We recently placed my father in hospice care as his health has been rapidly declining since spring.  He is 92 years old.  Everyone who knows us both tells me I am the spitting image of my father.  I admit there are moments when I get glimpses of him in my face or in a smile just as I see my grandfather in him or the way I fall asleep in an armchair while watching television.  And, there is definitely no denying his genetic influence on my hairline and scalp condition, but I will never be the man that Wayne Alfred Timby is.

In my mind and heart, he is a giant.  He is the kind of giant that was sleeping quietly as I grew up.  He never did anything the world would call spectacular (although he was one of the engineers who helped perfect rooftop air-conditioning systems for the greater good of mankind, even if we didn't have air-conditioning in our home until a decade or more later).  Then, over a period of months, even a few years, the gigantic footprint he left on my life became more and more evident.  It wasn't that he was an affectionate father (he wasn't) but I knew he loved me.  It wasn't that he was strict (he was) but that he was forgiving and merciful.  It wasn't that he lavished us with gifts (he didn't) but that he taught us the value of everything God placed into our lives.  Sometimes knowledge and understanding come as the years ahead shrink in possibility.

I know Dad best from the ten years we lived in Delaware, Ohio, from Christmas vacation 1958 to Christmas vacation 1968.  Those were two very difficult Christmases.  Away from family in 1958 and away from friends in 1968.  I never took kindly to moving.  I remember crying my eyes out at the statue of the bison in the Buffalo train station the night we left behind grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins to move to the Midwest frontier, praying Santa would find us in our new house on the other side of nowhere.  It was much the same ten years later as we left central Ohio for Bucks County, Pennsylvania, leaving behind my high school senior class, friends and neighbors that had become my surrogate family, my swimming teams (the Pacers of Rutherford B. Hayes High School and the Delaware Stingrays of the summertime Central Ohio Conference of Swim Teams), my girlfriend Kathi, my job at Bun's Restaurant, and my church family at St. Mary's.  Yes, it was tough.

We changed trains in Cleveland.  I must have slept most of the way because I don't remembers much about the trip.  It was a late-night train, arriving in Columbus about dawn.  Dad was there to greet us and to drive us about 20 miles north to our home in the wilderness.  I do remember thinking the trip from Columbus to North Liberty Street seemed to take longer that the train ride from Buffalo. The house was big compared to the duplex we called home in Tonawanda.  My brother and I shared one room and my sisters shared another.  Mom and Dad had their own room with no crib!  The house had a huge (at least to the wide-eyed senses of a boy in second grade) garage with a loft that must have been used for storing hay before we moved in with our black Pontiac.  The next day Dad took us all out to see the city and I remember stating in an emphatically factual way, "Everything is so square!"  At the end of the tour we bought a Christmas tree.  All was right with the world.  That is, IF Santa could find us.  Dad took care of that and had us sit down and write Santa letters with our new address.  He promised to deliver them to Santa's helpers in the morning on the way to work.  Looking back, I'm sure he did.

That first Christmas in Ohio came and went.  I don't remember much about it, not even what gifts Santa put under the tree for us.  Other than shedding tears and whining like inconsolable babies when we received our first long-distance telephone calls from our grandparents on Christmas night, we were busy exploring the neighborhood, creating snowmen on the front lawn, and flapping our arms and legs to make angels in the snow out back.  Oh! and the hill from the alley to the garage was spectacular for sledding.  Then vacation came to an end and it was time to meet the local kids.

My father agreed to send me to Catholic school at St. Mary's since it was my year to receive my First Holy Communion, so my mother and he took me downtown to enroll.  Mom carried Paul, and Joanne and Karen walked with Dad, holding his hands. I got stuck with the diaper bag (remember, this was when mothers still used real diapers!).  Than SHE came into the hallway.  She appeared to be a giant marionette sans strings with a huge, flat, black head, a face wrapped in bandages, and a rope dangling from her side.  I don't think I had ever seen a nun before.  We didn't have them at Benjamin Franklin Elementary, and they certainly didn't dress anything like Mrs. Blackburn.  She stood in the doorway with a half-smile disguising what I was sure was an intense desire to eat me for dessert after she finished off my parents.  I screamed and Dad simply said, "Bryan, be a man."  I don't remember the name of this principal who spoke with my parents and ignored me altogether while explaining tuition (a whopping $1.00 a week, payable when report cards were returned every six weeks).  I do remember, however, because I was trying not to miss a single word out of fear of being buttered and grilled by Sister Whatever-Her-Name-Was who was asking for any talents that my father could provide to help support the parish community since even non-Catholic parents (Dad was a Presbyterian) were expected to be involved.  I think he was as intimidated as I because he didn't object at all.  (My mother told me years later that Dad would service the heating system in the convent and would take the sisters a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon whenever they needed help, admitting that he would often come home shaking his head and mumbling that there was nothing wrong with their furnace.)  I would meet Mrs. Mahoney, the second grade teacher, on the first day of class in the new year.

Walking to Mrs. Mahoney's classroom was nerve-wracking.  Sister-What's-Her-Face escorted me and introduced me to my teacher and the class.  It took a few days to learn their names, but they were names that would be important to me right up to today.  There was Cathy Wolf, who couldn't get my name right for the longest time.  Freddie Furlong.  Jimmy Russell and Randy Thompson.  Steve Walker.  Cathy Reed and Barbara Buchahn.  Debbie Ford.  Tommy Frentsos.  John Bills and Eddie O'Connell.  Greg Amato.  Bobby Held and Charlie Kelly.  Ricky Longstreth.  Danny Parker and Barbara Bianchi.  They made me feel welcome, but Mrs. Mahoney, as sweet as she was when I arrived, ridiculed me when I failed the pop quiz in religion that day which asked but one question: What is the name of the new pope?  I had no clue about what a pope was let alone what a pope was named. I had attended CCD classes in Buffalo in preparation for First Holy Communion and I would venture a guess that sometime in the weeks before we moved the catechist probably told us about Pope John XXIII being elected, but, truth be known, Janet Hoose, who lived across the street, and I skipped class more than once.  Besides, the ridicule was unfair because the other students were given the question before the Christmas break.  So my first day in Catholic school went from a nervous entry to an exit post-haste fueled by anger.  When Dad came home I heard his sound advice again: "Bryan, me a man.  Go back tomorrow with your head held high."