HIS 86th BIRTHDAY

“And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” (Malachi 4:6)

In most Protestant Bibles, that’s the last verse of the Old Testament. It’s appropriate to use for this posting because today is his 86th birthday. “His” is Eugene Armand Baril - my father.

I’ve written about my father quite a number of times on this blog. My relationship with him was very complicated. I did not have a close relationship with him. He was an extreme perfectionist, and one of the problems of perfectionism (which I also suffer with) is that nothing and no one EVER measures up. So, I felt like I could never measure up to him. My late brother Eddie also had the same problem, and it was a big part of why Eddie abused alcohol. I don’t want to make my father sound awful. He WASN’T awful. This will sound self-depricating, but (on some level) maybe he DID deserve better kids.

I’ve often said that my father was retired after a “distinguished” career with the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles. That’s no exaggeration. He was distinguished in many fields. Dad not only had a pilot’s license, and not only was certified to fly quite a few different types of aircraft, but he was a highly respected flight instructor. He reached the level of Major in the Civil Air Patrol and taught many young people to fly. Although he was not a particularly large man physically, he was quite athletic and played several sports in high school. He was particularly accomplished as a baseball player. My father was a very good mechanic. In fact, he graduated from both Mechanic Arts High School in Boston (later known as “Boston Tech.”) and Boston Trade School as an aircraft mechanic.
Dad enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942 and served until 1945. Contrary to what some people believe about soldiers and sailors in World War 2, not ALL of them were sent overseas, and he spent the entire war on various bases around the U.S. (mostly in the South).

It was quite by accident that my father became a Boston Police officer. He had been working for the City of Boston as a surveyor, when a friend who desperately wanted to get on the force asked my father to study and train with him. My father later recognized the irony that his friend did NOT make it onto the police force, but he did! He spent 5 years as a Boston cop, mostly in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood. During those years, he was active on his precinct’s softball team.

In 1955, Dad took the Registry of Motor Vehicles exam and was appointed as a “Registry Inspector” in 1956. As a mechanic friend has told me, “In those days, Registry Inspectors were looked at with fear and respect, even more so than state troopers”. My father was a PERFECT driver. When I was a kid, each night he’d park a Volkswagen Beetle AND a compact American sedan in the same one car garage with only about a half inch to spare between them. You have to be INCREDIBLY SKILLED to do that!

Dad was very strict and very authoritarian. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about him. He had a fabulous sense of humor and was quite the prankster and practical joker. He also was an incredibly good storyteller, and was a sought after public speaker. Dad was not a clergyman, but he was actually asked to conduct two funeral services, and he DID, and did a good job each time!

Many of you know, Eugene A. Baril’s final days were very sad. It was devastating to watch him failing mentally in the 1990s. One night he came home hysterically telling my sister he did not know how to turn the car off or how to turn the wipers off. My mom would fight back the tears when they’d go to a self-service gas station and he’d be unable to work the gas pump. In 1996 we took his license away from him. Dad entered the Alzheimer’s unit of a nursing home in October of 1999 and died in June of 2000. He really should have been in that nursing home at least a year earlier. It was on that Alzheimer’s unit, with him on the level of a one-year-old kid that my father prayed with me to receive Jesus Christ as his own personal Savior and Lord.

Today is his 86th birthday. I’m kind of tearing up as I write. As I get older, I understand my father a LOT better than I did when I was a kid. Over the past few months I’ve gone through quite a bit of emotional stress in my life. I’ve wished SO MUCH that I could go and speak to my father and get his advice. No, NOT the senile guy in the nursing home, but the healthy, vibrant Eugene A. Baril as he was around thirty years ago. Yes, today is his 86th birthday, and I miss my father...