Memories of a swashbuckling father

My father was born March 10, 1912, in Denzil, Sask. He grew up on the family farm, received his medical degree from the University of Manitoba and studied in Oxford. After the war he and my mother returned to Canada, boarded a train and, as my father likes to tell it, looked out of the window in Port Arthur, Ont., liked what they saw, and got off. He hung out his shingle and went to work as a family physician.

He took me with him on countless house calls, delivered babies, did general surgery, prison work, and was much liked by his patients. He would play the piano in patients' homes, just for a few minutes before going on his next call. In 1964 we moved to Long Beach, California, where he hung out a new shingle and started all over again. My mother died in 1992, and my father moved to Cleveland a year later.

He loves to tell stories. I don't know much about his activities during the war, but I heard the tale many times about how he hid inside a wine barrel, in the wine, to avoid German detection. He spent several weeks recuperating in Lady Astor's castle, and has fond memories of that time. He never returned to his unit, was pensioned for several wounds, and still has shrapnel embedded in his head.

For years after the war he read extensively, preferring war-related books and anything on Africa, where his brother resided. He learned to speak and read Finnish, German, French, Spanish, Russian and even Swahili. I always felt that he was a swashbuckler. He never drove the speed limit, and when stopped would say he was a doctor on emergency call. He taught me to drive when I was 12, much to my mother's chagrin. We had a summer cottage on Lake Superior, and he would load up our small boat so that one false move could easily swamp it. My poor mother worried all her life about the safety of myself and my brother Ron, who is now a physician in New Zealand.

My father's major passion in life turned out to be junk collecting. He would map out house calls so that he could stop at every garage sale and thrift store along the way. As he brought junk in the back door, my mother was taking it out the front to donate. When he accepted that he was going blind as a result of diabetes, he hired a liquidator who held 6 sales in our house in Long Beach over 4 months. There were suits of armour, animal pelts, swords, pistols, surfboards — just about everything you could imagine. MGM Studios sent buyers twice.

My father's solid love, generosity and passion are my roots. After 2 strokes, partial paralysis and total blindness, without complaint he continues to enjoy book and Newsweek recordings, vanilla ice cream and as much pampering as he can finagle.

Judi Baker Gerhart Bay Village, Ohio

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