Not exactly fatherless

Like a lot of men who were killed Sept. 11, my dad died young and left children. At 7, I made a secret plan to cope with his loss, and it worked.

By Kevin J. Sweeney

Nov. 21, 2001 | The events leading to my father's death were not shown on live television. Aside from the phone calls to family and friends, and the generous obituary written for the hometown weekly, there was no way for the larger community to know that something profoundly sad had happened. My dad died alone, of congestive heart failure, at 6 o'clock on a Thursday morning, at Stanford University Hospital. It was 1962, and I was 3 years old, the fifth of his six children.

There is little in the way of detail to connect my father to those who died on Sept. 11. While there was a frantic last phone call -- from a doctor telling my mother to come quickly -- it came minutes too late. His occupation did not match the lofty pursuits of so many who worked in the twin towers: He was a former diaper deliveryman, and his last job was as a city maintenance worker -- a street sweeper.

But like many of the men who died on Sept. 11, my father was young (38), and in the prime of his life, and he left a young wife and young children -- abruptly. These are details that bring tremendous sadness; at times I am nearly swept away by it as I read the endless stream of obituaries in the New York Times. But I recall, as I mourn these losses, that even though my childhood was marked indelibly by a sad event, it was not a sad childhood. I was a pretty happy kid. And, so far, I've been a pretty happy grown man.

It might be because I have not been fatherless, not exactly, even though my mother never remarried.

Several years after my father died, I began to worry about what I might lack as someone who grew up without a dad. I remember, at the age of 7, worrying about whether I could ever be a good father if I didn't have a father. In the hazy minutes between bedtime and sleep, I would linger over the fact that I would not have the classic point of reference -- my old man -- in crucial moments of maleness or parenthood. I really don't know why I saw this particular need. It may have come from the image of television fathers, the ones who sat on the edge of the bed and had the perfect words to close the week's episode. It may have come from Catholicism, a grand influence in our household, and its emphasis on male leaders. It may have been that I missed my dad terribly, and replaced my sadness with a worry.

Whatever my motivation, I figured out a plan. It was mysterious, in that I am not entirely sure how I came up with it, and it was secret, in that I told no one else.

I picked out three men from our working-class community and decided that they would teach me how to be a father. None of them would know about their surrogacy, but I would watch them closely. And sometimes my surveillance would extend to contact: They were all friends of my family and I would be in a position, from time to time, to ask them for advice or hang out with them.

I watched Jim Gaffney, Sherm Heaney and Chick Kelly for many years. When our families got together, I would loiter in the living room with the grown-ups, watching the fathers go about their business. I watched the dads in the park with their own kids, and in the stands, when I played ball. I watched the fathers watching their sons. I watched them shake hands, hug and kiss. I watched them be husbands, watched how they treated their wives. I saw how kind they were to my mother. Their words would break through the cacophony of a christening party or a wedding and I would listen carefully: These were the words of a good father, I would think, a father that I myself had chosen.

Sometimes I would seek them out, ask their advice, tell them my jokes, talk. I would never reveal the specialness of our relationships -- I couldn't bear to tell them how great the stakes were. But I was always around.

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