"I wonder what he was really thinking about his life. He married a beautiful woman, and I believe they loved one another. Whatever had happened in West Palm Beach, stayed in West Palm Beach. He married in his late 30s, held a good-paying job, owned his own home on a corner lot. He debated politics with my Republican uncle Everett Stumm, was militantly pro-union, worried me with his depression when Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson the second time. He never said so, but I got the notion the Republicans were not the party of the working man. He read all the time. In another generation, he would surely have gone to the university and read books with his feet up on the desk, so he wanted me to do that for him. Sometimes I resented him, as when blinded by summer sweat working on the lawn when he repeated, “If the job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” He thought rugs were more important than dogs. Did I know how much I loved him? I do now."
