Remembering my Dad, for Father's Day

 RHYS BOWEN:  We have never celebrated Father's Day. John, that least sentimental of men, declared it a made-up holiday to cash in commercially. It was not celebrated in England when I was growing up.  If it had been, I'd certainly have feted my father. Frank Newcombe Lee was the loveliest of men. Kind, gentle and caring. He was a big softie. When my brother and I were fighting he'd say, "Don't make me take this belt to you!: Actually he never struck either of us but we were still afraid of the threat.

Example of being a big softie: When I was in college I was going to Germany for my friend's wedding and asked for my ticket as a Christmas present. My only present as it was expensive. But transistor radios had just been invented (I know. I'm that old) and I coveted one. i certainly hadn't asked for one. My parents had limited funds and two kids in private school and college. So I was surprised, as I went through my Christmas stocking, to find a battery. What on earth could I need a battery for, I wondered. Then hope glimmered. Surely it couldn't be.... and it was. Right at the bottom, my transistor radio.  That was my dad who not only picked up that I really wanted one, but went out and bought it.

He adored my mother and would do anything for her. Every Christmas he'd ask me to buy four pairs of nylon stockings to put on the tree as her little extra present. One Christmas he slipped a gold Swiss watch in between them.

He ran a paper factory. One of his workers, the stoker, Old Vic, got lung cancer and was in hospital. Daddy visited him every evening on his way home. 

And I have an interesting story about that factory. It was small, in the middle of Kent. it made tissues, paper napkins, spiral bound notebooks (the first to do so).  Last Christmas I was hunting for crackers ( the type you pull with a present inside).I had searched all over with no success My agent tipped me off to T J Maxx. I went there and found these beautiful large crackers. As I walked to the cash desk with them I studied them and nearly dropped them in a state of shock.  Imported by the Swan Mill paper company. My dad's factory. the small factory in the middle of Kent and here I am in the middle of California. I got chills. It felt as if my dad had found these for me.

Do you have any special dad memories?

The Fathers In Our Lives

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Sunday is Father’s Day, and it’s going to be a different one for lots of folks. Where normally you might have made a trip to Dad’s house, or had the family over for a BBQ, that’s the last thing you want right now, with older people being the most vulnerable population to Covid-19. As for younger fathers who still have kids at home, they’ve probably been seeing more of their offspring than they might like, and are wishing for a break!

I’m fortunate to still have my dad around. He’s a healthy 84 year old who’s finally getting out more now that Gov. Cuomo is easing restrictions in upstate New York. Only one of his eight kids is close enough and quarantined enough to see him in person - the rest of us will call. I always thank Dad: most of us are assigned fathers by fate, but he chose me. He married my mom when I was 14, and adopted me shortly afterwards, changing my name from Julia Spencer to Julia Spencer-Fleming (although I was always called “Julie” at home…) He couldn’t legally adopt my sister and brother - their birth father was still alive, unlike mine - but he raised them as his own. There was never a difference between the kids he had had since birth and those of us he picked up later.









The Spencer-Fleming-Lent family,c. 1980



And of course, on Father’s Day I think of my own kids, who have lost their dad. Ross’s big thing for the day was to have the kids make homemade cards. He didn’t care about presents, or being taken out to dinner (we did hit a few Sea Dog games over the years, which was nice) but he adored those homemade cards. And thank heavens for that - after he died, we went through his “memory bags” - totes where I would stuff everything he wanted to keep - and there they all were, to make us laugh and remember what a good father and man he was.

Okay, Reds, now that I’ve made myself get all misty, tell us about the dads in your life.


LUCY BURDETTE: My dad was a keeper--I was lucky, so lucky to be his daughter. He loved having a family and being a father, loved taking us camping, reading and singing to us, and was very proud of everything we accomplished. I will always miss him and can’t wait for you to read my sister’s memoir, I HAVE BEEN ASSIGNED THE SINGLE BIRD, which is coming in August. The photo is my mother, my sister and me, and my dad, probably around 1954. My father-in-law was terrific too as a dad, and so is John. I hit the jackpot in the fathering department.











RHYS BOWEN: My dad was a lovely man— gentle, kind and very generous. He adored my mum and always put family first. He did love to tease, however, which I hated as a teenager. He was an engineer by profession and there was nothing he couldn’t fix. He was always redecorating and improving our house. My fond memory? It was the year small transistor radios came out. I really wanted one but I was being given a ticket to Germany for my friend’s wedding as my Christmas present. On Christmas morning I opened my stocking and found a battery. What would I need a battery for? Unless… wild hope surged and there at the bottom of the stocking was my radio, thanks to my dad.







DEBORAH CROMBIE: I was lucky in the father department as well. He was quiet, kind, generous to a fault. He grew up poor in east Texas, had very little formal education, and was determined to give my brother and me the things he hadn't had himself. He was creative, writing his own advertising for his business and a little bit of poetry. I think if he'd had different opportunities he'd have been a writer. He loved travel, and food! (I wonder who he passed that one down to?) One of our family jokes was that Charlie always planned any trip around meals.

He adored giving presents, which you can see in this photo, one of my very favorites.

HALLIE EPHRON: Talking about my husband now, who is a superb dad. He did his duty, humiliating our daughters by wearing socks with his sandals and pens in his pockets (he’s a physicist). One of my daughters had a nightmare that her dad showed up in his artichoke T-shirt and sequined shorts, with his bird binoculars hanging around his neck. She wrote about it for a college essay (she got in). She’s come to appreciate him (as I type they’re playing Words with Friends) and she even has (and uses) her own bird binoculars and Peterson Guide. I’m not sure what happened to the artichoke T-shirt but I’m sure it’s somewhere in his closet.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: My dad. In this photo, doesn't he look  like Arthur Miller? He was a composer, and a musician, and he and my mom married when she was 19. And had me. But before that, he was drafted into World War 2, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and was taken prisoner..and ah. Was in prison camp with Kurt Vonnegut. But later, he became the music critic for the Chicago Daily News, and told me his mantra which I think of today: "There's always another typo."
Isn't that great?
He then became a diplomat, and became the cultural affairs officer at embassies around the world. He retired from his job in the foreign service after serving his last post at the court of St. James. He's buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Until the end, he loved music, and poetry, and taught me about Pogo and Mozart. That is quite a legacy.

Hank's father..circa 1955 

Now it's your turn, dear readers. Tell us about the fathers and father-like men in your life. And in honor of Jerry, and his artichoke T-shirt, here's the actual Giant Artichoke Restaurant of Castroville:

But I love Him Anyway!

RHYS BOWEN: 

I know we’ve just celebrated Father’s Day and that has made me think fondly, but with some amusement about my husband John, to whom I’ve been married for over 50 years now.

His good points: he brings me a cup of tea in bed in the mornings. Much appreciated.

He does all the grocery shopping.

He makes sure the household bills are paid.

He is good with money.

He is generous, if a little lacking in imagination. He has bought me some lovely pieces of jewelry, when he sees something he thinks I’ll like. On the other hand, when I told him to surprise me one Christmas I got a biography of Winston Churchill! No, he would never think of buying clothing or bath products.

And he is first reader and editor of all my books. He is ruthless in his criticism resulting in many fights but I do take many of his suggestions.

But he does have his quirks:

He is fanatical about the dishwasher. No matter how I stack things, he goes in and rearranges everything. Oh, and he washes everything before he puts it into the dishwasher. 

He is always losing things and blaming me. “Where’s my pen? Did you use it?” And I say, “It’s right there, on the table, in front of you.” And he’s says, “Oh.”

This is not new. The kids once wrote a skit in which he comes into the room at Christmas time and asks, “Where did you put the Christmas tree?”

He is going deaf and will not admit it. I was telling him that he needed an online vault for his passwords. What sort of fault? He asked. Sigh.  Apparently I whisper, look away when I speak, drop my voice at the end of sentences and mumble. Does this sound familiar to other wives?  I keep trying to convince him that hearing aids these days do not just magnify all sounds but can be tuned to the frequencies he has lost.

And lastly it is my belief that old men should never be allowed anywhere near technology. You should see him with Alexa.

“Alexa, do you think you could find that Benny Goodman number that goes like this…”

When she says “I’m sorry, did you mean…”

He goes on, “So there is some woman singing and…”

Eventually Alexa goes silent in despair.

John: That darned thing just doesn’t work properly.

The same with Siri. We had to come off the freeway so he could find a bathroom. Yes, old men need to do that too. We could not find out how to get back onto the freeway. I was driving. I told him to ask Siri.

John: Siri, we came off the freeway to take a pee and now we can’t…

When we used to use a GPS we were driving in Phoenix (which is a no-brainer. All streets either go North south or east west. GPS, whom we had called Mildred, said Take Bell Road exit. John always liked to take Greenway. Mildred didn’t like this.

Recalculating: Turn right at 39^thStreet.

He kept going.

Recalculating, Turn right at 38^thStreet.

He kept going

Recalculating: Turn right at 37^thStreet.

Me: for God’s sake turn it off.

John: She has to learn!

Me: LOUDLY. She’s a computer. She can’t learn!

But I love him anyway.

Happy Father's Day!

HALLIE EPHRON: It's Father’s Day, so let’s talk about our dads.

Mine was a gifted and flawed creature. A screenwriter who'd been president of his senior class at Evander Childs High School in the Bronx. His father owned a rug store on Fordham Road, but it was his mother who saved the family from bankruptcy during the Great Depression because she'd been secretly investing in real estate.

He was the youngest of four brothers. The only one who went to college, he got himself thrown out of Cornell in In 1934 in his senior year for stealing books. He landed in Hell's Kitchen and talked his way into a job as assistant stage manager, met my mom, and talked her into writing a play with him which was produced on Broadway and led to them moving to Hollywood to write screenplays.

He was mercurial and charming. A storyteller who loved to take center stage. On the down-side, he was bipolar and alcoholic. You never knew, when you arrived at his NYC apartment and knocked, which version of him would answer the door.

And yet the one thing he got right was to make every one of us, his four daughters, feel loved. Adored. We were the cleverest, the funniest (even better), and the most adorable. It didn’t patch over his ‘issues,’ but it gave me resilience I needed to meet the inevitable road bumps in the real world.

Tell us about a dad in your life.

JENN McKINLAY: My father was a brilliant artist and a deeply troubled man. He was handsome and charming and a fabulous storyteller. He had a smile that lit up rooms and when he laughed at something I said, I felt like I was brilliant, too.

He was also angry and terrifying and hurtful and scared the bejeezus out of me on a regular basis. My relationship with him taught me about establishing boundaries and loving someone despite their flaws. He died three years ago and I miss him still.

As flawed as he was as a father, he was an excellent grandfather. As my oldest hooligan just said, "Pop pop taught me about second chances -- from the stories you've told me about who he was to the man he became that I knew and loved." I am ever grateful that my dad had that chance and that my boys remember him well.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: My dad grew up on a cotton farm in Sulphur Springs, Texas, one of eight kids. He never finished school, but left the farm in his early teens and came to Dallas to find work. He adored his youngest sister, but otherwise did everything he could to distance himself from his family and his background.

He worked three jobs during the depression, started his own business, married, divorced, then married my mom when he was forty-four and she was twenty. They adored each other for the rest of their lives.

He had a creative streak--he always wrote his own advertising for his businesses--loved to read, and was incredibly proud of me. I think if he'd had the education he could have done so much more. He was quiet, kind, incredibly generous, and also suffered from depression, which he never spoke about. Interesting and complicated, my  dad. He died in 2004 at 96. I still miss him.

LUCY BURDETTE:  My dad was a metallurgical engineer and devoted father and husband. He went to the University of Michigan and left in the middle of college to sign up for the army to fight the Germans. I think that those years he was in Europe with his 1057 engineer cor​ps​ ​were the most meaningful in his entire life.

He loved camping and teaching and supporting us four kids, and he put up with the menagerie of animals that my mother encouraged.  I suppose his fatal flaw was that he simply could not be alone.

After my mother died too young, he was married fo​u​r more times. He would tell you that th​ree​ of his five  wives died before he did, and therefore he should not be​ held​ accountable for those marriages ending! The other two I think he fled into in order to escape the inevitable loneliness that comes after losing a spouse.

Even as diminished as he was in an assisted living at the end of his life, he asked me for the money to buy a diamond ring. He planned to propose to one of the caregivers he adored. He was funny and charming and I miss him terribly!​ ​And PS, my sister Susan Cerulean has written a memoir about caring for him at the end of his life. It will be out next spring and I will make sure she comes here to talk about it. It’s a wonderful book!

Rhys Bowen: My dad was a lovely man. Really kind and generous. He had dreamed of being a doctor but had to leave school to support his mother after his father died when my dad was a child. He had an aptitude for everything mechanical, landed a job in a paper factory and went on to run the place.

He also studied at night to pass his engineering professional certification. When WWII came he went to volunteer, even though he was in a protected occupation and spent four years in Egypt and then Palestine. Although there were battles and obvious hardships I believe he looked back on the time fondly, enjoying the camaraderie and makeshift sports. He was a really good athlete and had played soccer for junior London. I think his life was wistful thinking of what might have been.

He really wanted me to be the doctor he dreamed of being but alas I did not like the thought of all that blood. He would watch every medical program on TV, exclaiming in delight "Look, Margie. He's got the heart in his hands and it's still beating!"

My mum was the tough one. He was soft. And very proud of me, although he didn't like to show it. "IS that what you are wearing?" he'd ask with a grin when I was going out as a teenager.  When I was going to a party he'd ask what time it was over. If I said eleven o'clock he'd say "I'll be outside at ten thirty."  Daddy! I'd wail but he never wavered. 

He had a major heart attack when he was 60 but when he and my mother moved to Australia he perked up a lot, proud of his garden and taking long walks on the beach. Unfortunately his heart gave out when he was seventy five. I still miss him.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: My biological dad died a couple of years ago. He was the music critic for the Chicago Daily News when I was born, and as sensitive and talented and intelligent and intellectual as anyone could possibly be.
It was completely crazy--my mother always talked about this--that this thoughtful peaceful tolerant poetic person was drafted into the infantry for World War II, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and was taken prisoner of war, and got the Purple Heart after he was released from prison camp by the Red Army at the end of the war.  He would never discuss it.

He taught me all about music, and poetry and  art and reading, and even though my parents were divorced when I was six, we still stayed in constant touch, and when he joined the foreign service and spent much of his life as a diplomat and  out of the country with a new family, (every one adorable), we still were close. He wrote two nonfiction books about American music, both published by University of Chicago press. And did a radio show on music for what turned into NPR.

I read one of his favorite poems at his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.

My stepdad? Equally brilliant, but a tough and brusque corporate lawyer, who absolutely knew right from wrong, in every way, even philosophically, and would make sure you knew it too. If you dared to disagree with him, then you were simply wrong. Some of his favorite quotes were “what do you represent?” when I showed up in a too-short skirt. And “ It is a matter of supreme indifference to me” when we asked a question he didn’t have time for. He did not allow us to speak or interrupt during Perry Mason. Nothing we could do was good enough.

But he taught me to be inquisitive, and determined, and skeptical, and a persuasive speaker. And I am truly grateful for that.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My birth father was a USAF pilot who died in a plane crash when I was only six months old. Some thirteen years and one bad marriage later, my mom renewed her acquaintance with her college boyfriend (also USAF) who had recently been divorced. Shortly after they wed in 1976, he adopted me, one of the great events of my life.

After losing my mom last year, I'm increasingly aware of how lucky I am to still have my dad around. He's a quirky guy - a brilliant engineering type who never met anything he couldn't fix who lives on take-out and restaurant food now my mom's not around to cook for him. He's very introverted, but was the calm center of a blended family of eight kids. He's the old-fashioned kind of man who says what he means and stands by his promises, and although they were so different in many ways, Ross had that quality too, and it's one of the reasons I fell in love with him.

I think the great gift my dad gave me, my brother and my sister was to show us, up close and personal, what a good man, a good father and a good husband looked like. Having kids myself now, I realize what an incredibly important role that is.

HALLIE: So on this Father's Day, who are the dad's in your life and how are you celebrating?

Wishing a Happy Father’s Day to all our dads… such as they are

HALLIE EPHRON: My dad was a decidedly mixed bag. The youngest of four boys, no doubt treated like a little prince, he grew up popular (president of his senior class at Evander Childs high school in the Bronx). 
He was a snaggle-toothed charmer. He loved to entertain wearing a plaid silk dinner jacket and, in his old age, an ascot to hide his sagging chin. A raconteur, he told endless stories about Broadway and Hollywood (he wrote plays and movies with my mom). And then he'd tell them again and again.

A ladies’ man. Too much of a ladies’ man. A narcissist. A chain smoker. A drunk.

But always, always, he was besotted with his four daughters. We were beautiful, smart, funny: just ask him! And that unabashed love papered over some of his shortcomings.

I have four writing sisters, and he’s appeared in all of our books. He’s the model for Arthur Unger who gets murdered in the opening chapter of my novel, Night Night, Sleep Tight.
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Arthur Unger slides open the glass door and steps out onto his flagstone patio. He’s had a few drinks but he doesn’t feel them. It’s late at night, and though the sky is clear and there is no moon, there are no stars, either. There never are. Between ambient light and air pollution, he’d have to drive to Mount Baldy to see Orion’s Belt.

The sky is . . . He gazes up at it. Opaque? Inky? Like warm tar? His ex-wife would have nailed it. She was great at narrative description and dialogue. And of course, she could type. He was the plotmeister. Arthur takes a final drag on his cigarette, the tip glowing in the dark, and stubs it out in one of the dirt-filled, terra-cotta planters in which Gloria once cultivated gladiolus. Or was it gardenias? Something with a G.

He's why I cherish the fathers I now have in my life. My husband Jerry (pictured with our daughter's). 

And my son-in-law (pictured walking the beach with my grandson).

They are solid. Loving. Smart. Generous. Like my dad, totally besotted with their children, but in all other ways completely different. I count my blessings.

Hoping you all will share a snippet of the dads in your life.

Happy Father's Day!

HANK: Happy Father's Day Jungle Reds! And we all salute ours today.

Here's my dad--I think this is in the 1950's or so, when he was the music critic for the old Chicago Daily News--so he taught me about music, and poetry, and writing and reporting, and I have exactly his sense of humor. He lives in DC now, retired from the foreign service.

Here's ROSEMARY's dad--and this is her sister Paula.. Looks like it's in the 50's too..

ROSEMARY: He was handsome, he could fix anything - and I used to sneak his unfiltered Camels when I was a kid.

And here, in the greenery:

ROBERTA: My papa really was a rolling stone. His idea of heaven was dragging an Airstream trailer around the country visiting Army buddies and other old friends. This picture was taken at Hidcote Gardens in England, the last big trip he got to take. I was so glad to share it with him! He's utterly devoted to his family--still talks to his brother every day by phone. Happy Father's Day Pops! You take the blue ribbon...

JAN says: My father (shown here in great early 60s) was the kindest man I've ever known. He used to tell me that when you age, you have to "think" about being a better person, because if you don't "think" about it, you slide backwards. He is my example of how to grow better with age.

HALLIE: The title of his memoir is my dad (he and my mom were screenwriters) in a nutshell - he did think he could do anything. The great gift he gave to us, his daughters, was the belief that we could, too.

And heres our guest dad--Avery Aames' father . (Aren't these photos wonderful?) And Avery has a special tribure to her father--and to all of ours.



By Avery Aames

My father is gone. Has been for years. So is my mother and I miss her dearly, but this blog is in honor of fathers, so I’m going to stay with that theme, if you’ll indulge me.

I still think of my father, my good friend, and know how proud he would be that I have followed my dream. Dreams. He died so young that he wasn’t able to follow all of his dreams. How many he must have had. Would have had. I knew some of them. I would have liked to know them all.

“Believe you can!” my father said to me. And yet he was also the person who said that achieving a dream takes hard work.

Over the course of my life, I have had plenty of dreams, plenty of goals. In my early twenties, right before my father died, I began my career as an actress. I was cast in a small play in Los Angeles, and he drove down to LA to see me act, dance, and sing. When I close my eyes, I can still see his smiling face, the twinkle in his teary eyes. He had encouraged me to follow my heart, and I had done exactly that. It didn’t hurt that he had given me an old car and had driven my luggage and me to Los Angeles to get started.

Over the course of my acting career, though my father had died, he cheered me on. Every time I performed, I could feel him saying, “Way to go!” When I wrote my first screenplay for myself to star in (every actress’s dream), I could feel my father giving me a thumbs up. [Side note: I never could figure out how to raise enough independent capital to get a screenplay on its feet.]

When it came time to move out of Los Angeles (don’t shoot me women’s libbers, but my husband’s career was on the rise), I gave up on my dream of starring in a TV series or a film. I’d had a good run. I’d made a living as an actress, but becoming a star was not meant to be. My father would have been the first to tell me that not every dream comes true, and it’s the journey that matters.

So I came up with a new dream of becoming a published author. When I was a young girl, I fell in love with Nancy Drew novels. At the age of ten, I thought I could write one—not an easy task, by the way. Kudos to all writers of YA novels! I think my mother stowed my manuscript in my Memory Book. I’ll have to dig it out. I’ll bet it’s not nearly as gripping as I thought it was at the time, but that’s another story. Because of my passion for mysteries and thrillers, I decided that was the kind of novel that I wanted to write.

At our first stop on the “See America Tour”—my husband, my son, and I moved to a number of cities. Orlando, FL was the first one—I crafted my first manuscript. It dealt with my father’s death, and it was not very good. I was too close to the material. As we moved to our second stop on the tour—Charlotte, NC--I wrote my second novel. Alas, that manuscript found it’s way into a drawer, as well. I wasn’t too close to the material; I just wasn’t a very good writer yet.

At that moment of realization, I could hear my father laughing. Know why? Because for years, Miss Perfectionist—his nickname for me—thought she could do anything the first time out. Oh, sure, he encouraged my dreams, but he also encouraged me to see myself clearly. I was too serious. I was too intense. I needed to laugh. I needed to lighten up. And I needed to realize that achieving any dream took work. Hard work. Ten years of semi-rejection as an actress had taught me part of that lesson. Ten-plus years of rejection as a writer was the Master Class. Meanwhile, I took writing classes. I joined critique groups. I got involved with Sisters in Crime and its online group, the Guppies. I wrote a lot of books—more than five, less than ten--before I was finally granted the contract to write A Cheese Shop Mystery series. With each book, I’d learned something new about writing, and more important, something new about myself. I had grit. Dreamers need grit.

I wish my father—and my mother—were here to celebrate my joy as this dream comes true. I’m thrilled to be the author of The Long Quiche Goodbye. I’m thrilled to be passionate about my work, about cheese, about writing. And I’m thrilled to be one of the lucky ones who had the tenacity to keep working to achieve my dream.

Don’t give up. As my father said, “Believe you can!”

Do you have someone—a parent, a friend, a spouse, a teacher—who inspires you to achieve your dream? Care to share who and why? Do you have a dream that you are trying to achieve now? Did you have one that you let go? Do you believe you can?

HANK: Happy Father's Day to all!

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Avery can be found on her website at http://www.averyaames.com,/ on Facebook, Twitter, and on two blogs: http://www.mysteryloverskitchen.com/ and http://www.killercharacters.com./ She also has a booksellers page where you can purchase her book from any of your favorite bookstores: http://www.averyaames.com/book1_sellers.html Avery Aames is the pseudonym for suspense/thriller writer Daryl Wood Gerber. For more information about Daryl, you can go to her website at: http://www.darylwoodgerber.com/