this week finds me in granville, ohio at the home of my parents. grace and i have joined my brother tim [who lives here with his family] and my brother joe [from green bay]. jon, the happy mexican, is now in guatemala. we dont often all get together, but this is a special occassion. tomorrow my father goes in for open heart surgery to replace, or rather repair a bad valve. i know they do it all the time and the success rate is high, but it is still a major operation. and so we have all gathered.

it is, hopefully, very premature to begin any eulogies of my father, but i have just been reflecting a bit on his amazing life and figured this might be a good time to share some stories about him. well maybe one, it is getting late and the fire is starting to go down in the fireplace…

WHEN I WAS IN 9TH GRADE dad had all six of us pack up our backpacks and we headed out for a spring break trip to mexico. we had never been and so he thought this would be a good opportunity. of course, the dunham idea of spring break in mexico is not mazatlan or cancun; no senor frogs or margaritaville for us. we get to go “native,” to mexico city. one of the world’s dirtiest, crowded and most impoverished cities.

i can remember landing in mexico city and being overwhelmed: the size, the masses of people [close to 50 million inhabitants if i remember correctly], the extreme poverty [kids by the hundreds homeless and living in the streets], the filth and stench [the waves of diesel fumes would nauseate even the most rigorous of constitutions]. we had seen all this before, but somehow the concentration and sheer volume of this third-world left a profound mark on me. i can remember asking, wondering, why didn’t someone do something? why was there no help? it was if they had given up. as if the city was not even trying any more.

in the midst of all this we still were able to enjoy ourselves, take in some of the mexican culture and a fair amount of the city. we often would find ourselves in out-of-the-way places or riding along in crowded busses or trams. and while it was not always comfortable, convenient or even very efficient for us to travel this way, it did give us the opportunity to feel a little closer to the locals. and we like that feeling.

we had been in the city for maybe one or two days when we found ourselves on a very crowded tram in a less than reputible part of the city. we had all clamored and struggled on board at the last minute with about 20 others and so we were a bit split up. tim and i were together near the back; joe and jon near the middle. up towards the front, standing and clutching the overhead rail was my father. my mother had found a seat mid-tram.

now if you know my father, you know that he is given slightly to hyperbole and over reaction; he stubs his toe on a chair and you might think it had been chopped off for all the screaming and yelling. we all know this about him and so we were not all that surprised when we noticed our beloved dad in the center of a growing commotion at the front of the tram. we were however [also knowing him to NOT be a violent man] quite surprised to see him throwing indiscriminant punches at his fellow passengers.

being somewhat devoted to this man, we pushed our way to the front to reconnoitre the situation. once closer, we could hear him yelling, “sandy! get off the tram! get off the tram! everyone off the tram!”

we were also used to be somewhat obedient so we did; we got off the tram [along with about 10 confused, bilingual mexicans], wondering quite what had just happened. it wasn’t until dad had descended the stairs and caught his breath [it was quite a flurry of fisticuffs] that we learned he had been pickpocketed and the punches were aimed at all who he thought were accomplices to the crime. it was all we could do to convince him that they were long gone by this time and it was pointless to start off running on foot in hope of apprehending the culprits.

saner minds [ours in this case] finally prevailed, but it always impressed me my father’s tenacity, his unwillingness to give up. i think, if we had let him, we would be, to this day, in mexico hunting those pickpockets down. just for the principle of it if nothign else.

i know that one day we all must die. and my father will one day pass into the next life, a better life i am sure. but i hope if i have gleaned one thing from him, learned one lesson from all the years of watching him, following him around the globe, through foreign, sometimes hostile lands, i hope i have learned to never give, to always try, to always hope for a better world, a better life for those around me. and i hope that i have learned to never give up.