When my late father retired, he began an emotional quest: to learn as much as he could about the father he never knew. His father walked out never to return when Dad wasn’t yet a month old. The year was 1928. My grandmother, twenty-one at the time, was a newspaper reporter as was the husband who abandoned her and disappeared. He died seven years later. When Dad finished his genealogy work in 1997, he summarized his extensive findings in his signature prose. The engineer always wrote clearly and objectively, like a dispassionate journalist.
While starting my own family-tree research recently to learn about my mother’s hidden roots, I reread Dad’s material. How did I overlook his closing paragraph fifteen years ago? Or was I too immersed in my own media career at the time to appreciate his conclusion?
As a final note, I have learned a great about what my father did, where he went, and when. However, I know virtually nothing about him as a person. I know nothing about his sense of humor, his intelligence, his interest in others, or his feelings about life.
Sadness and regret cry out from behind those words. I also hear a whispered challenge. Dad’s “I know nothing” tells me to dig deeper.
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