A Good Life Cut Short

                                                           A good life cut short

Last November, when my dad’s 100th birthday passed, there were tributes to him on social media by my sisters and cousins, remembering what a great guy he was. There were also replies from his 12 grandkids-- who never met him-- but wanted to know more about their grandfather. I only knew him for 16 short years but he made a huge impact on my life. He was my hero, role model, and I always tried to make him proud of me. He and my mom were taken from us way to soon. But our family hung together, grew, and loved each other. I hope mom and dad would be proud of us. Or as they used to say, “I’m tickled about you.” I talked to my sisters about their memories and wrote it down. So here goes:

My dad would have turned 100 on November 11, 2018. Or was it the 8th, the date on his birth certificate. There was some confusion about his birth date. He died on February 29, 1972. Leap day. Some years we remembered it on the 28th and some on March 1st. He would have gotten a kick out of the confusion of his comings and goings.

But there was no confusion about the way he lived. A hard- working, honest, gentle man who loved his family, his country and his God. John Francis Pershing Hoban was likely born on November, 11, 1918, the day World War I ended.

Regardless, we celebrated it on the 11th. Because of the significance, he was given the middle name of `Pershing’, in honor of John `Black Jack’ Pershing, the American general who led the Allied forces to victory in the Great War. In spite of all these names, he was `Jack’ to all his friends and neighbors in Delaware, and `Shorty’, to everyone in his hometown of Pittston, Pa. In Pittston, `Shorty’ was his Christian name.

“It’s not a sin to be poor but it sure is inconvenient.”                                                                                                                                                                                         Shorty Hoban

He grew up during the Great Depression. But he used to say there wasn’t anything `great’ about it. He and his brothers, Joe, Mike and James, would walk the railroad tracks in `Ham Town’, the nickname for Hughes Town, an Irish neighborhood in Pittston. They would pick up coal that fell from the coal cars that transported the anthracite coal --the mineral the region was famous for-- to the furnaces and street lamps all over the East Coast. Word has it that they would sometimes assist some coal from the cars onto the ground when the droppings were slim.

My grandfather, Mike Hoban, was a WWI veteran and electrician for a Scranton colliery. He also coached the neighborhood youth sports teams. In an era where not everyone played or received a trophy, family lure says that my grandfather cut my father, his son, from the baseball team because he wasn’t good enough. Ouch. That’s probably why my dad didn’t empathize with me too much when I complained about my lack of playing time on my sports teams.

Son of a Sailor

On December 7, 1941, he was bartending at a hotel in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. He called home and his father had one question:  “When are you coming home to join up?” So at 22, he enlisted in the Navy and went to war. He was a first gunner’s mate on the USS Indiana, a battleship whose large guns supported the marines as they island-hopped towards Japan. We heard later that his brother, my Uncle Joey, was one of those marines storming those bloody beaches. Although he seldom spoke of the war to us, his ship’s year book states that the Indiana fought in some of the most famous battles of the war: Iowa Jima; Guadalcanal; Tarawa; Palau and Okinawa.  A gunner’s mate had the perilous job of feeding shells to the gunner, who fired them off. Dad worked in the magazine, a room filled with all types of explosives. A spark or a direct hit from a kamikaze plane could have set off an explosion that would have blown him to smithereens.

Our cousin, Jerry Linnen, told me that the night before his wedding, my dad had his groomsmen in stitches telling stories about the War. I wish I could have been there but Jerry didn’t invite me to his wedding.

On Sundays after church, dad would sit in his recliner and listen to “Victory at Sea”, a series of albums that consisted of military music, big guns booming and commentary about the big battles. He probably listened and thought back to those days, good and bad. And with five kids running around a three bedroom ranch house, he probably thought “War wasn’t that bad after all.”

We have photos of him, holding a golf club (No one ever remembered him playing golf) and holding a Hawaiian hula girl around the waist. That and a photo of him in his Navy whites are the only three photos that survived the war. He told my sister, Lynn, that the only time he cried during the war was when his ship passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and it hit him that he was finally home. Fifty years later, Katie took our two nieces, Maureen and Ryan, on a bike trip across the same bridge that their grandfather passes under a half-century before.   

“I have a wife, five kids and 12 tomato plants.”

A few years later he met my mom and they married in 1950. He was working in the Number 9 coal mine when the mines closed and many Pittston families moved away to find work. At the time, my sisters, Ann and Lynn, had been born in Pittston. Patricia, Katie and I were born in Delaware.   

Dad loved to garden, something Patricia and Kate inherited from him. He was also generous in sharing his crop with our neighbors. He would fill a bag of vegetables and have us drop it off at a neighbors door step. He had a grass cutting business on the side to make extra money to make ends meet. I worked for him, earning a quarter an hour plus lunch. We cut our doctor’s lawn as well as Ann and Lynn’s high school, St. Hedwig’s, in lieu of tuition. I used to tell them that at age 8, I worked to pay for their education. Some days after working a 16-hour shift at the DuPont pigment plant in Newport, where he came home covered in blue pigment, he would take me out to cut grass. He would tell me to start cutting while he took a little nap. My goal was to finish the three or four lawns and wake him up when all the work was done so he could go home and sleep in his bed. He liked that and soon I was raking in 35 cents an hour.

He also hired neighborhood kids in the summer. Donny Harris and Larry Tabor are two I remember. On Friday nights, they were usually at the door looking for an advance on their pay so they could go out and party. Since Dad only got paid once a month from his customers, cash flow was always tight. I can remember him, doing his best `George Bailey’ imitation, trying to come up with enough cash to bide them over till he got paid.  

He made a few attempts to buy equipment to support his growing landscaping business. But Patricia and Katie were quick to put their mark on them. He bought a trailer for his mowers and built a shed for his tools. The girls painted the trailer with the same design as the Partridge Family’s tour bus and took over the shed as a playhouse complete with curtains and filled with dolls and toys. He just smiled and went about his business.

He also loved dogs. He was always bringing home strays. Our dogs: Charlie, Flip, Brownie and more than a few Peppers, were a big part of out lives. Ann and Lynn tell me that my father used to tie a pork chop around my neck when I was a baby so the dogs would play with me.

He used to drop me, Ann and Lynn off at the Earle Theatre in Old New Castle to watch movies on Saturday mornings. He killed time until the movies were over siting at Battery Park watching ships move up and down the Delaware River. When an old Navy ship was heading to be mothballed at the Philadelphia Naval Yard, we would be there to watch it take its final voyage. On the 4th of July, he would take us to the Port of Wilmington to tour naval ships and to the armory at the New Castle Airport to see the Blue Angels aerial shows and fireworks.  

“Our Shorty”

Although I grew up only 80 miles from the ocean, I was about 13 before I saw it for the first time. That’s because on our yearly family vacation, we went back to Pittston to visit family. Every July we loaded up our late model station wagon and made the 150-mile pilgrimage to Pittston, a little town located between Scranton and Wilks Barre on the Susquehanna River. Many years our battered jalopy didn’t complete the journey. A leaking radiator, blown engine or worn out transmission caused a breakdown on the North East Extension, forcing the Delaware Hoban’s to arrive in Pittston on the hook.

Me and Dad would spend a few days the next week finding our next car--that would hopefully make it back to Delaware. I enjoyed the car shopping but my favorite part was running the town with my dad. At some point he would take me to visit his old haunts and see his old buddies. They would be in back rooms at Bartoli’s and O’Malley’s bar, playing poker. They would toss me nickels and dimes from their winnings and give me all the sodas and snacks I could consume. Later, we would visit his sisters, Mary Grace (Aunt Mickey) and Genevieve (Aunt Gen). It’s been said that as soon as you entered my aunt’s kitchens, you suddenly became smarter, better looking and in my case, taller. Dad would bring a case of beer for the adults and a couple 2-liter sodas for 12 kids. Then he would be incredulous when we told him that the soda was gone. During the course of the party, my aunts would beam at their big brother and say, “Our Shorty” as they gave him kisses on his cheeks.

“Are you lonesome tonight?”

Mom and dad were sweethearts. She called him Shorty and he called her Josey. The only time they fought was when he fell off the wagon, which happened about every five years or so. I never heard them fight or have cross words for each other, except when he would drink, and then he was very meek and quiet. Dad was a binge drinker. After one drink, his drinking  would spiral out of control until a week had passed and he was too sick to work. Then his buddies from AA would show up and get him through it. “Dad would go to AA meetings to buck up before a wedding or vacation in Pittston” remembered Lynn. But at the end of the night he would sometimes have a beer and then the slide would begin.  

But for most of his life, dad worked hard to support the six of us. He and mom never missed a game or school activity. He was a devout Catholic, following the mass closely. I always thought that when I got older I would become devout like him. I didn’t. I thought I would learn to love his war albums and show tunes. I didn’t. But I did inherit his drinking problem. But that’s a story for another time.

He used to sit in his chair and read the bible, military history or biographies, often with Patricia and Katie on his lap. He used to grab them by the knee until they were laughing hysterically. I’ve often wondered what his life would have been like if he had gone to college on the GI Bill after the war. He loved to read. But like many of those who fought, he wanted to get on with life after losing 4 years to the war.

And he loved our friends, who were always welcome in our home. It got to the point where my sister’s guy friends would stop by to take my dad to Brandywine Racetrack or Delaware Park and leave my sisters’ home. I think some of the guys saw him as a father figure because he didn’t judge and knew that it was tough growing up. To some, he was the father they never had.

When guys on the street returned from Viet Nam, he hung a sheet in the window welcoming them home. One of the guys told me years later that it was the nicest thing that anyone had done for him. He never came out and said how he felt about the Viet Nam War, but he was definitely on the side of the soldiers.

Dad liked his show tunes; South Pacific, My Fair Lady; and Pal Joey. But he also liked Elvis and the Beatles. Ringo was his favorite Beatle and he used to sing, Elvis’s: “Are you lonesome tonight” to my mother. He didn’t sing too well but that didn’t keep him from singing loud.

The Middletown spy

Dad was a big sports fan. He took me to my first Phillies game in early 1964. It was a night game at Connie Mack Stadium. As we walked up the ramp and the field came into view, I said, “The grass is green,” after watching Phillies’ games on a black and white T.V.  He looked down at my confused expression, crew cut, freckled face and protruding front teeth and replied, “What color did you expect?” He probably wondered if he could ever come up with enough money to get me into Harvard.  A few weeks later he called us into the house to watch Jim Bunning complete his perfect game against the Mets. He said he wanted us to witness history. 

His favorite football player was Tommy McDonald, the undersized Eagle’s Hall of Fame wide receiver, who wasn’t afraid to catch the ball over the middle. After receiving a vicious hit from a defender McDonald would spring to his feet and run back to the huddle like it was no big deal. “That’s the way you play football,” dad told me. And that’s the way I tried to play.  And live.

He followed the Pittston High School teams where some of his nephews starred and coached. In Delaware, he was intrigued by a little farming school in the middle of the state called, ready for this: Middletown. When they played schools their size, they would win by 50 or 60 points. When those schools refused to play them, they were forced to play bigger schools upstate and out-of-state. And they continued to win. Many a Friday night, we watched Middletown play Salesianum (Sallies) or Newark. Many of those games determined the State’s number 1 ranking. Later I played for Sallies, as a lowly sophomore buried on the depth chart. Many of dad’s friends at work were Middletown fans and I think he was a little tired of their constant boasting about their team’s prowess.  

During Middletown week at Sallies my sophomore year, the coach called the team together at midfield. He told us scrubs to form a line on the other sideline because there was a Middletown `spy’ watching practice. I looked over to see my dad, with his work shirt, dungarees, and his ever-present thermos of coffee, sitting against a tree off the field  I got sly grins from some of my teammates who knew him. But we didn’t have the heart to tell the coach and lined up as told. It didn’t help. That Friday night Middletown continued its mastery over Sallies.

That summer I transferred to Dickinson High School and we opened the season against Middleton, who was sporting a 20-game winning streak and was a heavy favorite against us. Dad didn’t watch my games from the bleachers where my mom and sisters sat. He used to follow the play up and down the sidelines. He would usually stand somewhere near the line of scrimmage so he was easy to spot in the crowd. I ended up scoring the winning touchdown in what was a huge upset victory. As I headed for the sideline after scoring, I spotted dad against the fence with a big smile on his face. I think he was proud of me.  

After arriving home, I was in the kitchen talking on the phone when he entered. He used to do this little dance when he was happy. I guess it was a form of the cha-cha, with his arms at a 45-five degree angle, he shuffled forward. We hugged and he said he was proud of me. Mom was tickled. I think he was excited to go into work to see all his Middletown buddies and do a little boasting himself.  

Dad hadn’t been feeling well for a while. His doctor said it was nerves but he was losing weight and his face was gaunt. By the end of the season he was in the hospital being treated for lung cancer and black lung. He suffered through the holidays and died at the end of February. The next season we played Sallies in the 1972 State Champion game and lost. Before the game as we were waiting to be introduced, my coach, whose father had also died recently, came up to me and said it was too bad our dad’s weren’t here to watch it.

Ralph, a friend of my dad’s, wrote my mom a beautiful letter after my dad had died. He told my mother that my dad was like humorist Will Rodgers, who “never met a man he didn’t like”. Even when it became clear that my dad’s cancer was terminal, his strong faith was a comfort to his loved ones, including Ralph.  “Shorty told me that when he was in the ICU after surgery, the only thing he could see was a crucifix hanging on the wall. Shorty said he stared at it and thought, `It’s just that man and me, now’.”

There are many things he and mom--both members of the greatest generation—had missed by dying so young:  Weddings, graduations, holidays, promotions. But the biggest loss was not getting to know their 12 grandkids and 6 great-grandkids. Mom did a great job raising us and we are still very close. Our kids became nurses, engineers, teachers, marketers, medical illustrators, and good citizens in general. They all have quick wits and sharp senses of humor. To put it another way--We have a dozen smart-asses on our hands. But that’s ok.  I think they love being Hobans and are a great support system for each other. They love their families and know a good party when they see one. Just like their grandfather and grandmother.  

In other words, they are the kind of people that Shorty and Josie Hoban would have been tickled about.

Happy 100th birthday, Dad. We love you.