Shots in the Dark

My father turned 75 in 2005, and it was hard to know what to get him for that landmark birthday. He wasn’t a very materialistic person—no Italian clothes or German sports cars for him—and because of his Parkinson’s, it was harder for him to enjoy most of the things in which he took pleasure. He loved to read, but he was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate, which made reading difficult during the day, and at night, the medication he was taking for his disease put him to sleep. He loved good food, but the spasms in his hands and the challenge of chewing made mealtime an exercise in prolonged frustration. My father was a proud man, perhaps too proud; I knew that things were truly bad when I asked if I could cut his food for him, and he accepted. He loved a dry martini and a good wine, but the pleasure he took from spirits was diminished by the growing difficulty of drinking them. Two hands had to be used; special glasses; straws. And the alcohol, like the reading, did not go with the medication. The pills arrayed on my father’s bathroom counter gave it the appearance of a penny candy store—one from this bin, one from that bin….

So my siblings and I came up with an idea: Using Apple’s iPhoto, we’d put together a book of pictures from his life. We canvassed his brothers, my mother, his wife Diane. We found some beautiful ones, pictures that introduced us to a boy and then a man whom we hadn’t known.

We gave him the bound book at a small party for him in Greenwich, and he flipped through it with something like shock, as if it were taking him back to moments, episodes, events he hadn’t thought about in decades—for it was true that he hadn’t seen these photos in at least half a century. My dad tended to keep his emotions to himself—he would have raised an eyebrow at this blogging thing—but these images of his youth, his health, moved him. For a second, I wondered if we had done the right thing, reminding him of how he used to be. But I think it was a good idea; I think he knew what we meant.

I love the pictures above and below. When my uncle George, who was at the party, saw the photo of my dad catching the football, he teased him in the way that brothers do, joking that my father had faked the pose. My dad, indignantly but not all that convincingly, denied it. To me, that only makes the picture more charming. It is much more like a boy to pretend to catch a pass like that than to actually do it, and anyway, the act of the act of imagining the catch, dreaming of the accomplishment, is more profound than the physicality of doing it.

And as for the boy in the rowboat—my father had a lifelong love affair with the ocean. Maybe it began in moments like this one.

In a Globe editorial, the former dean of Harvard College examines Harvard’s new segregated-gym policy…and wonders why, if it’s all right to institute a policy that discriminates against men on the basis of their gender, why does Harvard ban ROTC because for discriminating against gays?

You can’t have it both ways, right?

Whatever the logic, the university failed in its educational responsibility. It missed an opportunity to model for its students the kind of moral reasoning it expects of them.

Is there anyone who actually works at Harvard—i.e., not a student—who will stand up in favor of segregation?

Perhaps the new dean of the College, Evelynn Hammonds?

Is Harvard’s new policy of not admitting transfer students fair?

This distraught e-mailer doesn’t think so…..

Yesterday all transfer candidates received the below email stating that “Harvard College is unable to enroll any transfer students for the next two academic years, 2008-2009 and 2009-2010,” due to on-campus housing. Personally, I was NOT planning to live on-campus so why is this effecting [sic] my application?

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Bonus points to readers who can, without using Google, name the deeply embarrassing pop culture reference of this blog hed….

After Entertainment Weekly gave my first book a “D+,” I swore I’d never trust their reviews again. How wrong I was! The pop culture magazine has just given “The Greatest Game” a score of A-.
Building upon vivid reporting from newspaper icons like Peter Gammons and Murray Chass, Bradley examines every possible what-if that might have led to a Red Sox triumph.

I think the reviewer may have been a Red Sox fan.

“The problem with Iraq is, every time you turn the corner, there’s another corner.”

—Rhode Island senator Jack Reed

I still can’t quite bring myself to try to put into words some memories of my father. But for the time being, I have a few photos of him, some from when I was younger, some from a time before my birth, that I might post over the next few days.

Here’s one from his boyhood. I’m guessing that my dad was around 16 or 17 in this photo, which would date it to 1946 or 1947. The picture was probably taken in Yorktown, Virginia, where my father’s family moved after my dad was born in Chicago and spent his early years in New York City.

I never knew him like this, of course, and it’s a shock to see him looking so young, especially after the last few years: Time and Parkinson’s transformed his body into something almost unrecognizable and, ultimately, something unliveable.

Better to think of him like this—vigorous, happy, his whole life ahead of him. Nothing but possibility.

In a few days, when I’ve collected my thoughs, I’m going to write a little bit about my father. I don’t know if you’ll be interested, but for me, I think, it’ll be helpful.

Until then, I’d like to post this obituary that his wife, Diane; his brothers, George, Tony, and John; my mother, Marian Bradley, and my siblings, Mike and Kate, and I helped put together yesterday.

It was quickly done, and when I look at it, this obituary doesn’t really tell the story of his life. The story of my father’s life falls in between these factual lines. Nonetheless, it provides an outline, a structure, and it’s one way to remember him, a better way than the memory of the last few years, in which his body was bit by bit disassembled by Parkinson’s, the same disease that killed his father, my grandfather, about half a century ago.

Michael Blow of Greenwich, CT, Fishers Island, NY, and Boca Raton, FL, died on March 19 of complications from Parkinson’s disease.

Michael was born on May 10, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois, to George Waller Blow and Katharine Cooke Blow.

He is survived by his wife, Diane, and by a wife from a prior marriage, Marian Bradley; three children, Michael Bradley, Katharine McGloon, and Richard Bradley; five stepchildren, four grandchildren, and ten stepgrandchildren. Also three brothers, George, Anthony, and John.

A 1948 graduate of the Millbrook School in Millbrook, New York, and a 1952 graduate of Yale College, Michael served as a lieutenant in the United States Air Force in Korea. He worked at Collier’s Weekly, Newsweek, and American Heritage, then was for many years a book editor for Reader’s Digest. Michael was the author of three books: The History of the Atomic Bomb, Men of Science and Invention, and A Ship to Remember: The Maine and the Spanish-American War, which was inspired by the fact that his grandfather, Lieutenant George Preston Blow, U.S.N., was a survivor of the Maine explosion which led to the start of that war.

Michael was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, the Society of Colonial Wars, the Yale Club of New York City, the Field Club of Greenwich, the Hay Harbor Club of Fishers Island, the Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club of Boca Raton, the St. Andrews Club in Delray Beach.

Donations in memory of Michael Blow may be sent to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, Christ Church of Greenwich (254 E. Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, CT), and Hospice of Palm Beach County.

And keeps you humble. Mortality keeps you humble.

On Tuesday night, I celebrated the publication of my new book, The Greatest Game, with some old and new friends.

About 24 hours later, my father, who has been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for many years, died in his apartment in Boca Raton, Florida, at almost the exact time my Jet Blue flight was landing in nearby West Palm Beach. I had hoped to see him before his death; I did not make it in time.

I am still in Florida, and I will be posting intermittently over the next few days. Please bear with me, and thanks for your patience.

By the way, the Yankees crushed the Red Sox in Tampa a couple of days ago, 8-4. Hey, so what if it’s only spring training?

“I won’t cry, I promise.” —Marcy Crevonis asking Derek Jeter if she could take a picture of him next to the grave of her late fiancee, Michael Pohle, who was killed in the Virginia Tech shootings. Jeter told Crevonis she could have the picture if she smiled….