Editorial
Front Page - Friday, February 5, 2010
I Swear...
Father & Son
Vic Fleming
October 1992 – Allowing my eyes to close and my mind to relax, I see across the years to a 7-year-old with a baseball glove larger than he is. A grown-up, in his 40s, tosses the ball up and hits a fly. Doing as he was taught, the boy glides underneath the descending ball, raising the glove. And Father was there to ease Son’s pain when the ball somehow missed the glove and struck Son’s forehead instead.
Father would go on to greater achievements, as coach of the little league team when Son was in his ninth year. In retirement from coaching, Father yelled for Son’s teams – witnessing kick-offs, homeruns, sprained ankles and busted chins. In victory and defeat, Father stood by Son – always there for such support as was needed.
Father smiled and pretended to understand when Son learned about girls (and thus had less time to spend with Father). Father likewise seemed to comprehend when Son chose a college half a country away from home. And Father paid the tuition.
They got together again, a few days or years later, and asked, “Where did the time go?”
Son had grown busy and gone off to law school, married, settled in Arkansas. Father was now a grandfather, Son a father. So, for the first time since little league, they had something in common again.
Father had passed three score and 10 when the two of them first played in the father/son tournament. Four years they played. Then, a little heart trouble set in. But nothing that could not be overcome. Their visits became more frequent. Their friendship grew, in ways that had not occurred before.
As Father had always predicted, Son had become an After Meal Speaker. In the town where Son was born, in Father’s 79th year, Father sat at table and listened as Son gave the after meal speech. And Father seemed quite pleased.
There were things Son wanted to ask Father – about the old days. There were things Son wanted to tell Father – like how proud he was of him.
For, you see, Father had taken to working in a sporting goods store, with a bunch of folks younger than Son. When Son would talk to these people, they could only remark how much Father’s very presence in the organization meant to all concerned. That made Son feel very good.
Son perceived that Father was going about the sporting goods business – selling baseball gloves to mothers and fathers and children; outfitting soccer teams; measuring tennis shoe sizes – with the same sense of excellence and professionalism with which Father had gone about the work of banking and finance before his first and second retirements.
But Son did not exactly get the words out about how proud he was.
And then last Thursday, the call came that Father was gone. Son did not feel good about that at all. Son was not ready to let Father do such a thing! Had not Son just spoken to Father yesterday? Father’s plans, he had said, included the 1993 father/son tournament. And showing Grandson how to catch a fly ball.
Son’s spirits were uplifted by friends, who brought their hearts and prayers by to say they cared. Father’s friends included peers from three professions. And those who cried the hardest were the young folks from the sporting goods store. But those who will miss him the most live in the home of an Arkansas lawyer.
ELIJAH ANSON FLEMING, JR.
June 21, 1913 – Oct. 15, 1992
(This column was first published in the Arkansas Lawyer’s Winter 1993 issue.)
Vic Fleming is a district court judge in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he also teaches at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Contact him at judgevic@comcast.net.
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