Requiem for a Heavyweight

On the Death of the Copper King

Early Wednesday morning—Valentines Day—in a hospital in North Carolina, my father, Jim McGrath died. He was 92, which appears to have been the cause of his death. With him at this moment was my sister Kelly, a trained nurse and untrained archangel, who described to me his final moments with such tender love and beauty that I wish everyone could hear it. For anyone who knew my Dad, the fact that as his heart monitor slowly wound down to its last beeps, the songs of the man he called “the world’s greatest interpreter of lyrics” (Frank Sinatra) played in the background, would know that this was the optimal end. He leaves behind a bride of 24,588 days, six children, and nine grandchildren, his own offspring being somewhat less fecund than he.

Dad and me, ca. 2000

The last few years have been hard on The Gaffer, as gravity took its toll, first slowly and then dramatically. He came to be in unremitting pain as his body increasingly signaled its deterioration. Along the way, a bit of dementia crept in too, which added to the anxiety of those around him. As I surveyed my siblings and my mother (Julie) yesterday, a common theme was that of gratitude that his pain was over. It is the central theme of my thoughts as I write this.

Jim referred to himself as a “humble wire-peddler”, who took what he learned as an “Interior Communications” specialist in the navy (1951-53) and turned it into a thriving wire manufacturing business (his 1970’s era CB radio handle was “The Copper King”) in the garden districts of South Jersey where he and Julie raised me and my siblings. The story of their meeting is one of family legend that has the two of them attending a wedding of separate friends. This being 1956 and somewhere in the North Jersey/New York area, the reception was being held in a venue where there was a jukebox—maybe a firehouse. My mother (fetching, temptress red-head that she was), stood at the jukebox looking over the selections, whilst my eventual father sat at a table close-by, looking over his selection. He opened with “Hey Red, play us a tune” and flipped a nickel her way. She caught it, and flipped it back with the words “Play it yourself”. Five boys arrived in short order (1959-1968) as my parents apparently had things other than social protest on their minds in the 60’s, and there was little argument as to who was the favorite—me. This status was earned upon my birth in 1965 and held until the arrival of Kelly in 1970. At just over five years of age, one possesses little of the emotional intelligence that a person accumulates over a lifetime, but I was clever enough to realize that once he got his little girl, I was then and forever, supplanted.

My earliest clear memory is of the first mission to the moon in 1969. I had been outside playing, and for some reason had come into the house where my father was watching TV. Garrulous nipper that I was, I engaged him in deep conversation about whatever insights I had for him, at which point he shushed me and pointed at the screen where those grainy images of that mission were playing live on TV. I sat down with him and watched. And baked a memory.

I will never forget the first time I saw my father cry—this memory lays me low as I type. It was at his father’s funeral in 1978, at the viewing, just before we were to leave the funeral home. His father lay there in the coffin, mostly looking like himself, and I was being a Very Big Boy and holding it together, as this is what Very Big Boys do. My Dad went up to the coffin, leaned in and kissed his father through a veil of tears and said “Goodbye, Andy”. And then I evaporated. Just as I am right now…

I saw my father cry again under very different circumstances 26 years later, as I stood on the dais set up on the quarterdeck of the USS BULKELEY (DDG 84) and assumed command of the ship. He was there in the front row with others of my family, and he beamed with tears of pride. He never got over his adulation of his own destroyer captain, and as I rose through the ranks, he was there with me all the way. When I looked around at how I might finance a college education at a time when we had double-digit inflation, unemployment, and interest rates, there was only one choice, as I had been the subject of a low-level mind control campaign perpetrated by a master manipulator, for whom not one DAY of his three years in the Navy was a bad day, and who cleverly hid his ancient cruise books and Navy photos under his bed for an enterprising snooper like me to find. I think my decision to leave the Navy was harder on him than it was on me.

My father in the yellow tie, after a good cry at my Change of Command. Others pictured are Kevin, Sue, Lauren, Meaghan, Jim, and my mother Julie

My Dad was a man, and he was a man’s man. He liked being in the Navy, he liked running a business with a group of dudes around him, he loved the “cafe” he lunched at every day and the regulars there, and he was a titan of the Burlington Country Club scene. Get my brothers and me together and invariably, one of us will bring up the cast of characters he surrounded himself with there—Kelly Kish, Peter Lawrence, Butch Eckman, Gordan Keenan, Don Alvarez—and how much fun they had playing golf together. We caddied for these guys, and as I’ve written on this Substack before, much of what I learned about how adult men carry themselves, I learned from them.

Last night after I returned home from picking up my daughter Hope from the airport (she was coming East from California for other matters), I logged onto Facebook to see that my siblings had posted memories of my Dad, and it was an absolute joy to read the hundreds of comments from those who knew him and those who know only the products of his parenting. The love and sympathy my girls (Hannah contacted me from the wilds of the Bahamas where she teaches)—who lost their father in far more tragic circumstances—along with that of their mother, Catherine—have shown me is transcendent.

Later today, the first-born (also Jim), who along with Kelly and their spouses has performed miracles of love and patience with my aging parents, will meet with the required officials to schedule appropriate ceremonies. We will converge as a family upon central North Carolina to be in each other’s grief and gratitude. I have prepared myself for my father’s death for a long time, in that each time I parted with him for about fifteen years, I have done so with no business left undone. He knew that I loved him completely, and I knew that he loved me completely. I did this out of duty and love, but also as a defense mechanism designed to arm me against the sadness of this day. I am dubious as to the success of my preparations.