My Father's Decennium

Last Monday on, October 21st, my mother celebrated my father’s 10-year anniversary of his passing. I almost know all the stories that my parent’s friends have told of him by now, but I always love being caught off guard and having one of them tell me a story that I have never heard of. There was a group of about 20 of us, and we all met at my father’s mausoleum at Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown, Washington, DC, where my mother had actually put up a tent for us with a bartender in the tent. I was not expecting the bartender part, but I guess I should have at the same time. All of the readings were great stories that were re-told, and some new stories that have never been told. A common theme of the stories that were told had to do with my father’s being in the woods and his love of the woods, his service in the Navy, and of course, when my father was the Editor-in-chief of the Washington Post during Watergate. 

One of my favorite scenes in the movie All The President's Men is when the camera cuts to Jason Robards standing in the doorway of his office looking over towards where Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein worked in the newsroom, and Robards yells, Woodstein! That was the name that my dad came up with for the both of them as a duo. I love that scene because back in those days, there were no computers, and everybody used typewriters, which were extremely loud in a newsroom, and everybody was typing at once. When Robards yelled, he yelled so loud that the whole newsroom went silent. I can certainly see my father doing something like that. I love you Dad, and will always miss you.