The Nazi invasion of Poland deprived him and my Mom of their formal educations, although they both earned degrees from UHK -- the University of Hard Knocks. Their experience provided powerful perspective throughout my childhood, especially during the turbulence of the 1960's.
Once I reached school age, I sat next to Dad for meals at the kitchen table in our modest Detroit bungalow. We usually ate dinner about 4:35 p.m. Supper was served ten minutes after Dad arrived home from his UAW factory job at GM Hydramatic, Ypsilanti, Michigan. Just time enough for him to change clothes and clean up. He'd begin by setting his work boots outside the back door to dry. They were damp with hydraulic fluid. In the summer, if I ran home at dinner time and saw those boots, I knew I'd better hustle.
Dad ate fast. He started work at 7:30 a.m. The plant broke for lunch at 11:30 a.m., so his appetite was raging by dinner. He had only a 26-minute lunch break, which included a five-minute walk from his work station to the restroom and back. The plant was huge. Foremen road bikes around the place. Dad wolfed his lunch and the habit carried over to dinner. I emulated him and struggle to shake the behavior to this day. But I also picked up some good things.
Between bites, Dad would share stories from his day. Sometimes it would be a joke, if it was family-friendly or he could clean it up. Other times we'd hear about some new technology. Once, Dad was assigned to work a new, state-of-the art grinding machine to test a pilot manufacturing operation. The GM engineer nervously paced while Dad did his thing. Hearing Dad's broken English, the engineer snapped at the foreman, "This guy speaks broken English. Why did you assign him to this new operation?" Smirking, Dad's boss snapped back, "He's not going to talk to the machine, he's going to run it." Dad was very good at his job.
Occasionally, the topic was injustice. Every time a worker in his department retired, the boss would pass the hat. Back in the day, the standard donation was two bucks a guy. Enough to buy a cake and send the coworker home with a wad of dough for a dinner celebration with his missus or her mister. But one day, no one pitched in. The retiree was an African-American. Dad was embarrassed and angry. He took his two bucks over to the guy, apologized and congratulated him on his retirement. There were times Dad shared some of my Mom's homemade cake with the gentleman. The retiree was grateful someone showed him compassion.
Dad understood his black colleague's feeling of rejection. Although he spoke with a Polish accent, my father was a U.S. citizen. He was born in Dunkirk, New York in 1920 while his expatriate family worked U.S. jobs. My grandparents were earning a living while Poland battled invasions from Austria and Russia between two world wars. When Poland regained independence in 1920, the Stepien family returned to its farm in Europe. Likewise, my mother's parents labored in France and also returned to their Polish family farm.
A quarter century later, after World War II, Dad decided to make the United States his home. But he was forced to leave his wife behind in Poland. Mom was pregnant with my older brother. Dad spent all he had to get to America. He lived with his older sister and her husband while welding radiators for the Hudson car company in Detroit and saving all he could. It would take well more than a year for him to squirrel away enough to bring my Mom and my newborn brother to the U.S.
One day at lunch break, glass filled his cup as Dad poured coffee from his thermos bottle. He wondered how it had broken. Loathe to spend the savings, he bought another glass-lined thermos. Next day, same problem. He found his thermos broken in his locker. Dad knew someone was pranking him. And the prankster was squandering hard-earned money Dad desperately needed to reunite his young family.
The next day at lunchtime, Dad slowly pulled his smock over his head. Peering through an opening in the fabric he spied a guy at his locker who dropped the thermos and put it back on the shelf. The guy enjoyed bullying immigrants. Now Dad had learned a few lessons about what constitutes a fair fight in America. First, you never hit a guy with glasses. So, Dad pretended to have something in his eye as he approached the bespectacled culprit. When the guy leaned in with a sly grin, Dad snatched the glasses off his face before he began to teach him a lesson.
That day, Dad was fired for fighting. The next day, he stood in a long line to apply for job at General Motors. He was hired and worked at a couple GM locations for 32 years.
So years later, when fellow workers rejected a man because of the color of his skin, Dad remembered the sting of hatred. And it moved him to show compassion. He dealt with each person as an individual. It's a lesson I try to remember.
Happy Father's Day.
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