This One's for You Dad...

By: Steve Biddle

On Dec. 27, 2009, my Dad died. Let me tell you a little bit about him.

J. Craig Biddle was born on April 9, 1924, in Elmira, N.Y. He went through the local school system and enrolled at Springfield College in Massachusetts. But World War II interrupted his education soon after he became a college student and he enlisted with the U.S. Navy. Dad served with the Sea Bees, or Construction Battalion. Clever, huh? Construction Battalion = CBs = Sea Bees. So at the age of 18, he was in the Pacific Theater, on islands that he had never, ever heard of, building airstrips for our planes.

While we all know how that story turned out, it would be wise for us to remember that at the time, they didn’t. There was no forgone conclusion to World War II. So for an 18-year-old, building airstrips in the South Pacific, there was probably little time to think about one’s future.

But Dad, like so many in his generation, got through it and went back to Springfield College after the war. Upon graduation, he returned to upstate New York, working for the Elmira Star Gazette, back in the Golden Age of newspapers. He met Jennie Francis, who was an English teacher at the nearby Waverly High School, and then some other stuff happened: They were married on July 11, 1953, in Otisco, N.Y., by my maternal grandfather, the Reverend A.E. Francis, who officiated at the Presbyterian ceremony.  

A year later, I was born in Waverly. My sister Kendra was born in 1956 in Springfield, Mass., to which Dad had returned, not as a student this time, but as a public relations associate.

Fast forward to 1968. We moved to Orlando, Fla., where Dad had just accepted a job as the business editor of the Orlando Sentinel. That 1968 Orlando was vastly different from 2010 Orlando. But that’s a subject for another day.

So let’s fast forward again. My sister and I grew up—she went her way as a highly successful insurance executive in High Point, N.C., and I went my way into…well, let’s just say I went my way too.  

But always, Dad was there. Whenever and wherever we were, Dad was there.

There are many things for which I am profoundly grateful to him, but this one story probably illustrates the kind of guy Dad was more than anything else: Dad was an athlete, a terrific softball player and basketball player. He became a professional basketball referee, and, since he was a journalist anyway, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to find that he also became a part-time sportswriter.

But me? I was born without the sports gene. I know Dad would’ve loved to have a son with whom he could have toured the country, taking in ballgames, discussing stats and mixing it up on the fields of friendly competition. His daughter was, and is, a pretty damned good athlete, but not his son.

But as much as he would have loved to have a son who could’ve made the football team and went on to win the Heisman Trophy, he was just as proud of me when I lettered in chorus and when I won band awards. Or at least he pretended to be, and when it comes right down to it, it means the same.

Dad and I never agreed on politics. In my youth, I was a far-left hippie type, and Dad was a Nixon Republican. Over the intervening years, we…uh…swapped places. That made for a great deal of tension during family visits, until we decided to exchange position papers on why we believed the things we did. It was one of the best decisions we ever made. We discovered that we were so very far apart on just about everything that we could never discuss issues again. So we didn’t. And we got along just fine.

For the past few years, Dad has been declining, and I am very glad I got to spend his last minutes with him. I think he’s looking over my shoulder now, attempting to correct my grammar, so I should say something I never said enough when he was alive: Dad, I love you. I am proud to have been your son. And I’ll miss you.  • SCM