By Jo Colvin - 05/20/2011
Echo Press
As you may know, 2011 marks the 120th anniversary of the Echo Press. In celebration, once a month we are running snippets of stories from yesteryear, along with advertisements from the last century. Of course, it’s also graduation time – that bittersweet time of year when melancholy parents have to say goodbye to their children as they set off to start lives of their own. In a tribute to both Echo Press history and to parents with graduating seniors, following is an excerpt from a column written in 1965 by John Obert, city editor and then editor at the Park Region Echo from 1948 to 1966. It was written to his oldest son, Tom, as he set off for college. Tom (aka Cubby) returned to Alexandria, his boyhood home, in 2001 after 30 years working for the U.S. Department of Labor. Although it was written 46 years ago, its message and the feeling it evokes transcends time.
 |
| Tom Obert |
“Dear Tom, When your mother and I said goodbye to you in the dormitory, an era ended, for life will never be quite the same again. Oh yes, you’ll be home for holidays and summer vacations, and your room will always be your room. But you’ve taken that first irrevocable step away from us, as every young man inevitably must, and the parting wrench…well, someday when you’re as old as I am perhaps you’ll understand. As we drove away I turned to your mother and said, “Suddenly I feel very old.”
I kept thinking of the day you were born, suddenly astounded that 18 years had passed so quickly… The years passed all too quickly. I remember your first step, your first word – it was a magnificently profane expression you learned when I came up under the open door of the medicine cabinet one day and cracked my head. People kept telling us to ignore your one word vocabulary and that you’d soon forget it. Hah! You said that same word for two months before you uttered the conventional Ma-Ma and Da-Da…
I remember your first haircut. You leaped from the chair and fled screaming down the street. Shortly after, Grandpa gave me a home barber kit, which you suffered patiently until the crew cut stage was abandoned and you suddenly demanded professional tonsorial attention. I remember your first day at school. You didn’t cry. Mother did.
I remember your first Little League baseball game… It all passed so swiftly. All of a sudden you were in junior high school, and it was a buck and a quarter a week for hot lunch instead of a buck. With your appetite it was cheap at twice the price…
Where did the years go? When your mother and your grandmother and your sister and I watched the graduation processional that hot night last June, bursting with what I’m certain seemed rather tasteless pride when you stood in the first row with the honor students, it seemed but yesterday when we brought you to Washington school for your very first day of kindergarten…
I wish we had more time together this summer. I suppose every father in the world says that when his oldest leaves home. But it does seem something of a shame that a man doesn’t really get to know his sons, doesn’t really get to appreciate them, until they’ve reached young manhood – and are about to leave. Well, now you’re in college and on your own. No one to answer to but yourself. No one to tell you when to be home. No one to remind you to hit the books…
I suppose I should be worried. But I’m not. I really don’t know what we did to make you turn out the decent young man you are. I don’t think we can take much credit for it. But we can take a great deal of comfort and satisfaction – and we do. I suppose, too, that I should wind this up with some fatherly advice. I think it would be redundant at this point. If you haven’t learned decency, courtesy, compassion, honesty and diligence, there’s nothing I can do about it now. But I think you have. And that’s why I’m not worried.
Love, Dad”
Taken from a weekly column that rotates among members of the Echo Press editorial staff.
No comments:
Post a Comment