A FATHERS DAY TRIBUTE TO THE GOOD DAD

 

 It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. These are the opening lines to Charles Dickens book "A Tale Of Two Cities". This could describe the life with my father Willard Aaron (Bill) Segroves for the almost thirteen years that I knew him. All of his friends and family called him Bill but he was just daddy to us. The best of times were from my birth in 1950 until I was about nine years old. The last three years of his life from 1959 to January 16, 1963 were the worst of times. How does a man evolve from the best father in the world to being a monster? I have asked this question thousands of times in the last 62 years but I can only speculate. On this Fathers Day I want to honor the good dad that I knew. Many people can honor their father on Father's day without reservation but it is more difficult for me. I have tried very hard not to hate him over the years, which I could easily do. Through the years members of my family and friends have tried to console me by saying your father was a good man and he loved your mother very much. Or they might say something like your father wouldn't have harmed your mother if he had been in his right mind. The only way that I can justify looking at him with any affection is if I accept the reasoning that he wasn't in his right mind. I can't love the monster that he became. The monster that killed my mother, the mother of his children and his unborn baby. So, I have to focus on the good dad.

So let me tell you about my good dad. During his good years there was never a better father than Bill Segroves. I always enjoyed being with my dad although he was constantly working. The drugstore opened early in the morning and he would be there most days until closing, which was around 11:00 PM. We were a family owned business and I never felt like my father was away too much because much of the time when we weren't in school we were at the store. In my mind I can still see my father smiling with his arms folded and leaning against the counter in his suit coat, white shirt, bow tie, or a regular necktie, wearing dark trousers and smoking a cigar. He always looked like a businessman and was never dressed casually when he was working. I can also see him in my minds eye in the prescription department filling prescriptions. His regular customers sincerely liked and respected him. You could feel it. They were predominantly black and this was in the segregated South. It was not a love and respect based on fear of the white man or of knowing their place in society. I felt and saw this respect. They affectionately called him "Doc" and I was little "Doc". Because of the example my parents set and the way that they related to people, no matter what their class, station in life, or skin color I have benefited from this to this day. I was too grief stricken to attend my parents funeral but I was told that the front yard of the funeral home was packed with his customers paying their respects because there was no room inside.

Although daddy worked a lot he always found time for his children in every area that a child could want or need. He never missed one of my baseball games. One or the other of my parents were always at my practices. I wasn't a great player and I sat on the bench a lot. This was not like it is today when every kid gets to play whether they are good or not. Or they all get a participation trophy. When I did get to play it was mostly right field. Occasionally I was a relief pitcher or played second base. More than a few times I cried because I didn't get to play. He was always there to comfort me and it wasn't his fault that I was a mediocre player because he was always playing pitch with me and teaching me the fundamentals. He taught me how to hold the bat, how to field fly balls, and grounders. I did great in practice but when I got in a real game I was too hesitant and cautious. This was probably due to my painful shyness.

 Most kids loves to fish and daddy was an avid fisherman. He took us fishing all the time. Many times it would be just me and him which was good quality time together. Sometimes the fish weren't biting and  I would get bored. Then I would start throwing rocks which aggravated him. If I was catching fish I was okay but I never developed the love of fishing that daddy had. Swimming was another thing that daddy loved. He could easily have been a champion diver. Whenever we were at home we were swimming at area lakes like Lake Louise, Old Hickory Lake, or Cascade Plunge at the fairgrounds. He would always draw a crowd to watch him dive from the top of the diving tower. Daddy was good at performing the "swan" and "jack knife" dives among many others. I was scared of the water and in old home movies I could be seen wearing a life preserver. Mark on the other hand loved the water and as a baby would jump off into the deep water without hesitation. Daddy was always there to catch him. 

 In the summer we always spent a week down at Chickasaw State Park near Henderson Tennessee. The family rented a couple of cabins and our family, his cousin Howard along with Howard's wife and daughters shared a cabin with us. Didi, Roy, Alton and her boyfriend "Gigs" also stayed with us for a fun filled week of swimming, fishing, and fellowship. Sometimes my sisters Carolyn and Faye, who were my dad's children by his first marriage, would go along with us. He was a good father to them although they didn't live with us. Daddy also took us hunting. He hunted for dove, squirrels, and rabbits. In the late 1950's there was a go kart craze. Go kart tracks were being built everywhere and he was constantly taking us to ride them. He would take us kite flying and we would go to Centennial Park and fly balsa wood airplanes. This is the father that I want to honor on Fathers Day. The good father that he was. A really good man that I knew for the first nine years of my life. In those years I cannot say enough good things about him. Much of the good in me like my work ethic, self discipline, love of country and love for family I owe to my father. 

 When it came to discipline my father didn't scream at me, slap my face or spank my butt with an open hand but he would take off his belt and whip me hard. I can only remember three times that he ever whipped me with a belt. Many people would call it abuse today but these were probably the tenderest moments that I ever spent with my dad. I was always deserving of punishment and after I had a little time to cry and settle down he would come into the room and sit down beside me. He would put his arm around me and ask me if I understood why he had whipped me. Daddy would then tell me how much he loved me and would say something that I have never forgotten. He would tell me that he would not always be around and I needed to learn how to grow into a man because I was the oldest. There was no way I could have known how prophetic these words would be.

  The main problem facing this country today is the lack of fathers in the home. When I was a child about 95% of white families had a father living at home and about 90% of black families had a father living at home. Today only about 70% of white families have a father living at home and about 30% of black families have a father living at home. The lack of fathers in the home contribute to the rise in crime, illiteracy and dysfunction. Blacks make up 13% of the population but are responsible for 50% of violent crimes. Black neighborhoods in the inner cities were safe before Johnson's War on Poverty. As one former 1960's civil rights activist put it "when whites were at their worst blacks were at their best". During the War On Poverty the government paid women money when they had children as long as there was no father in the home. The government has incentivized bad behavior. This has also led to higher crime and dysfunction among whites. When you add the removal of prayer and Bible reading from the public schools in the early 1960's along with radical feminism we have seen the deterioration of the nuclear family. If not for those good years with my father I don't know if I could have made it through the bad times of my life. Although I think I have been a good father I can't compare to my father during the good years. No child could have wished for a better father. I was blessed. You have to earn the title of daddy. Otherwise you are nothing but a sperm donor.

 Many people can't say that they had good years with their fathers. Others can't claim a good relationship with either of their parents. That's because they were drunks, drug addicts, sexual, verbal, or physical abusers. Or they had no father or parents at all. Mothers are very important but so many of the ills of society can be blamed on fathers. Many times homosexuality in both women and men can be attributed to a bad relationship with a father or an emotionally distant relationship. Sexual, verbal and physical abuse is a generational curse learned many times from the father. I believe that my father was not a bad man but mentally ill. In the last three years before he died he was in and out of alcohol rehab. He spent six weeks in a mental hospital. Daddy tried suicide by overdosing on pills and tried to choke my mother to death.  I don't know what demons he was fighting but he was self medicating with alcohol and pills. It was like some space alien took over his body and left a zombie in it's place. This picture I posted was the last picture ever taken of my dad. It was taken on Christmas day 1962. I have studied this picture many times over the years. He looks healthy and is smiling as if he hasn't got a care in the world. You would never guess by looking at this picture that three weeks later he would kill my mother and himself with the nine shot 22 caliber pistol that he was carrying in the right pocket of his trench coat.