) and bring them to the Albany Park station, where they sheepishly had to look into the eyes of their football coach, their friend, and a detective who was trying to piece it all together.
As they talked, my Dad sat silently, taking it all in. He said little or nothing. He just listened to the kids he had piled into his car and bought hamburgers – kids who played and ate and slept at his house many times over the years. I wish I knew what was going through his mind as he sat and listened. I wish I knew what made him break down and sob.
It had been a weird, jarring 24 hours, for sure. These were some of my best friends – but as I think back on it now we had reached a time when we knew we were all on the cusp of drifting apart. I had just finished my freshman year in high school, and I was the only kid from my grammar school who had gone on to attend Luther North, a small school that was three-and-a-half miles west of my grammar school as the crow flies, or about a million miles away in other ways.
At the end of the hour or two we spent at the police station, the detective ushered The Three to another room and asked my Dad f he wanted to press charges. No, he said – just let them go home. Within about a week, they paid me back every dollar they took from my stash. I cannot recall if the Semi-Professionals were ever arrested. I know we never got back anything they took on the second day. My Dad, I suspect, wanted to move on. And we started locking the door when we weren’t home.
By the time all this went down, in some senses I had already left the neighborhood. My group of friends changed, as often is the case when a kid hits high school. And maybe that made it easier for me to be the mark – that, and the fact that my friends knew I had earned a few dollars at the grocery store that summer and knew where I kept my money. We moved out of the neighborhood when I was 19 and in college, to a new house several miles away on the far Northwest Side. I have stayed in touch with one of The Three over the years, and know relatively little about the other two.
But the rest of that summer was pretty normal. I remember asking my Dad – would it be okay if I hung out with (one of The Three)? He told me, that’s up to you. I did hang out with at least two The Three a little bit more that summer, and my Dad never disapproved. In fact, he never said much of anything about that incident. I don’t know why. He moved on. I moved on.
My father didn’t tell me how to live. He lived and let me watch him do it.
clarence budington kelland
Lessons Learned
My Dad taught me a lot, and mostly by example. Nearly 11 years ago, I eulogized him, and it was maybe the greatest honor of my life to do that. This is not a eulogy about a man who raised nine children, was married for 60+ years to the same woman, and built a successful business on a high school education. This is an article about a single day, and what I’ve come to think he taught me that day.
What I said when I eulogized my Dad, among other things, was that he was honest and generous to his core. When he heard that the kids he coached strolled into his home in the middle of the day and took his son’s money, he was brought to tears. Not by anger, but by disappointment. He had coached them and fed them and unfailingly supported them – to what end? He was crushed, and his emotions overflowed. He did not yell or scream. He did not threaten my friends. He did not run off to try to tell the other parents that they had raised terrible kids. He did not – in short – act as you might imagine a man could be expected act in that situation. He cried in front of all of us. I cannot speak for my friends, but that made more of an impact on me than any fit of anger.
I wonder sometimes if he cried that day because he felt bad for me – crushed because my friends had betrayed our friendship. Maybe. But the thing I appreciate most about how my Dad handled the entire incident is that he left me to deal with the fallout. He did not confront my friends that first night; I did. He did not issue an edict as to whether I could maintain those friendships going forward; he left that to me. He did not demand I forgive them; he left it to me.
That first night – the night before I was awoken by the semi-professional thieves – I cried as I went to bed. Softly. I cried because my friends had betrayed me. As I toed the line between boy and man, I cried not because I’d suffered a broken bone, a cut, or a scrape, but because I had been hurt inside. My Dad did not know I had gone to bed and cried, but the very next afternoon he let me know – through his own tears – that it was perfectly okay that I’d done so, whether I was a boy or a man.
Thanks, Dad. And Happy Father’s Day. Hit ‘em straight up there.
