NikkiTwisted - NT Anderson@nikki_twisted
My dad - a eulogy
September 15, 1938 - July 9, 2024
A second generation American born to an Italian family, my father lived the dream. Growing up poor, his senior yearbook life goal was to become a television repairman. By his mid-20s, after a stint in the Army Reserves and with a couple of uneventful jobs behind him, the repairman dream was a thing of the past and he began to make his mark in the business world, launching a career that would far exceed anything he ever thought possible.
By the time I came along in his mid-30s, he had already achieved success at work, being nationally recognized as one of the top five in his field, and at home with his hobby of breeding, showing, and racing championship horses. Through it all, he never forgot where he came from, telling me stories when I was small of Johnny Finnegan, the only Irish kid in an Italian neighborhood who used to spend hot summer days soaking up to his chin in a garden hose-filled trash can. Or the Christmas when my grandfather skipped midnight mass to stay home and set up a train around the tree that he’d saved all year to get for my dad.
And when I did come along, it wasn’t through the usual circumstances. After it was determined that my mother couldn’t have children, my dad went on the hunt for an adoption attorney. That’s a story in and of itself, but the end result was that my parents boarded a plane in New Jersey on a cold November morning when my birth mother went into labor in Houston, Texas and returned home three days later with me. Throughout my childhood, I heard over and over from family members that my dad had prayed for a girl, and I became the quintessential daddy’s girl before that plane touched down in NJ. I have never once attempted to find my birth parents.
He was a kid at heart, and we were thick as thieves. He spoiled me with toys, exotic vacations, world-class horses, and an excellent private education…but he also blessed me with his time. With two jobs—his career and the day-to-day management of our horse farm—he still found a way to make time for me every single day. To teach me to pitch baseball or swim or snowmobile or go bike riding. He built me a tree swing (I still have it) and let me have all the barn cats I wanted and always brought me trout fishing with him. He took me around to meet the old farmers in the county and would give me a straw of hay to chew on while we listened to their stories of “the olden days.”
He was exceptionally funny, vibrant, and an achiever till the end. All of my friends loved him, and some even had crushes on him. When I was young, I grew tired of hearing about how charming and witty and fun he was. To me, he was just Dad.
He taught me a work ethic, never refusing a business call after office hours or when we were on vacation. He didn’t retire until he was 82. He taught me giving and generosity. When he was the sole donor of a large playground and multiple ball fields at a local Catholic summer camp, they held a ribbon-cutting ceremony, but he wanted no part of being recognized. He couldn’t get out of it, and when they thanked him in front of the crowd, he blushed while all 6 feet and 200 pounds of him shuffled his feet like a schoolboy, then the diehard baseball fan in him simply announced, “Let’s play ball!”
The memories are endless. Like when I was six and I started writing plays that he and I starred in for our audience of one—my mother. He often played a female lead, and he would make his entrance with a high-pitched voice and two balls of paper towels down his shirt. Or when he would let me sneak downstairs to the rec room to watch Dallas with him on Friday nights (“Cliff Barnes, that son of a bitch”). Or when my mother was traveling on the rodeo circuit and he would take me to the local deli and let me get any sandwich and piece of cake I wanted (“Don’t tell Mom”), then we would go home, and he’d let me sit on the kitchen counter to eat it. Or the year we couldn’t go anywhere without listening to my Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas tape, and even in the dog days of summer he had to hear about how badly Alvin wanted that blessed hula-hoop. Over and over.
Or the countless times he made me laugh so hard I cried.
He got me tickets to any concert I wanted to attend, often going with me and talking for hours about the music and the bands. We explored our rural county together, searching the fields for artifacts while he taught me all about his love of the Native American history and culture, many times explaining how badly we’d wronged the people who were here first. I’ll never forget the time he took me to see a Navajo rain dance in New Mexico…and it actually rained. I was four, and I was convinced.
When I was a baby, he went to the back land on our farm and planted a Christmas tree in the woods, then when I was old enough, he took me on a walk there every summer, checking on the tree and teaching me to cup my hands to drink out of a spring nearby. He loved nature and wanted me to know about it. Except for when I was in second grade and I went on a class trip to a nature reserve where they taught us how to survive in the woods by peeling and eating bark on a birch tree. He had a birch tree outside his barn office window and spent an entire spring season yelling out the window, “Stop eating the tree!”
He loved politics, served on our township’s planning board committee, and sat on the board of our county fair, helping to grow it into what is now the New Jersey State Fair. He was a fierce believer in giving back to the community he loved. He never missed an opportunity to help the local police, firefighters, and ambulance. Our volunteer fire department received a particularly large donation when I was learning to cook and they suited up to come to our house every day for a week. (“I need you to stop trying to make omelets, hon.”)
In recent years, we spent our time exploring towns, antiquing, discussing historical society lectures, reviewing my horse business, dining out, seeing shows, shopping, and doing anything else that interested us.
I inherited his deep and profound love for sticky notes. He also loved the color blue, n-gauge trains, Hallmark movies, the Yankees, all things Christmas, bowling, Lionel Ritchie, pumpkin picking, meatloaf, the ocean, Italian shoes, luxury cars, spending time in his barn office, Steve Martin, history, college football, the Blessed Mother, Oak Island, haggling, waltzing, cutting the lawn, new gadgets, ice cream, miniature golf, socializing, and life. My dad loved life.
So, the memories are endless, but so is the pain. I feel like I’ve been beaten in the center of my chest with a sledgehammer. I’m nauseous and can’t make it stop. I think I’ve flown over the cuckoo’s nest on a one-way ticket.
What were once tears of laughter are different now because this man has been larger than life to me for all my life, and I have to figure out how to continue on without his unconditional love and support. The only person who loved me through every bad decision, every screw up, every life altering mess I created…and there were soooooo many…the only person who forgave me for every shitty thing I ever said…is gone. This man who lived an extraordinary life, gave me an extraordinary beginning, and cultivated an extraordinary father-daughter relationship.
If you’ve made it this far, I thank you. I could write about my dad for days, and none of this does his life justice, but all I really wanted to accomplish here is to tell some people a little about him while taking a moment, in the midst of the grief, to celebrate his life instead of mourning my loss.
He was my best friend, my first call, and I don’t at all comprehend a world where I won’t hear his voice again.
