Kodak Beaker

Plainview, NY, 1984

The last time I saw my father was in early 1983. He was driving me to New York’s JFK to catch a flight overseas. I was off on a year-long Rotary Journalism Fellowship to Nepal. My mom sat restlessly in the passenger seat. We’d warned my father not to take the Chrysler—Mom’s Ford was more reliable—but his personal anthem was the Frank Sinatra song “My Way,” and as always, he had ignored our advice. I I sat in the back seat, listening to them bicker, the familiar soundtrack of my life at home.

The Chrysler broke down, as predicted. We were already running late. While my father tried in vain to restart the engine I exited the car in disgust, pulled my backpack from the trunk, and stuck out my thumb.

During my 18 months abroad, I asked friends returning home to carry parcels of my exposed Kodachrome film. Reluctantly, I decided to rely on my father to process the film, review the slides, and write to tell me if my exposures were okay. At first, his notes were perfunctory. As the months went by, though, he wrote increasingly perceptive letters about my images: praising the beauty of Nepal, the clarity of light, the vivid festivals. He began to ask me for advice about how to get started in photography. Within a year he had bought a good camera, and set up a small darkroom in our basement laundry room.

Near the end of my trip, I phoned home from a three-day stopover in Hong Kong. My Dad had all the lenses he needed, but asked me to find him a pair of fine binoculars. “I trust your judgment,” he said. It was the first time he’d ever expressed confidence in me.

A few days later I landed at LAX. Jet-lagged and culture-shocked, I called home again. My brother—who should have been away at college—answered the phone. “Jord!” I said. “What are you doing home?”

“Dad is dead,” he announced. “He died of a massive heart attack last night.”

I was on a cross-country flight within hours, and home the next morning: sitting shiva, going through my father’s effects, and standing in his darkroom, bereft. I would never meet the man who, after 30 years of disinterest, ha had at last become a friend.