MY FATHER'S HEART:
A SON'S RECKONING WITH THE LEGACY OF HEART DISEASE
An extraordinary story of an all-too-ordinary scenario: A father dies, a son remains, and the loss casts a long shadow across a generation. Rich in evocative detail of time, place, and family, it is a powerful memoir of love, forgiveness, and finding oneself.
Published by Da Capo Press
Now Available in Paperback!
"[An] homage to love, perseverance and the pursuit of longevity."
-- Kirkus Reviews
"Highly recommended for memoir fans..."
--LibraryJournal.com
Music from MY FATHER’S HEART
MY FATHER’S HEART, the musical!
“Music, the songs of the moment that we grow up with, that we heard without hearing, knew without knowing how. If our life were a movie, they would be its soundtrack. This is not an original thought, but it’s no less true for not being one. Hear them now and they don’t just jar a bit of memory, they transport you back, enveloping you in a particular time, a specific place, a certain emotion.” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 168
UNWRITTEN, Natasha Bedingfield & Daniel Brisebois & Wayne RodriguesMY FATHER’S HEART doesn’t get written without “Unwritten.” My 15-year-old son, Patrick, introduced me to it (an her) when I was first getting started on the book. (“Check her out, Dad, she’s really hot!” And so she was.) But it was her words that stunned me, motivated me, kept me going. Sometimes, writing, I would play the song all day, over and over. It still gives me chills to hear it, as it transports me back to my office and envelops me in that particular time, that specific place, that certain emotion. Gratefully acknowledged in MY FATHER’S HEART, page 317 |
THE HORSE, Cliff Nobles & Company“The dance in September 1969 in York, Pennsylvania, was ‘The Horse,’ a driving instrumental by Cliff Nobles & Co. It had come out the year before, but once the local bands got it down, it remained a favorite. ‘The Horse’ featured blaring horns and an up-and-down cadence that perfectly conjured a horse on the gallop. With arms outstretched, curled fingers holding the reins, you bobbed to the music – riding the horse – kicking a foot out in front of you on the downbeat while twisting your hands in the opposite direction. That was it.” MY FATHER’HEART, p. 136 |
I’LL NEVER SMILE AGAIN, Tommy Dorsey Band, Frank Sinatra“Mom and Dad had their song – ‘I’ll Never Smile Again’ – by the Tommy Dorsey Band, sung by a Frank Sinatra whose most prominent feature was still his Adam’s apple. … Today when I hear it – rarely, making it all the more out-of-nowhere – the song is an arrow right through me, carrying me back to a 1938 Lake Erie, a THAT MOMENT of my imagination when Mom and Dad first met. Except the song wasn’t written until 1939, by the Canadian-American songwriter Ruth Lowe of Toronto (across Lake Ontario from Buffalo, at least) and the Dorsey-Sinatra Victor recording wasn’t a big hit until the summer of 1940.” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 27 |
PEOPLE, Barbra Streisand – From the movie “Funny Girl”“But even as Mary Liz turned me down for the York Catholic High School homecoming, she offered hope. The week after, she said, we’ll see a movie – ‘Funny Girl,’ all the dates were going to it – and we’ll wear what we wore to homecoming. … When Omar Shariff came to Barbara Streisand before going to jail and said, ‘So long, Funny Girl,’ Mary Liz leaned into me and said, ‘I’m going to cry now.’ She couldn’t have been more direct had she clicked on a neon sign that read: “Put your arm around me so I can put my head on your shoulder.” The movie ended too quickly after that. MY FATHER’S HEART, pp. 163-164 |
ROMEO & JULIET, Theme song from the Franco Zefferelli movie“The theme for the York Catholic High School homecoming my senior year was ‘Romeo and Juliet, an homage not to Shakespeare but to the Franco Zefferelli film that had come out the year before and that all of us had seen. Leonard Whiting as Romeo and Olivia Hussey as Juliet, and they were both our age. And there was that bedroom scene – that’s why we went – with Romeo bare from behind and Juliet naked to the waist. You could see her, only for a second, but you could. Yet still the nuns had told us to go! Walking into homecoming, I was fully one with the drama of a star-crossed, young-lovers romance. Early on, Mary Liz walked over and whispered in my ear that next Friday would be our Friday. And so it was.” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 163-164 |
THE MAGNICENT SEVEN, Theme from the movie – Elmer Bernstein, composer“… Dad was a one-person, unscientific survey on the power of advertising, back when cigarette ads were in magazines, on TV, absolutely everywhere. … Marlboro was rising with a bullet after Philip Morris finally clicked with its ‘Marlboro Man’ and ‘Marlboro Country’ ad campaigns, riding the theme song from ‘The Magnificent Seven.’ MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 172 |
PAPA’S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG! James Brown“My junior year at York Catholic High School a couple of the guys decided that everyone needed a theme song. So they went about assigning each junior his or her own ‘song.’ … Mine was ‘Steve McKee’s Got a Brand New Bag!” from the James Brown title of almost the same words. I have no idea why that song, or whether it mocked me or not. I was happy to be included.” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 128 |
ONE, Three Dog Night“With my sister Kathy’s story told it was my turn. Not for the first time, not for the last, as I was quickly learning. People wanted to hear about last night, when I watched Dad die. For their sake or mine, I never figured out, but they wanted to hear it. Kathy was different. She needed to hear it, and I needed to tell her. Somewhere in this recounting came the song ‘One,’ by Three Dog Night, WSBA, 910 on the AM dial. … I hated it then, I hate it now. But when I hear it on one of those FM oldies stations that has baby boomers like me squarely pegged, it put me in our blue 1963 Chevy Biscayne, Kathy driving, on our way to pick out a coffin for Dad. MY FATHER’S HEART, pp. 170-171 |
WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN, Percy Sledge“Our St. Joseph eighth-grade graduation party, an much to my relief Joan Galloway has asked me to dance. She and Danny Quinlivan were the first couple in a wball,” an effort by a WSBA deejay to breathe life into a dying party. Danny and Joan danced, the music stopped, and they each found new partners. Five or six music stops later – plenty of options still available – Joan asked me.” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 168 |
NA NA HEY HEY KISS HIM GOODBYE, Steam“… When I hear it now, I’m playing basketball in college, and the goodbye part serenades me off the floor after fouling out again on the road. Once it would be with a full band right our team, trombones jabbing, with me on the bench … steaming.” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 168 |
WHAT’S GOIN ON? Marvin Gaye“I am in college and wondering what next. I want more than a job, more than some nine-to-five and then home for dinner to complain for twenty minutes, like Dad used to do. But how? Where? What’s going on? I haven’t a clue.” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 169 |
HOLLYWOOD SWINGING,Kool & the Gang“Twenty-two now, out of college, on my way soon to St. Mary’s, Alaska, to teach at an Eskimo-Indian boarding school. I am amazed to be dancing with Noreen D’Ottavio, a senior-girl member of the York Catholic High School homecoming court when I was a freshman. A bit of that amazement is with me still. We are doing ‘The Bump’ – that mid-1970s embarrassment where couples banged hips, shoulders, and elbows, plus assorted other body parts, maybe, perhaps auguring well for later in the car.” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 169 |
LOVE WILL LEAD YOU BACK, Taylor Dayne“I am in a rental car in a small town thousands of miles from Brooklyn. Noreen and a three-day-old newly adopted Patrick are in the back. … Our infertility and adoption ordeals had left me ragged, emotion empty, as if a soup ladle had scraped out every last bit of me. … Now here was exactly eight pounds of baby boy replacing my ache with an unspeakable joy, touching me in places vulnerable and exposed where I hadn’t dared stray since Dad had died.” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 169 |
OKLAHOMA! Theme song from the play – Rogers and Hammerstein“My sophomore year at York Catholic High School Sr. Regina Cecelia staged a full-blown production of ‘Oklahoma!’ – dancing and everything. A gutsy move by a great teacher. Unheard of undertaking, it succeeded only because she defiantly ensured it be too good to be dismissed. With that she vaulted the spring musical into third place on the ‘Fightin’ Irish’ school calendar of must-do, must-see events. It provided no glorious season-long acclaim, ads did football and basketball, but for one weekend, oh my. … I wasn’t in ‘Oklahoma!’ [But] I decided right there that next year I would be on that stage, washing myself in this acclaim. MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 130-131 |
BRIGADOON, Theme song from the play – Rogers and Hammerstein“The spring musical my junior year was ‘Brigadoon,’ the story of two American hunters who stumble upon a village in Scotland that appears once every one hundred years. … I got the part of the bourbon-loving Jeff Douglas, the comic relief, the often drunk, always sardonic sidekick. My role delivered all the funny lines, the best double-entendres. … a no-brainer part, a guaranteed standing ovation. Except that …” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 131-132 |
HONEY BUN, From the musical “South Pacific” – Rogers and HammersteinMy senior year the musical was ‘South Pacific.’ It rescued senior year. I was Luther Billis, the no-brain comic relief again, in this one cavorting in a grass skirt and a pair of coconut-boobs. Are you kidding? Standing ovation, guaranteed. MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 165 |
MARIAN, MADAME LIBRARIAN, From “The Music Man” – Meredith Wilson“There was the caravan to Painters mill Music Fair, a summer-stock theater in Owings Mills, Maryland. The excursion in 1962 remains special to me, if no one else. We saw Darren McGavin as Harold Hill in ‘The Music Man.’ I was nine years old, and I followed his career until he died in 2006. Whether he was Carl Kolchak on ‘The Night Stalker,’ the uncredited Gus Sands in ‘The Natural,’ or Candice Bergen’s father on ‘Murphy Brown,’ he was to me always the ‘Ol’ Perfesser,’ charming Marian Paroo in the River City, Iowa, library. MY FATHER’S HEART, pp. 274-275 |
WHEN YOU AND I WERE YOUNG, MAGGIE, George W. Johnson & J.A. Butterfield, composers“Margaret Brady [my great-grandmother] died n 1891 after contracting pneumonia while attending a family funeral in a rainstorm. [My great-grandfather] James, in his early fifties by then, chose not to recover. Andy [my mother’s father] was the youngest of the six surviving children. In turn, Andy would have 20 years to observe his father’s grief before James died. Back from his day at the lumber company, James would send one of his kids to the pub across the street to have his lunch bucket filled with beer. It is said that he was given to singing the popular song “When You and I Were Young, Maggie.” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 37 |
SHE’LL BE COMING ‘ROUND THE MOUNTAIN, Composer Unknown“Dad’s uncles, his father’s brothers Frank and Edward, often bunked at 231 Rodney Avenue in Buffalo, sometimes for extended periods, when there was work to be found in western New York. Aunt Alice says the McKee kids always new when to expect a visit: In the days before, Jack McKee [Dad’s father] took to singing, “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.” MY FATHER’S HEART, p. 48. |
