White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation

My Father’s Words

The closest I ever came to hearing my father talk to me as one adult to another was the day after I had graduated from Wesleyan, when I found his old diaries in my mother’s basement. Here was the account of his U.S. Navy service when he was twenty. He sailed to the Philippines in 1946, right after the war had ended. It wasn’t at all like the soldiers’ letters I had read in my history classes, filled with jokes and fond memories of high-school buddies back home. My father wrote about the day he saw a Filipino boy picking through the trash for an apple, and then went to the Army Officers’ Club “replete with a swimming pool, an eight-piece orchestra, and a bar well stocked with whiskey and beer of several brands.” He continued, “It occurs to me, if the Army and Navy spent more money on rehabilitation of the Filipinos and less on recreation facilities for officers, they would be losing fewer Jeeps and black market goods. The comparison of the hedonistic Officers’ Club and the child with the apples makes me ashamed to wear the uniform of the U.S. Navy.” In another entry, he mused, “Sometimes, in thinking over American history as it is told in textbooks, I get the impression that there is a serious discrepancy in the character of our people between former times and now. In the old days, say the books, Americans were generous and they fought for freedom and justice and the rights of man. The crooks and carpetbaggers and government-grafters never lasted very long, for the righteous wrath of the American people always drove them under. Nowadays, it seems to me that almost every group is interested in its own benefit first and the good of the whole second.” I sat down at my desk—the same desk that he had used in Chicago—and began to copy sections of the journal. I didn’t want to lose this contact with him. All morning, I put his words into my own handwriting, the felt-tipped pen gliding across the pages of my spiral notebook, the tears occasionally splashing down and smearing the ink. It was my father who had taught me to form the cursive letMy Father’s Words 137 138 ters in my name, copying and recopying C-L-A-R-A so I could trace the lines. Now, I was tracing his words once again. In the diary, and in his other papers, his fatherly advice was all there. His opinion of marriage: “A marriage founded on true understanding is far more likely to succeed than one founded on animal attraction.” His prime objective in life: “To live an ethical life, to follow the golden rule and help others whenever possible.” His reason for becoming a lawyer: “I have been guided somewhat by my desire to change the status quo, and to obtain more justice and an equal opportunity for all.” When my mother came home later that day, tossing her canvas work bag by the front door, I told her what I had found in the basement . She smiled. “Good for you,” she said. “I always meant to tell you to go and look down there one day.” “He was so idealistic!” I said. “I never knew that.” “Yes, he was,” she said, closing her eyes and exhaling sharply. “He was always getting disillusioned with everything because of that. Nobody was ever ethical enough for him. He always took that so hard.” I nodded, waiting for her to go on. She turned her back to me and started dusting the cloisonné box on the mantel with the sleeve of her sweater. “You know,” she said, “in some ways, I think he was too good for this world.” “No, I don’t know,” I answered. “There’s a lot I don’t know.” Years later, when I was back in Boston sorting through a box of papers my mother had given me, I found my father’s 1961 diary. I was born just three months before he began keeping the diary. His name was stamped in gold letters on the red cover. When I read it, I sat at the bottom of the basement stairs. Squeals and thuds from the cartoon my children were watching on TV drifted down from the living room. “I am going to try to keep more of a diary this year,” my father wrote on January...