Thinking of dear ol’ Dad

FLO MARTIN

My father, “Papa,” was a kind and gentle person. He was born into a

good family. His dad, my grandfather, was an army man in Bulgaria.

The general eventually was appointed as secretary of the interior for

the Bulgarian government. Life was going well.

When the Communists took over Bulgaria, my grandfather was sent to

a slave-labor camp, where he was imprisoned for more than 15 years.

In his 80s, the general was released due to failing health and died

of prostate cancer several years after his release. His last words to

my aunt were: “Je suis decu de ce monde” -- I am disappointed with

this world.

My dad tried to follow in his father’s footsteps and graduated

from the Bulgarian equivalent of West Point. But, his spirit was too

free, too individualistic. The military life was not for him. He

found a job in his early 20s as a secretary in the Bulgarian

consulate in Germany, where he met and married my mom, a Bulgarian

exchange graduate student at the University of Munich.

Life was good for about a year, until the Allied forces started

dropping bombs on southern Germany. My father’s daily existence at

that point literally became a struggle to survive. I remember a story

he told of one day feeling so loathe to go into an underground

shelter during a bomb raid that he simply stood up against the side

of a building and watched the bombs drop all around.

At the end of the war, my dad and his little family -- I was born

in 1942 -- became displaced persons. Again, hungry and unemployed for

quite a while, Papa relied on his ingenuity, intelligence and (I

might add) good looks to make ends meet. In ’49 we immigrated to

Canada where both my parents worked hard to make a life for their

daughter. Then, in ‘55, we again immigrated, this time to California.

That’s when my real memories of Papa begin. He was a strict father

but also very understanding. He struggled to keep a positive

attitude, even though he had lost his family in Bulgaria and had lost

his homeland. I love to tell stories about my dad because he had such

a gentle sense of fun, in spite of all the pain.

One such story tells of my wedding day. The ceremony was scheduled

for 11 a.m. at the Church of the Wayfarer in Carmel. Around 10:30

a.m., I was happily settled in with my attendant in the women’s

lounge of the church, waiting for the signal that the ceremony was

about to start. We waited and waited and waited.

Turns out, my fiance had partied all night with his best man in

Carmel and was still asleep at 11:20 a.m., when his mother finally

called the best man’s apartment and woke the two men up. Well, the

guys dressed in a huge rush. Meanwhile, the pastor of the church had

invited all the wedding guests to “take a little break in the garden”

until the groom arrived.

People were taking bets as to whether the groom would really make

it or if he had gotten cold feet at the last minute. The pastor even

told my father that another wedding was scheduled for noon, and that

he would cancel our wedding ceremony if the groom was not there real

soon. Well, the groom finally did arrive, at 11:45, and my dad met

him at the sidewalk entrance to the church. My father’s words, as he

shook the groom’s hand were: “So glad you could make it...”

Another of my dad’s understatements came the day before he died.

Papa was 63 and had been battling bone marrow cancer for about nine

months. (I calculated once that during the 30-plus years that my dad

chain-smoked -- usually about 4 packs a day -- he had consumed about

500,000 cigarettes. Papa had quit cold turkey in his early 50s after

surgery for precancerous polyps on his vocal chords, but, apparently,

it was too late.)

During those last days, he lapsed in and out of a coma and spoke

very rarely.

The last words he spoke to me, with a twinkle in his eyes were:

“It doesn’t look too promising.” Gentle man, my Papa: He had accepted

death with a smile.

* FLO MARTIN is a Costa Mesa resident and faculty member at Cal

State Fullerton.