My Father’s Day Memories Kick In

6/20/2015

No Rowing in Kissena Park Anymore But Still Pretty

Just the other day, we were driving on one of those old roads in Queens when I spotted Kissena Park.

“My father used to take me rowing there,” I said.

My father could not swim but once in a great while he would take his oldest child to the modest lake in the park.

Also, just the other day, one of our children was clicking in a Stanley Cup game, but scrolled past “The Third Man” – the zither music, Orson Welles smirking in the shadows.

“My father and mother took me when I was 10," I said.

It is one of my great memories of childhood, being judged mature enough to handle the villainy and mystery and politics of that epic movie.

The hockey could wait; we pretty much stayed with "The Third Man" right through the final scene in the cemetery.

My parents taught me to spot the creep factor in Nixon and McCarthy. They taught me the calling of journalism.

My father went off to work six or seven days a week to feed our family. I also knew that he liked working.

As busy as he was, sometimes he found time to park near the railroad main line to watch trains racing toward the city, installing in me the chill of the outward bound.

Sometimes on a Saturday we parked by LaGuardia Airport and watched the airplanes and listened to Army or Notre Dame football games on the car radio.

He also took me to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, and made sure I rooted for a team with Dixie Walker and the next year with Jackie Robinson. He taught me to root for the good guys.

He drove me out to inspect the college I would attend. He had never gone, but made sure I did.

I know this: I never thanked him enough.

Altenir Silva

6/21/2015 05:07:51 am

Dear George,

A time goes by, but memories remain. Happy Father's Day.

Best - Altenir

Mike from Whitestone

6/21/2015 04:55:58 pm

Happy Father's Day GV and all. I enjoyed this post and identify for sure. Thanks Dad. Another side of the newspaper world but he dove in head first also, nights, weekends, holidays, loved it and took care of us too. Taught me many lessons especially the value of hard work and still does.
Movies : Rocky, Young Frankenstein, Man Called Horse were a few he took us too against my mom's wishes. .....
He failed too....tried to make a Met fan out of me, wasn't happening. He too a Brooklyn Dodger faithful first.
US Navy vet.
Still golfing, walking, keeping it simple.

Thanks Dad.

Thanks GV.

Ed martin

6/21/2015 05:20:58 pm

Vintage Vecsey. Thanks and hope you had a great day.

Mendel

6/21/2015 10:11:50 pm

Beautiful words, George. Your memories evoke my own. Happy Father’s Day.

George Vecsey

6/21/2015 11:58:45 pm

Thanks for the comments. I forgot to add that my father left school at 15 to support his mom and sister...and was one ofthe most informed people I knew. How many times do I say, "Pop would know that?" GV

Gene Palumbo

6/22/2015 08:46:22 am

Somehow or other, I just now found my way to a post of George’s from three years ago. It goes well with this one, and I recommend it: “What I Miss Most About My Father:”
http://www.georgevecsey.com/home/what-i-miss-most-about-my-father

In addition to the post, take a look at the comments. Here are two examples of a theme keeps re-appearing: “I can think of all kinds of things I wished I had talked about with my father, two decades gone, now that he is not around,” and “I miss him too, and Mom. Often wish I could talk to them and share what's going on in my life.” At one point in “Good Will Hunting,” Minnie Driver touches on this beautifully as she’s speaking with Matt Damon. It’s worth going back and seeing again.

Brian Savin

6/23/2015 12:27:06 pm

This is why great journalism matters. It shares our make up and our memories, as different and similar as they are.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

My Father’s Day Memories Kick In

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