​Blog 667 – 06.18.2017
One Dad In Particular

Today on Father’s Day, 2017, I would like to tell some stories about a particular, unique, and peculiar dad – James ( Jake, J.C, Windy) Clifford White. I loved my Dad and thought him a friendly giant as a little boy, an image never quite lost to me when I grew up to have children of my own. I grew to be a couple of inches taller than my dad but as I always have I will always look up to him.

Born the second of six surviving children my dad grew up in the Great Depression, not the best of times for many but far tougher for the poor. My granddad Thomas, whom I never knew, lost his, beloved wife, Mary Etta, after the birth of their last surviving child, leaving Ira Thomas, James, Walt, Sybil, Joe, and Ruby to be raised by a man who even the kindest accounts say was not particularly industrious, or very good managing what little money came his way, but had a certain proclivity even during Prohibition to seek answers to the important question of the day at the bottom of a bottle. I do not judge my Grandpa for his weaknesses and neither did my Daddy. And that is one of the things that I loved most about him – the way his love if not entirely blinding him to the faults and weaknesses of those he loved made them nevertheless quite easy for him to overlook.

My daddy loved me not because I looked like him (And they say I did) or because I thought like him (Which after ten I rarely did) or because I acted like him (that hard as I once tried deny it is the way I am most like my dad) but just because I was his son and he believed that is just what daddies do. Me, too, “It’s a love without end end, Amen” as the country song says. My daddy loved country music, a strong point of disagreement in my youth with him. Since his passing I have come to appreciate a lot of country music especially the older country classics that he loved so much. My dad was a life long Teamster/Trucker and there is a certain country song about a trucker talking about a certain billboard with a certain beauty wearing nothing but a towel and a smile that my daddy liked. That song still makes me smile and look for towel clad smiling beauties. It is not just a trucker song, but a beach, and a beauty lover’s song.

My dad, was a sailor in the Navy during WW II and as I have said before, just like the Marines, once a Sailor always a Sailor. Sailors, Soldiers, Marines, and Airmen all love pretty girls. Dad married a pretty girl right after the war but it did not work out. In February of 1950 he talked another pretty girl, my mom, into marrying him. Nine months later almost to the day I arrived. I was in a bit of a hurry to start this wonderful adventure.

My dad’s generation was not taught to hand out trophies and praise to their children much. Their parents did not think it necessary or needful and neither did they. But my dad was proud of his two fine sons. It was always in his eyes. Though we were never in the stories he liked most to tell because they mostly happened in his childhood, youth or during the War. When he spoke to others he proudly bragged on us. Never much in our hearing. Some years back I published some autobiographical stories that my daddy had typed up and that I had found after his and my mother’s deaths? I called the little book, More Than My Share from a Dad quote where he said of the good things in life that he had received more than his share. I think my mother, brother, and I were a big part of that. I am grateful and proud that James Clifford White had so many nick names – My favorite was and will always be Daddy.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White