Life, and the Guidance of Role Models

Dad

           

                                          Rick Jason as Lt. Hanley             Hugh Beaumont as Ward Cleaver

Copyright © 2019

By Ralph F. Couey

For most people, I think, the way in which life has worked out has had very little to do with how it was imagined when we were young.  The twists and turns endemic to this path we live has shown the tendency to turn plans on their collective ears, forcing us down unfamiliar paths.  

As a child, I imagined life would work out like it did for my role models.  My father, first and foremost in my personal pantheon of heroes, was a man of intelligence and great wisdom.  He was dignity personified and had embarked on a life of service and discipleship, most of which I became aware at his funeral when countless people told me of the impact he had on their lives.  It was like being introduced to someone new.  Like others of his generation, he knew the value of hard work and in the lingering shadows of the Great Depression, never took prosperity for granted.  I loved and respected him deeply, but despite his concern, support, and encouragement, I always felt that I never really measured up.

Being a child of the '60's, I spent a lot of time watching TV, from which I gained a certain make-believe perspective.  But there were role models there as well.  Ward Cleaver, father of the Beaver, so perfectly played by Hugh Beaumont was one of my favorites.  Through the lens of childhood, I saw a lot in him to be admired and respected.  It's no accident that my regard stemmed from the fact that he shared so many valuable attributes with my own father.  Calm and steady even in the fiercest storms, both of them possessed seemingly boundless courage and wisdom.  They always had the right answer to any question, the right solution to any problem.  True to the cultural norms of those halcyon days, they were in unquestioned command of their household realms.

Both Dad's, mine and the Beaver's, wore suits and worked in offices.  I knew what my Dad did, but the nature of Ward's profession will forever remain a mystery.  We would see him occasionally answering his office phone while sitting behind a desk mysteriously bereft of papers, folders, or in-and-out boxes.  The only observed accouterments being a phone and a pen-and-pencil set.  Whatever he was doing, he was nonetheless a man of authority.

My Dad was a World War II veteran, and it's very likely Ward was as well.  From his mannerisms and surety, I think he was probably an officer, likely Army infantry.  In that, he shared a lot of mannerisms with another of my role models, Rick Jason's role as Lt. Hanley in the series Combat!  Hanley led the platoon in which the series lead Vic Morrow served as the crusty, old-beyond-his-years Sergeant Saunders.  Hanley was also a man of authority, and regularly issued orders which were difficult and dangerous to carry out.  Now, these orders probably flowed to him from Company or Battalion HQ, but Hanley never passed the buck.  He took personal responsibility for the orders he issued, and personally bore the often fatal consequences of those orders.  My father was a caring and compassionate man. But make no mistake, when he issued orders, they were to be instantly obeyed and fully carried out to his specifications and expectations.  In that respect, all three men were very much alike.  And in the end, if everything was done correctly, there was a measure of praise that would be shared.  For most men, the highest praise possible was making the Old Man proud.

Basing my life on three men, one real, the other two fictional, set the bar for success at a very high level.  Impossibly high, as it turned out.  The trouble for me was that they made it all look so easy.  As I discovered, nothing is that easy.

One of the most valuable lessons of leadership is that a leader can be wrong, but must never be uncertain.  A leader who wavers, creates an army which wavers and in battle, and in life, there can be no such hesitancy or weakness.  I had confidence in my Dad's decisions because he appeared to have confidence in rendering them. Children need that certainty, that rock in their lives. It keeps the boundaries of their existence firmly in place, and keeps their minds on the present, instead of worrying about the future.

Growing into an adult, there have been plenty of times when I truly didn't know what the right choice was.  But the situation demanded a decision and I had to come down firmly on one side of the fence.  Yes, I agonized over those choices.  But I knew I had eyes on me and for their sake, I had to make the decision, believe in it, and trust in it, and then let the outcome speak for itself.

My life is a road map of my decisions, both sound and unsound.  It was only late in life that I found out that my decision-making had been impaired by cognitive disabilities of which I was completely unaware. At times I felt stupid and incompetent, always wondering why I couldn't make things come out right.  But I did have three careers, all of which I worked to the limits of my capabilities, although part of me wishes I could have been better, and suspects that I should have been better.  My Ward Cleaver dreams were never fully realized though, and at times I feel like my years were wasted.

Do I still have dreams?  Difficult to say.  There is a running joke among us seniors that every day you can wake up is a good day, given the alternative.  I'm not so sure the bar needs to be set that low, but there have been times of late that I have wished I was someplace else doing some thing else.  But that may be more reflective of my innate nomadic nature.  Perhaps a more accurate inquiry might be, "What else is there for me to accomplish?"  That's a much harder question to answer.  We are all individuals, and it doesn't do us any good to lay someone else's yardstick along our own.  I have a very dear friend who retired from teaching, and all he did was go lead a major symphony orchestra. As much as I honor and respect him, I still can't help but wonder, "why can't I do something like that?"  Sure, there are ideas that occasionally flit through my brain and then vanish without a trace.  I still have ambitions about writing, still wanting to author my Great American Novel.  But writing is a road rutted with disappointment and heartache, a Darwinian existence where only the strong survive.  

As I've collected critiques, I have come to realize that my writing is largely instinctual, bereft of any real rules except that it sounds good.  To me, anyway.  In the fifth season of the groundbreaking HBO series "The Wire," a newspaper editor is looking over the shoulder of one of his reporters as he's writing his story.  He points out that "You've started three sentences with a gerund."  I had to admit I felt a little dumb.  If you asked me the difference between a gerund and predicate, you would get a blank stare in response.  I could really benefit from a another class in third grade English, although, like any aspiring scribe, it's hard to admit I'm not yet good enough.  When I was in third grade, and my teacher was trying so hard to help us make sense out of the myriad parts of grammar, I wasn't all that interested in writing, and so vastly unmotivated to learn.  Now, however, I really am motivated to learn to write better, to obey those pesky rules.  I guess if there's one last ambition out there for me, that would be it.

As a kid, I never thought about being a writer.  In all fairness, I never thought about being an Intelligence Analyst either.  I just wanted to be some combination of my Dad, Ward Cleaver, and Lt. Hanley.  But as we have all discovered, life is a curvy road.

And you never know what's waiting around the bend.