The Man I Never Knew
He was one of the players on a baseball team posing for a picture. He was kneeling on the front row. He was the one holding the bat. His first name was the same as my middle name. I was told that my mother wanted me to be named after him, but that he didn’t want to saddle his son with the name “Delmar.” When I consider the kind of man he was, I can think of a lot of things that would have been a whole lot worse. [Editor’s note: The picture is the one used above for the header of this article.]
I knew Delmar Faughn from the time I became aware of the world around me until his passing in December of 2000. I never knew the guy in the picture, though.
When the picture was taken, my parents were in their first year of marriage. I wouldn’t become a part of the family until eight years later. I never got to see the man with the bat play what I understand was his normal first base position.
I also never had the experience of watching the self-appointed scorekeeper and head cheerleader in action – at least when my dad was playing. I did get to see my mother reprise those roles when I played, though.
When the picture of that baseball team was taken, a lot of things were still in my father’s future. Pearl Harbor would be attacked about a year-and-a-half later. I never knew how that affected him.
I do know that he became a soldier at a much later age than some today might believe. He was twenty-nine years of age when that attack happened and was in his thirties when he began to serve. I never knew him as a soldier. I’ve heard him tell stories about how difficult it was for him to keep up with soldiers who were a decade (or more) younger than he was, but I never saw him go through that experience.
I also never knew things about my father in the years before he wore that baseball uniform. I never knew the very young boy who lost his mother. I never knew the teen who went to live with a sister so he could attend high school (much like some today leave home to attend college). I never knew the young man who did what he had to do to try to make a little money during what people then called “hard times.” We know that today as The Great Depression.
My dad was about a month shy of being thirty-six years old when I was born. There are a lot of things about his first thirty-five years I don’t know – and will never know. I am an only child. All of my father’s siblings and most of his contemporaries are gone. I have very few, if any, resources that would help me to find out about the man I never knew – or at least the portion of his life that was lived before I was born.
Sadly, there are also a lot of things about the years between thirty-five and eighty-eight that I will never know. I’d like to think that this is due to the fact that my father was one of those men who did not “share” much. While there is some truth to that, there is also some truth to the fact that I was probably too busy living my life to take the time to ask my father some things I would love to know.
If you will pardon the expression, this is not being written in order to provide some “inside baseball” information about my family. It is being written because I realize that every family has unique stories, legacies, memories, histories, etc.
This is being written in the hope that this will encourage all of us – including me – to really get to know about our loved ones while we can. I’m hoping
Can you think of a phone call or a visit you might need to make?
