Roger L. Miller as a boy, early 1920s
Author's
Note: I wrote this 11 years ago, on the occasion of the tenth
anniversary of my father's death. Like his memory, it has withstood the
test of time. I have slightly updated it for today, December 11, 2023,
the 21st anniversary of his death. Read the original here.
My Dad and Airplanes
by G. Wayne Miller
I
live near an airport. Depending on wind direction and other variables,
planes sometimes pass directly over my house as they climb into the sky.
If I’m outside, I always look up, marveling at the wonder of flight.
I’ve witnessed many amazing developments -- the end of the Cold War, the
advent of the digital world, for example -- but except perhaps for
space travel, which of course is rooted at Kitty Hawk, none can compare.
I also always think of my father, Roger L. Miller, who died 21 years ago today.
Dad
was a boy on May 20, 1927, when Charles Lindbergh took off in a
single-engine plane from a field near New York City.
Thirty-three-and-a-half hours later, he landed in Paris. That boy from a
small Massachusetts town who became my father was astounded, like
people all over the world. Lindbergh’s pioneering Atlantic crossing
inspired him to get into aviation, and he wanted to do big things, maybe
captain a plane or even head an airline. But the Great Depression,
which forced him from college, diminished that dream. He drove a school
bus to pay for trade school, where he became an airplane mechanic, which
was his job as a wartime Navy enlisted man and during his entire
civilian career. On this modest salary, he and my mother raised a
family, sacrificing material things they surely desired.
My
father was a smart and gentle man, not prone to harsh judgment, fond of
a joke, a lover of newspapers and gardening and birds, chickadees
especially. He was robust until a stroke in his 80s sent him to a
nursing home, but I never heard him complain during those final,
decrepit years. The last time I saw him conscious, he was reading his
beloved Boston Globe, his old reading glasses uneven on his nose, from a
hospital bed. The morning sun was shining through the window and for a
moment, I held the unrealistic hope that he would make it through this
latest distress. He died four days later, quietly, I am told. I was not
there.
Like
others who have lost loved ones, there are conversations I never had
with my Dad that I probably should have. But near the end, we did say we
loved each other, which was rare (he was, after all, a Yankee). I
smoothed his brow and kissed him goodbye.
So on this 21st anniversary, I have no deep regrets. But I do have two impossible wishes.
My first is that Dad could have heard
my eulogy, which
I began writing that morning by his hospital bed. It spoke of quiet
wisdom he imparted to his children, and of the respect and affection
family and others held for him. In his modest way, he would have liked
to hear it, I bet, for such praise was scarce when he was alive. But
that is not how the story goes. We die and leave only memories, a
strictly one-way experience.
My
second wish would be to tell Dad how his only son has fared in the last
21 years. I know he would have empathy for some bad times I went
through and be proud that I made it. He would be happy that I found a
woman I love, Yolanda, my wife now for nine years and my best friend for
almost two decades: someone, like him, who loves gardening and birds.
He would be pleased that my three wonderful children, Rachel, Katy and
Cal, are making their way in the world; and that he now has three
great-granddaughters, Bella, Livvie and Viv, wonderful girls all. In his
humble way, he would be honored to know how frequently I, my sister
Mary Lynne and my children remember and miss him. He would be saddened
to learn that my other sister, his younger daughter, Lynda, died in
2015. But that is not how the story goes, either. We send thoughts to
the dead, but they send nothing back. We treasure photographs, but
they do not speak.
Lately,
I have been poring through boxes of black-and-white prints handed down
from Dad’s side of my family. I am lucky to have them, more so that they
were taken in the pre-digital age -- for I can touch them, as the
people captured in them surely themselves did so long ago. I can imagine
what they might say, if in fact they could speak.
Some
of the scenes are unfamiliar to me: sailboats on a bay, a stream in
winter, a couple posing on a hill, the woman dressed in fur-trimmed
coat. But I recognize the house, which my grandfather, after whom I am
named (George), built with his farmer’s hands; the coal stove that still
heated the kitchen when I visited as a child; the birdhouses and flower
gardens, which my sweet grandmother lovingly tended. I recognize my
father, my uncle and my aunts, just children then in the 1920s. I peer
at Dad in these portraits (he seems always to be smiling!), and the
resemblance to photos of me at that age is startling, though I suppose
it should not be.
A
plane will fly over my house today, I am certain. When it does, I will
go outside and think of young Dad, amazed that someone had taken the
controls of an airplane in America and stepped out in France. A boy with
a smile, his life all ahead of him.
My dad, second from top, with two of his sisters and his brother.
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| Dad, near the end of his life. |
