It's Saturday Night -
time for more Genealogy Fun!
Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:
1) Sunday, 19 June, is Father's Day. Let's celebrate by writing a blog post about our father, or another significant male ancestor (e.g., a grandfather).
2) What are three things about your father (or significant male ancestor) that you vividly remember about him?
3) Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status or Google+ Stream post.
Here's mine:
My father was Frederick Walton Seaver (1911-1983), born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts to Fred and Alma Bessie (Richmond) Seaver, moved to San Diego in 1940, married Betty Virginia Carringer (1919-2002) in San Diego in 1942, and died there in 1983. They had three sons, and I'm the eldest son.
1) My father loved baseball. He played it as a boy and a young man, going to Dartmouth College on a scholarship to play in about 1932, but he suffered a knee injury. He grew up listening to the radio and his favorite team was the Boston Red Sox. After he moved to San Diego in 1940, he regularly listened to the San Diego Padres on the radio. He signed up as a manager in 1957 when Little League baseball came to our area of San Diego. My brother, Stan, was 10 years old, and dad managed the team for three years in Mike Morrow Little League (8 to 12 years old), then two years in Pioneer Pony League (13-14 years old), and two years in Pioneer Colt League (15-16 years old). My brother, Scott, was 8 in 1964, and dad went back and coached Little League for 5 years, Pony League for two years, and Colt League for two years. In addition to managing teams, he usually worked on the baseball fields for hours each week during the summer - dragging the field, mowing the grass, lining the batters box and foul lines, cleaning up around the dugouts and stands, etc. He did not attend many pro baseball games in person, but watched the World Series, and other nationally televised games, until he died in 1983.
2) My father was an avid bowler (ten pins), and this was his only "boy's night out" activity from 1950 to 1970. At the peak of his prowess, he averaged in the 190s (which was pretty good at the time). He was 6 foot 2 inches tall, 190 pounds in his prime, right-handed, debonair in his bowling shirt and shoes, and very graceful in his four step delivery, with a great roundhouse curve. He bowled on several teams in San Diego, including travel leagues. Our summer vacations from 1955 to about 1963 were to the California State Bowling Tournament - we went to Fresno, Sacramento, San Jose, Los Angeles, etc. in the air conditioned blue Mercury and later the pink Oldsmobile. I don't think he ever rolled a perfect game, though, but he came close several times. He was very competitive. I can find many articles in the San Diego Union newspaper that mention his bowling exploits. As kids, we didn't go to the league bowling with him because of our early bedtime and the unsavory environment (smoking, drinking, cussing, etc.). As a young man, I often went with him to the bowling league on Friday nights, and even practiced driving on the way home one year. However, we gleaned one excellent benefit from his bowling - he always stopped at a bakery after keggling and bought delicious fresh donuts, cream puffs, eclairs, etc. We loved Saturday morning! His bowling career ended in 1971 when he cut off one finger and mangled another using his circular saw in the garage.
2) My father was a life insurance salesman for Prudential Insurance Company (we had a piece of the Rock!) from 1947 to 1971, when he retired. His office was in Point Loma, and his "debit" (his service area) was in Pacific Beach - a good 12 miles away from home. He usually went to his office once a week and to his service area two or three times a week. He went door-to-door selling life insurance policies, and then collected monthly premiums from his customers. The other days, and into the night, sometimes until 11 p.m. or midnight, he worked at his desk overlooking the front door steps in our apartment at 2119 30th Street. He had an adding machine with a narrow tape roll (it was great fun to play with when I was a kid, and my daughters loved playing with it too!), file cabinets, and many ledger books in which he entered the payments received. He was always there when I came home from school, work or evening activities. This work schedule permitted coaching baseball, working on the ball fields, and bowling.
There are my three memories of my father. He was not especially communicative with his sons - but we loved and respected him while we were growing up, attending school and starting out work lives. He was supportive in our athletic endeavors also, attending my brothers' high school baseball games and coaching us with bowling. We played basketball and ping pong on the patio in the summertime. We played word games at dinner time, and sometimes we played card games (Canasta) board games (Sorry, Monopoly) in the evening if there was nothing good on television.
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Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver
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