The last eight Father's Days have been bittersweet at best, because for each of these observations honoring fathers I have been one but haven't had one. It was just before Father's Day in 1999 that my Dad passed away.
If when it's all said and done I can leave the kind of legacy that my father did, I will have done well.
Robert Harold Riley was the oldest of Robert J. and Myrtle E. Riley's seven children. He was born into a hardworking, loving blue collar family in Gadsden, Alabama, where almost everyone worked for or in support of the Goodyear Tire plant in town. His father, my grandfather, was a pipe fitter at Goodyear. Very early in his life he displayed an uncanny natural ability to draw, which he continued to hone through his teenage years.
While he was in high school, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the US entered WWII. Like all of his male classmates, he went to enlist and fight for his country. But an emergency appendectomy eight weeks earlier sealed his fate: He was classified 4-F and they wouldn't take him. It was a bitter disappointment that would haunt him the rest of his life when he thought of all of his classmates who went and didn't come home.
Instead, he became the first one in his family to go to college, entering the University of Alabama on an art scholarship in the fall of 1943. After college, he became a civilian contractor for the US Army in Fort Benning, Georgia, where he met Mary Francis Cone. They were married in 1952. Bob, as he came to be known in college, was offered a position with John Peter Associates in New York. At JPA, he quickly distinguished himself as a world class designer and illustrator, working on high profile projects for Golden Books, McCalls, and Time-Life. He became the youngest vice-president at JPA.
In addition to his incredible art and design skills, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of classical music. He was right at home in New York, the epicenter of American art and culture.
My earliest memories of him are tender ones. He loved to read to us, especially Winnie-The-Pooh stories and The Little Prince. I remember him singing to me often. And I will never forget the way he called me "son." He would call me that my whole life, with the same tender inflection in his voice.
In the early 1960s my parents decided they didn't want to raise their family in New York, so we made plans to move to Georgia. It was an exciting adventure to me. It wasn't until thirty years later that I realized what a sacrifice that move was for him.
By this time, Dad was over 70, and in failing health. I came by to see him and found him depressed, which was very rare - he was normally the ultimate optimist. Not on this day, though. I soon learned why. Dad had just read John Peter's obituary in the Atlanta paper. John Peter was more than a boss to him. He was a mentor and friend. As we sat around the kitchen table and talked that day, I learned that the company Dad left in 1963 went on to have offices in New York, London and Paris. He left John Peter Associates as a 36 year old rising star and that firm had become a global player in the publishing business. It was in that conversation that I realized what he gave up for us.
I couldn't resist asking him if he had any regrets about leaving New York for Atlanta, which in 1963 was hardly a hotbed of publishing, graphics and advertising. For the first time that day, his broad grin returned. "Not for a second" he said.
As a kid I thought it was the coolest thing in the world that I was able to walk into the library of any school I attended, go to the always present set of the Time-Life Nature series, open the pages up, point to one of the pages and say, "My daddy drew that."
My father and I were always close, but never more than the last three years of his life. I moved back to Georgia and was able to visit with him several times a week, sometimes at home, but most often as I took him back and forth to dialysis.
Dad slipped away on May 20, 1999, surrounded by his family. He was lucid almost to the end and he knew he was going home, so we all got to say everything that needed to be said. As he quietly stopped breathing, we sang his favorite hymn to him, "I Will Arise and Go to Jesus." It was, as Gary Chapman sang, "As good as goodbye gets."
There have been so many moments over the past seven years that I would have given all I have just to talk to him, to hear his voice one more time. So many times I would have given anything to get his take on a situation or problem I was facing.
Each of the last eight Father's Days have been tough to get through. But something about this one was harder than the rest. We had a great day together, just my wife and son and I. They treated me like royalty all day. I got to talk to my daughter by phone that evening. But all day long in the midst of the joy being a father was an almost unbearable longing to be a son again.
Happy Father's Day, Dad. Thanks for the legacy you left me.
God, I miss you.
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