I will be 67 years old in a couple of months. I am not
feeling particularly morbid at the moment, but it gets easier and easier to count
the number of my days. It’s reasonable to assume that I could live another 20
years—unless something unexpected comes up—and also reasonable to assume that I
will be in decent health most of those 20 years. Beyond that point, all bets
are off, and both disability and death will loom much larger.
But it occurs to me, in this moment, that the true span of
an individual life includes the years in which others will remember the
otherwise departed. My father, Bernie Epton, died in 1987. But today he is
alive in memory. Mine.
Today is not a special day. It’s not an anniversary of anything
that happened to Dad. But I have been reflecting on my own life, and on my
children, and how we have lived, separately and together. One thought triggered
another, and Dad was suddenly present.
Today, Dad is a young boy in Chicago, living through the
Depression and writing his father in Atlanta. Not to worry, Dad, he writes. Do
what you have to do in Atlanta. I will take care of everything here.
Today, Dad will drop out of school at the University of
Chicago and enlist in the Army Air Force. Today, Dad will leave for an Air
Force base in England, where he will begin leading bombing runs over Germany
and Eastern Europe.
Today, Dad will meet Audrey Issett, a private in the British
army assigned as a plane spotter with an anti-aircraft unit on the coast of
England. Today, Audrey is a combatant in the Battle of Britain. Today, Audrey
and Bernie will fall in love.
Today, the war in Europe has come to an end and Dad will be
rotated back to the states for the invasion of Japan, which will never happen. Today,
Audrey, pregnant with Teri, will finally make it to the States and meet the
maniac in-laws who will be her family for the next 65 years.
Today, Dad will pass the bar exam and become a lawyer.
Today, Bernie Epton will lose his first race for Congress.
Today, Audrey and Bernie and their four children will stop
at Rosenbloom’s after going to a movie together at the Hamilton on 71st
Street. We will order five hot fudge sundaes and one strawberry sundae to go.
(“Teri, Jeffrey, Mark and Dale, they are simply full of schwale,” Dad will sing
endlessly throughout our childhood, or at least until his oldest two become
teenagers, and things stop being so much fun).
Today, Dad and I, divided by all the things that divide
fathers and sons, will argue about the war in Vietnam. I will tell him that the
war is evil and so are the war makers. I will not support the war or acquiesce
to the domination of the war machine, I will tell him. And he will show me his
multiple medals and insist that we owe service to our country.
Today, after being drafted, I will leave for Canada. Dad
will be deeply grieved by my decision, but he will give me money to help me on
my way. He will pretend the money was actually left to me by my grandfather,
but I will know better.
Today, Dad and brother Mark will board a plane for Memphis,
where they will join in solidarity with the Memphis sanitation workers marching
in a memorial parade for Martin Luther King.
Today, on a visit home, I will knock on the door of my
parent’s apartment. Home alone, Dad will shout “what’s the password?” the first
phrase of a great Marx Brothers routine.
Today, Dad will pay for a naming ceremony at his synagogue
for Nathan Nightrain Epton, my first child. Nate won’t be there. Neither will
I. Nor will Nate’s mom be there. Dad will have Nate named Adam Nathan Epton
because he doesn’t approve of the name I gave Nate, and Adam begins with A, the
first letter of Dad’s father’s name. In the Jewish tradition, this is the way
to name a child after an ancestor. Nate won’t care, at all. Over time, I will
learn not to mind, either.
Today, Dad will retire from the Illinois State Legislature
after 16 good years during which he only screamed in frustration at his
legislative colleagues maybe a dozen times, okay, maybe a couple dozen. Today,
Dad will stop saying he’s the smartest guy in the legislature. Today, Dad will
stop saying he’s the richest guy in the legislature.
Today, Governor Thompson will call Dad and ask him to be the
Republican candidate for mayor of Chicago, and run against whoever wins the
Democratic primary, Jane Byrne, Richie Daley or Harold Washington, an old
friend from the state legislature.
Today, Washington will win the Democratic primary and because
racism will motivate many white Chicagoans to cross party lines in the general
election, Dad will become the first truly competitive Republican candidate for
mayor in decades. Today, Dad will try to explain to the media that his campaign
slogan, “Epton, before it’s too late,” is not a coded racial message. Almost
nobody will believe him, but he will insist that he’s right, they’re wrong and
the slogan will remain in use.
Late tonight, after a long day of campaigning, Harold
Washington will say to a campaign worker who has come to hate Bernie that the
man they are campaigning against is “not the Bernie Epton I know.” She will be
surprised by the depth of Harold’s compassion and his obvious affection for
Bernie.
Today, finally, the race will end. Washington will win,
becoming the first African American mayor in Chicago history. Dad will lose and
begin lamenting the damage the campaign has done to his reputation.
Today, I will talk to Dad, who has woken up, as he does
every day, feeling humiliated by his defeat and horrified by the belief that he
is a pariah. I will try to tell him that the reality is not so awful as he
imagines, but nothing I say will seem to help and the smiles seem few and far
between.
Today, four and a half years after the 1983 election, and
less than a month after Harold Washington died, Dad will die. Today, Dad will
be buried in Oakwood Cemetery on the south side, where Washington is also
buried, and where generations of Chicagoans, mostly African American and
Jewish, are buried.
Today, more than 26 years after Dad died, I remember him.
Today, Bernie Epton is alive.
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