Tag: dad

Role Models & Big Birthdays

Two of the people I compare myself and my life with the most are my father (middle) and my grandfather (his father, left). These pictures were taken somewhere around 1905, 1950ish and 1976-7. Each of us grew up in Oxford, Maryland. It’s safe to say that there is no place in the world that any of us felt or feels more at home when it comes to a location.

Things I have learned from my father: it’s possible to be a lot like someone in character and disposition while also being very different in terms of the gifts you have and the passions you pursue; sports and a love of sports is absolutely a love language; the happiness of your children is a life goal and aspiration and a moving target that as a parent you can never hit; you can say a lot with very few words; time spent with family in any location is something to be treasured; there is grace in putting others before yourself that it is not possible to know any other way; the word “damnit” is a catch-all—tone means everything.

My Dad was born in Oxford in 1944 and lived on a small farm in the town of Oxford, which would be a trip to think of there now. My aunt lives in the house they grew up in. He went to school in the building that is now the Oxford Community Center, then to Easton High School, then to Severn High School, then to the University of Virginia. He met my Mom for the first time when they were about 14 and 13 years old.

He graduated from UVA in 1966. The Vietnam War was going on. He enlisted in the U.S. Army. He got lucky and was sent to Germany, where he lived for three years.

He came back to Oxford, he and my Mom bought the house where my sister and I grew up and where they lived until 2021 when the house burned down.

He got a job as an accountant working for Fall Casson for a few years until he and three others took a chance and went out on their own starting Beatty Satchell & Company, a CPA firm. My Dad was known as “Mr. & Company” because he thought it looked tacky to have too many names on a business and didn’t need his name listed. Of the four that started the firm, he is the only one who still works there.

My memories of him as I was growing up include tax season, fishing with he and my grandfather, his office softball team (he played first base, like Eddie Murray), cookouts on the water at the Tred Avon Yacht Club, haunted houses every year as part of the Kiwanis Club, and him being asked to be treasurer of every nonprofit organization he volunteered for.

Their parenting style has always been to let their kids find their own way, make mistakes, figure out what was important, and to be supportive in every step of the way, helping us up when we fell. I fell, and fall, a lot more than my sister did or does. I always cared less about getting in trouble and more about letting my Dad down.

I have been so incredibly lucky that from childhood to now that my Dad has always been the first person I call to share good news, the first person I turn to for advice, and the first person I look to for solace when life falls apart. And he still picks up the phone.

We’ve been to Baltimore Orioles playoff games and a World Series game, Baltimore Ravens games, including playoff wins and losses. Going to a game together when they win (playoff win pictured above) is an awesome feeling.

Yesterday, my Dad turned 80. I tear up with stuff like this because I am so full of gratitude to have him as a role model, a friend, a grandfather to the girls—for them to get to know and appreciate him like I do—as someone who our family gets to share the joys, sorrows, confusion, wonder, and all the best stuff of life with. One of my all-time and forever favorite sounds and experiences is him laughing.

Turning 80. What a gift. The person having the birthday is the one who gets gifts. But it’s those of us who know and love him that get the biggest gift here.

Happy birthday, Dad. I don’t have the words to say what I actually want to say so these will have to do. I love you. We all do.

I’ll Never Be on Oprah

Being a father and a son, gratitude and all the feels well up on Father’s Day. About four and a half years ago, my father turned 70. We had a surprise shindig for him at the Oxford Community Center, which was the Oxford school where he went for kindergarten through 8th grade. He got roasted by a number of folks, and I spruced up my remarks and published them on Eastern Shore Savvy, a cool online magazine that has since gone away. And along with it, all the articles that were once online.

I missed having that article around in particular, so I found my draft of it, and bring it back here, for Father’s Day, four years later.

I’ll Never Be on Oprah
From Eastern Shore Savvy, January 2014

My father just turned 70 and I think I can beat him in a foot race. We used to race in front of our house in Oxford, maybe 50 yards to the end of the street. I was in high school the first time I managed to beat him.

My father grew up in Oxford when you could have horses and chickens there. He shares his name, Robert, with his father. He went to school in the building that now houses the Oxford Community Center. He met my mom, who is from Towson, Md., through a mutual friend in Ocean City when they were teenagers. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1966, the first in his family to do so. The Vietnam War was in full swing and the draft was happening. So he enlisted in the Army. The classes that completed basic training before and after him went to Vietnam. My dad was sent to Germany.

After the Army, my father returned to the Eastern Shore. A friend convinced him to think about public accounting as a career. In 1974, when I was two, he joined Beatty, Satchell and Company, a CPA firm, became a partner and has worked there ever since.

I have a lot of classic memories of growing up, father and son stuff. We’ve always had baseball—from learning to play catch in the back yard, to going to Orioles games at Memorial Stadium. To this day I’ve seen more professional sporting events at Baltimore’s now leveled ball park than anywhere else. I remember Dad playing first base on his office softball team, and when I got old enough, and good enough in little league, that’s the position I wanted to play.

During my last year of little league, my dad had taken to filming our games on his Betamax camcorder—he was convinced that Beta would surely outlast VHS—he created priceless audio while filming the last play of my season. Playing in Cordova, I slid safely into home plate on a wild pitch, stood up and raised a badly broken wrist up in the air. You hear a few gasps in the bleachers and then dad saying, “Oh sh**!” right before the tape cuts off. I haven’t watched that tape very often.

As an accountant, my father planned our family trips around CPA conventions—to Disney World, the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn., and to Boston. We drove like the Griswolds in the movie “Vacation,” as I wasn’t big on flying, and we stopped to in Charlottesville, Va., to dad’s alma mater, the Natural Bridge and the American icon, South of the Border, where Pedro straddles the line between the Carolinas.

Growing up in our house, Halloween quickly became our favorite holiday, because it meant helping build and being behind the scenes of the Kiwanis Club haunted houses, which were well known and epic to almost anyone that lived in Talbot County between the late 1970s to mid 1980s. I’ve seen my dad as Frankenstein, as a mad scientist, and a swamp creature, among other things.

There are some things a son picks up from his father. When I started drinking beer, I always went for Miller Lite. When watching the Baltimore Ravens, we yell the same words (in the same pitch) at the television when they throw an interception. I learned that real Christmas shopping is done on Christmas Eve, and not a day before.

There are some traits or inclinations that aren’t necessarily passed down. I’ve got more hair than my father does. I don’t eat as many Snyder’s Pretzels. And numbers don’t speak to me the way they do to him. With any father and son I guess there are going to be striking similarities and head-scratching differences and I think as I’ve gotten older I have learned to marvel at both.

A lot of writers get noticed for having troubled upbringings or non-existent parents, and they have become great despite what they’ve had to overcome. Dad has given me the creative disadvantage of raising my sister and me well. He taught us, by the way he lives, the difference between right and wrong. He’s been the consummate provider, working so that my mother didn’t have to, and making sure we could go to college. He has provided the example for me, of how to be a father, and set the bar immeasurably high. I’ll never be on Oprah.

When we get together for holidays or family dinners or kids’ sports games, my father has accepted the mantel of “Granddaddy,” which is what my sister and I called his father. As a father now, I think I feel maybe what he must have felt then, surrounded by your parents and your children. I’m not sure it gets any better than that.