Sacred Stories

I have been reading Barack Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father, and parts of his early life have resonated with my own. No, I was not the multi-racial child of a black father and white mother, but my father was out of my life at an early age and I was raised by a single mother in my early years. Later, I was adopted by my mother’s second husband. My maternal grandparents played a big role in my early life, yet I knew very little about my father’s side of the family. The parallels of our early lives are striking. Obama’s attempt to reconnect to the father he never really knew hit home as I read his book.

In his book, Barack tells about his days as a community organizer in Chicago’s Altgeld neighborhood. In listening to the stories of some of the residents, he uses the term “sacred stories” to describe their lives and their memories. It struck me that I, too, have sacred stories, stories of my father, B. R. Hammond. In honor of Fathers Day, I thought I would share one of my sacred stories.

My earliest memories of my father are shrouded in fog with images of black and white photos to give me clarity. Mostly, I only remember my mother and me living in a series of small apartments and time spent with my grandparents, Roy and Elsie Hembree. I remember only one visit from my father to our apartment. He talked mostly to my mother. I do not remember anything he may have said to me. Apparently, he had told her he was going to marry his third wife and would not be coming around as much...or again, as was the real truth. He left and that was the last I saw of him until I was 10 years old. I was at my Grandma Hammond’s funeral and I was standing at the casket when he got up and came over. He stood next to me and asked how I was doing. Then he asked how my mother was, even though she sat in the same room with the other relatives and ex-wives. His once dark wavy hair was already gray, almost white by then. It is funny, but I do not remember what I said. I am sure it was short and cryptic, as only 10-year-old boys can be when they are suddenly faced with discomfort. I did not know that it would be the last time I would have a chance to say anything to my father.

Bernard Ray Hammond grew up on a farm in central Illinois. He had a sister, Dorothy. His parents were hard working and well-respected farmers. When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the Army Air Corp and became a fighter pilot. He was trained to fly P-38 Lightnings in the European theater of Italy. The P-38 was the fastest fighter in those days before jet fighters came on the scene. His wing commander told my Aunt Dorothy at my father’s funeral that “B.R. was either the bravest pilot I have ever known or the craziest.” He won the DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross) for his meritorious service in the war.

By all accounts, the war changed my father. I watched a PBS program on television about the fighter pilots in World War II and how their lives were a living hell, not knowing from one air battle to the next if they or their friends would make it back to base. Some pilots watched as one by one they lost their closest friends. Their buddies were shot to pieces and died in fiery crashes leaving them as lone squadron survivors. Many pilots stopped making friends and withdrew into the business at hand. When the war was over, my father came back to his small hometown and never flew again. I do not know what he did for a living, but at some point, he and a partner bought a tavern on Main Street near the train station. I suspect he drank to forget the horrors of war.

My father’s first marriage ended in divorce. He had a daughter by his first wife. According to my mother, he loved his daughter dearly and fell to pieces when his ex-wife took his daughter to live in California. He went on to have a series of affairs that produced at least two other daughters. My mother was his second wife. I suppose he saw in her a chance to turn his life around. They had a small house in town, by some of the black and white photos I have seen. Then one day, my mother found some letters in a duffle bag in the attic. The mother of one of his illegitimate daughters had begged him to marry her to give her child a name and spare her disgrace. My mother confronted him and sometime after that, they were divorced. I think I was only about two at the time. My father would marry yet a third time and that marriage would produce three more daughters as I recall. I was his only legitimate son until another affair, perhaps during his marriage to my mother. That affair produced another son.

When my mother remarried, I was about six. Her second husband, Dick Ortman, wanted to legally adopt me and change my last name from Hammond to Ortman. Well, my father was not about to let that happen. He opposed the adoption and especially the name change. My Grandma Hammond took him aside and laid it all out for him. She told him that he had not been much of a father to me and that I now had a chance at a new life. He finally gave in with the condition that since I would be living on a farm, I needed a gun. He bought me a BB gun. My mom gave it to me when I was a little older.

It was not until after my mother remarried and we moved to the suburbs of Chicago, that I learned I had all of these half-brothers and sisters. In fact, I had gone to church and to school with most, if not all of them. The older of the two daughters went to my grade school and the other daughter, whose mother had begged my father to marry her, went to my church and was a good friend of mine in our church youth group. If she knew about our relationship, she never let on. Neither did any of the others that surely must have known at the time. Looking back, I realize now that she and I looked a lot a like, but I never saw it. My father’s second son was only about a year younger than I was and he went to my grade school as well. We hated each other. In fact, one day at school, we were in the gym playing basketball and he was teasing a smaller kid to whom I was talking. When I confronted him, he made some smart remark to me and I decked him. For the first time in my life, I saw red and I reached out with an upper cut and landed him on his butt up against the stage. You can imagine my surprise... and his...when we saw each other at my Grandma Hammond’s funeral. Strange, but I do not remember asking why he was there. One of the daughters from my father’s third marriage contacted me after my father’s death and wanted to meet me. I was in college at the time. I had decided not to attend his funeral and for some reason I felt it was not a good time to meet her and my other half sisters. She begged me over the phone and I refused. I wished them well and told them that our father would want each of us to go out and be the best person we could be or some such thing. I wish now I had met with them. We do many things we later regret.

My father was divorced from his third wife and living with a woman in Chicago at the time of his death from throat cancer. He had been a smoker most of his life. He had had several operations and part of his lower jaw had been removed. According to my Aunt Dorothy, my father did not want anyone to see him in those last days. To this very day, I regret not having the courage to sit down and get to know him, get his side of the story. I pictured that some day I would walk into his bar and introduce myself to him and we would have this long talk, but it never happened. My first wife, Linda, and I went for a visit to see my Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Al years after my father’s funeral. She was a wealth of information and gave me a handwritten copy of my family tree. She and my Uncle then drove us out to my father’s gravesite in the family plot. When we returned home after our visit, I went into our bedroom and wept long and hard for my father. I still keep in touch with my Aunt Dorothy from time to time. Her husband has passed on now. She remains my contact with the father I never knew.

Years later, I had a dream that I was in a plane and that my father, B.R., and my adopted father, Dick Ortman, (both pilots in life) were teaching me how to fly. Sitting on either side of me, they taught me how to climb and bank the plane. They were showing me how to navigate by markers on the ground. We landed and did take offs. It did not seem odd in the dream that they knew each other and were friends. At some point, I realized that both men had passed on and that this was their gift to me. I woke up and have never forgotten their gift. It was a beautiful and peaceful dream.

So now, you have one of my sacred stories. I would love to hear yours, if you care to share them.

FOOD for THOUGHT...