My Dad Died. RIP.

Things have been quiet around the project, and that’s because on January 2nd my father, Ron, passed away.

Proudly displaying his musky. He would have that fish mounted and I remember seeing it a lot as a kid.

It wasn’t a surprise. His health has been slipping the past few years. But it also was a surprise, because we didn’t expect things to decline quite so rapidly. So here we are. My father and I weren’t close. We were estranged for more than 15 years, and even after reconnecting we were still distant. But its important to me to honor him here, because despite the distance between us I still trace a lot of who I am to him.

My dad was a Bears fan and a fisherman. He was a lot more, but that’s how I think he would like to be remembered. And it’s mostly how I do. When I was just a kid I remember watching Curtis Conway score touchdowns and calling him to see if he thought they’d win the game (they often didn’t). And I remember going on fishing trips with him to the Wisconsin River near the Wisconsin Dells. We never caught much, but I remember riding in the boat and even the first time I had coffee… It was mostly cream and sugar.

That’s the short of it. But the long of it is something I really want to reflect on. So here we go…

My dad served in Korea during the Vietnam War. He was a pharmacist and served in a medical unit. I remember watching a lot of M*A*S*H with him as a kid, and thinking he was a part of something like that. He wasn’t, not exactly. But he did have stories that he told me, probably before I was really prepared to hear them. While serving he bought a Yashika 35mm camera. He got interested in slide photography and took a lot of pictures both in Korea and back home on bases. Once we were going through some of his slides and he showed me a particularly funny sequence that started with him and other soldiers baking pot brownies, and the final photo was of a Jeep that had crashed into a flagpole (that’s visual storytelling). When I was somewhere around 12 years old he gave me that camera. I didn’t know then that it would turn into my entire life’s work. But it did. I don’t have the camera anymore. In fact I think it was broken. I never got a usable photo out of it. But I do still have his tripod.

Most of the photos I’d try to take with that camera were on fishing trips. Those trips predate me getting the camera. I think we started going on those fishing trips around 8 or 9 years old. Hard to remember exactly. I have a few hazy memories of the first trip, and the planning of the first trip in fact. I remember going with both my mom and dad (who were divorced by that time) to get a snowmobile suit. Warm jacket and pants with a bib. This would be necessary attire while out on the fishing boat. Because when it got cold, we’d be staying out on the water. I remember that being very important. Knowing that when we were out fishing, we would be out there rain or shine. Asking why we didn’t just fish in the summer months didn’t ever occur to me. The Wisconsin Dells was his preferred spot, fishing the Wisconsin River. We’d drive up from the Chicago Suburbs, boat in tow, and head to a fishing resort right on the river. The Dells are a touristy town with mini golf and go-karts, and in those summer months acrobatic water skiing shows. I remember us driving past all the fun places; Paul Bunyan’s Pancake Breakfasts, Pirates Cove, and Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum, all to get to the river. For fishing.

My Dad was a walleye and musky fishman. And he had a lot of success in the past. He has two of his largest catches mounted. But that was in the before times. I hardly remember catching a single fish on those trips. I remember sturgeon fishing was very popular on the Wisconsin River. In October, when we were often fishing, you see lots of pontoon boats out on the water fishing for these huge prehistoric fish. And I remember wondering why we never did that. Why we were always after these elusive walleye. And suffice to say my love of fishing never really developed. But as I got older, fishing was time for quiet and peace. Catching anything wasn’t the highlight for me. It was looking out into nature. Thinking about the eco systems around us. And once I had my camera, looking for interesting things to photograph.

The other thing that sticks out to me about those trips was exploring music. My dad had a cassette tape collection that was amazing. And we would listen to classic rock (at the time known just as rock) on the drive, in the boat, and back at our cabins. My dad had a really fancy set of headphones and he’d set me loose to listen to tapes. I remember the first time I heard Jethro Tull playing rock flute. The first time I heard Edgar Winter Group playing Frankenstein. The first time I heard the Beatles play Dear Prudence. This stuff just hit differently. My dad loved music. And he passed that importance on to me in ways I never really understood. He knew all the guitar players and who played with who, where players started, all that geeky stuff. I remember when he told me I could borrow a cassette, and it felt like some sort of holy grail thing I now had access to.

While my dad was a pharmacist in the Army, that’s not what he really wanted. His mom wanted that for him, and he always told me that was hard on him. He ended up becoming an HVAC Technician and worked over 30 years at a VA hospital outside of Chicago. And that was something he did enjoy. One story growing up really sticks out to me. When I got to high school I had an opportunity to take elective classes. And going into freshman year I wanted to take a business course. My uncle had a hubcap business in Wisconsin that I would sometimes go work at, and my grandpa always told me the importance of working for yourself. So growing up I had this idea that business and entrepreneurship was important. But showing my dad the class catalog he wondered if I’d be interested in work more similar to what he did. So he brought me to the hospital on his off day and walked me around showing me what he did. I’d like to tell you I was won over and changed my elective, but I wasn’t. And if I’m being honest I really hated what he did. I looked down on my father for doing that type of work. I felt superior to him. I don’t know if I expressed that to him, or hid it. But I really shunned blue collar work. And I ended up taking that business class.

That business class didn’t lead me very far. Sophomore year I shifted my elective to drama class and that set me on a wholly different trajectory than I ever thought I’d be on. But I maintained my disdain for blue collar maintenance engineering.

Allow me this moment to cover a long period of time, because I want to get to something funny. I would take a couple years of drama classes, drop out of high school, briefly attend college for theater and photography before again dropping out, stop talking to my father and start the estrangement, get a warehouse job, quit the warehouse job, act in some things, and then I GET HIRED AT A THEATER TO DO MAINTENANCE. Then once that theater went itinerant, I got hired by a friend to join the maintenance team at a high rise in Chicago. And. I. Loved. It. That job led to some of my best friendships. And all the stuff my dad did, I was doing. Albeit in a less professional way. But I was doing it. And even though we were estranged, I still felt a connection and kinship through that job.

And the whole maintenance job thing is what gave me the curiosity and confidence to start woodworking and instrument building. If I hadn’t done that job I don’t know that I ever would’ve wondered how to build a guitar.

So this is why I want to honor my dad. And honor him here specifically. Because if it weren’t for his influence, this project probably never happens. He gave me my first camera. Those trips were foundational in how I came to understand nature and music. And through his profession, I found myself as a craftsman.

That is this project. And I hope as it grows you can hear his echo in it.

Official obituary here.

This photo was taken in Korea, sometime around 1973.

He kept this photo in his wallet. That was his boat and he was proud of it.

I don’t remember seeing my dad (far right) in a suit very often. Not sure where this was or what it was for. But look at that bartender.

As a youth.