John 3:16 – Be thankful, grateful, patient, charitable, kind, and smile, as it is infectious. God Bless America; protect our president and Military!
I had two traumatic times in my life when my father, at the age of 42, suffered a severe, debilitating stroke in 1958, about 15 days before my second birthday. I’ve written at length about this time in our lives in a past post. The Cliff Notes version is that our mother was 2 months pregnant with our kid sister on that cold, snowy February day, with 6 mouths still to feed at home.
Looming were the obvious questions at the time: would he survive, as the odds were against it in the first 5 years? How were they to manage money to save the house, pay the utilities, keep food on the table, schooling, and nurse her husband back to health? What would be the long-term solution to a man who worked a union job for PTC (Philadelphia Transit Co.) and would be unable to return due to his disability? Living one day at a time but always focused through faith on the future. Needless to say, it was tough on my 5 older siblings, ranging in age from 2 to 12; all of them had to grow up just a little faster than most
Many good people were in and out of the family, with neighbors like a Jewish Deli owner named Oscar Levine, who would run a tab and sell my mother goods at cost. He would always manage to put day-old bread, cakes, and milk about to go out of date into bags to give her for free, since he was going to take a loss anyway. I remember my father, when he got back on his feet, going around to pay against the tab and was told there was no rush. Oscar would retire and sell the business shortly afterward, and my proudful dad would never really get to make good on paying the tab. They always managed, where they could, to pay it forward through acts of kindness and charity.
Zoom ahead to 1991: We would buy a house in another more upscale area of Drexel Hill and, unbeknownst to us, within two years, would find it had a structural problem caused by an alien fungus. We brought it to the attention of our Homeowner Insurance Company, which, after a year of fudging on our policy as a whole, went from my wife’s heel going through the floor to a 6′ by 6′ hole in our living room floor.
On December 10, 1993 at around 9:30 at night, while watching the Perry Como Christmas show, the radiator expansion tank fell from a weakened joist (23 in all would need to be replaced), pulling down some of the plumbing. Over the years we managed to put it all behind us and move forward. As we tell our kids and grandkids, the clock will move forward with or without you, and itdoesn’t care one bleep about the hardships you face. My advice: if you’re faced with a problem, put your big pants on, find a solution, and get to work. We are not a fans of complainers or whiners.
Thank God, my mother, who lived in the area, put off moving into Lima Estates and opened her arms and doors to our family in our time of crisis. Something she was long and well-versed in. We ended up suing the Insurance Company won the case but lost what was needed to pay what was needed to fix that house. Luckily, we always guarded our credit and, through loans and credit cards, were able to fix the house. A financial setback in the 10s of thousands.
Like my mother and a lesson well learned and now taught to our children and now grandchildren – the clock will always move forward in life with or without you, and guard to always make sure it is with you!
In life, we all experience setbacks, some material, some financial, but the hardest ones you learn are those in sudden death or accidental death. We choose to look at life’s blessings, which have put both those parts of our life’s journey shared with you today, to face your troubles head-on and with dignity. Our children and grandchildren were all born healthy, and that is more important than any setback we might have faced in life. If you don’t think so, just ask any parent whose child is in the fight of their life with a debilitating illness or a child who needs 24/7 care and the worries they carry. Any one of them would trade your problems in a heartbeat. Take it from a guy who worked with non-profits MDA, Variety, Ronald McDonald, Gift of Life, Philabundance, and more.
Many in the “Greatest Generation” who lived through the struggles of the “Great Depression” worked in FDR programs like the CCC and went on to fight in Europe and Asia in WWII and Korea, then rebuilt many of those places and advanced technologies as stepping stones to where we are today. They rarely complained and told their stories, as they all knew someone who had it worse or didn’t make it. They had character and grit!
Point to Ponder: The character of a person is and can only be measured by how they respond to things that didn’t go their way or made life more difficult- or, in His words, “A tree is known by its fruit”.
The bottom two are my dad in the CCC’s from 16 to 18 years old in Pine Furnace, PA, and he was a dynamiter. The picture shows my kid sister holding him a few months after he got home from rehab from a debilitating stroke he suffered earlier that year. Middle top row: my mother and father-in-law, Mike Kmeco, who fought under Patton in both Africa and the European theater as a tank SGT. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and his division opened at least two Jewish concentration camps, among other things.
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