When I was a boy, there was a trunk in our
basement that contained untold mysteries for
my brother and me.
The trunk held memorabilia from my father's
years in the army during the second world
war, and as children we imagined our quiet,
scholarly father firing his M-1 in a pitched
battle over some island in the Pacific. While
he wouldn't talk much about it when we were
kids, he did assure us that was not the case.
But my father was a hero, and not just to his adoring children. He and his associates saved countless lives during the war doing something that war chronicles tend to overlook.
It was Napoleon who said an army travels on its stomach, and the Allied forces during World War II constituted the largest standing army in the history of mankind. No other since has come close to that mobilization, and all sensible people hope one never does.
But feeding millions of soldiers three times a day is more than a notion, and the Army Quartermasters Corps was having guests for dinner, and quite a lot of them. Canned food was being shipped to the troops all over the world, and mechanized canning was a new science in those days.
It was so new, in fact, that scientists were not yet aware of the dangers of anerobic bacteria which could grow rapidly in canned foods, and it was not until soldiers were dying in large numbers from contaminated food that anyone realized what an insidious danger improperly canned foods could become.
A call went out from the Quartermaster's Corps to all
commands that recent college graduates with scientific
training were needed to address this problem. P the
Elder had just graduated from Yale University with a
degree in Chemistry, and he was transferred to a
special unit assigned to solve the problem of feeding
the largest group of human beings ever to sit down to
supper.
It was this set of circumstances that began my father's lifelong fascination with foods, one which enabled him to enrich the lives of millions of people without their ever knowing it.
For us as children, it was a quiet lesson, but an extremely important one. Our father taught us with his life that people don't have to know that you have helped them, the important thing is helping, not getting credit.
I think that's why Pop refers to Father's Day as "Hallmark Day", because he would rather do things for people than be thanked for doing them.
Most times, I let that slide, but not this time. Pop has done too much in the past year to go without our deepest thanks, whether he likes hearing it, or not.
Not all that much has changed since that summer day under the shade tree, Pop. You're still the best father in the universe, and I am still the luckiest, fattest little baby in town.
Happy Hallmark Day, Pop.
June 16, 1996 Charles Paparella All Rights Reserved