Category: Featured

When Edwin De Morier accidentally knocked the oil lamp onto the barn floor — this would have been in France in March of 1918 — it took only seconds for the flames to race across the straw and up the dry wooden walls. Within minutes the barn was ablaze.

But during the confusion of battle, the fire was all the British and Americans needed to triangulate and regroup — it also increased morale when the three German soldiers that were hiding in the barn loft jumped out and surrendered.

So could you say that my grandfather was a World War I hero? Umm, sure. Sure you could. And since the war was over nine months later, it’s obvious that Edwin’s contributions were a large part of the victory. A very large part. But it’s more important to note that the barn fire led to Edwin’s one and only nickname: Eddie Elbows.

When Eddie returned home, he went back to his little barber shop in Afton, New York. And after watching Louise Kramer walk past his front window to the hotel she worked at each day, his newfound battlefield bravery allowed him to approach her and say hello — after 17 failed attempts. A courtship eventually followed and a year later Eddie and Louise were married. They moved into the three rooms above the barber shop.

On February 15^th, 1923, Edwin and Louise De Morier gave birth to their first child. A boy named Lawrence, but who would always be known as Larry. My father. Three years later their second child, Lyle, was born.

Life in Afton was happy and carefree with the exception of Eddie’s emphysema, which began to become more and more chronic — leading the shop to be closed more than it was open. And when his clientele began to frequent more reliable barbers, the rare times when he could work Eddie was seeing less and less business. The family income was dwindling.

In 1936, Larry came home with two announcements for his parents. The first was that he had quit school and the second was that he was now an employee of the D&H Railroad. And although Eddie Elbows and Louise weren’t happy about this, the family’s options were slim. So when he was sixteen years old — the same age that my youngest son is now — my father became the sole breadwinner for his parents, his 13-year-old brother, and himself. He’d be working alongside men, repairing rail, laying ties, and loading freight.

When World War II broke out, Larry De Morier was one of the first in the area to receive his draft notice. He reported for duty, went through the physical, and after failing the eye exam miserably, the doctor asked, “Where are you glasses?”

“Glasses? I don’t have any glasses.”

“Well go get glasses ya idiot. Yer blind as a bat.”

Larry was told to see an eye doctor for glasses and wait to be called back for active duty.

The call never came.

I often wonder how my father’s life, and ours, would have been different if he went to war. Would he have come back? Or when he did, would he have been more cautious? Would the events that happened to him later have not occurred or would his training have prepared him to defend himself?

This major turning point, this single event, that changed my father’s life, occurred in July of 1955. Larry had walked his mother to the stands of the Afton Fair where a dog show was being held. He told his mother he would pick her up in an hour when the show was over and he left to explore the fairgrounds.

If Larry had stayed with the crowd, if he had not walked in the alley behind the booths but down the midway or around by the animal displays, his life may not have drastically changed.

But he didn’t. He walked in the dark alleyway between the games and the concessions. And seeing him take this path — and believing that the young man in a jacket and tie was much more prosperous then he really was — two unknown men followed my father down the fairground alley. They surprised him and beat him with a rock, crushing his skull and leaving him unconscious.

They took everything of value that Larry De Morier had, which was four dollars and a tie clip. And when he recovered, they left him with violent seizures that he would experience for the rest of his life.

Now, although the 1950s and 1960s are often remembered through fond nostalgic eyes, there are certain areas that are not as enlightened as you may think. Epilepsy was one of them. This was largely due to the common belief that the disease was a side effect of years of heavy drinking. My father, whose first and only drink was a glass of champagne at his brother’s wedding, was aware of this belief. He also experienced the first-hand fear on the faces of those who looked down to him when coming out of a seizure (on the rare occasions when he felt one coming on and couldn’t slip away quietly).

His obsession for the next forty years would be to hide his epilepsy. He had worked on the assembly line at Borden Chemical for almost twenty years when he took the janitor position there, so he could easily slip away to the janitor’s closet when he felt a seizure coming on. And he even hid it from my mother; they had been married two months before she saw the first seizure.

My father turned down promotions and he declined other job offers because the risk of exposing his illness was too high.

On November 25, 1964, a month before my second birthday, Eddie Elbows died. My father would stop by his mother’s house every day after that to check on her, never missing a single one for the next three years until she died.

Growing up, I didn’t see any of this. I just saw a man that I was embarrassed by. A man who couldn’t throw a ball or shoot a basket, because he was driving railroad spikes at the age when you learned these things. A man who was getting drastically older than the other fathers around him because the medical treatment for epilepsy in those days was a harsh cocktail of side effects (which didn’t stop the seizures from coming; they only made you so stoned that you really didn’t care).

In April of 1976, Larry De Morier’s thirty-year run of luck ran out. Feeling a seizure come on, he was not able to get his janitor’s closet in time and it was witnessed by coworkers. He was forced into disability.

The two areas of pride for a man of that era was his ability to work and his ability to drive. Larry lost both of them on the same day.

The seizures my father would experience always came in threes; if he had one, within a few hours two more would follow.

As a teenager I would latch onto these times when I knew my father was extra short-tempered. I would purposely say or do something to set off the delicate balance of chemicals in his head and he would become angry with me. I enjoyed these times because it was safe — my father was a gentle man and was incapable of harming anyone — and even though we would be nose to nose yelling at each other, he could never touch me. I knew this. We would yell. We would hurl threats at each other. We would say horrible things. But he never touched me.

The next day, the seizures would occur and the day after that, my father — now with the chemicals in his head stable — would be humiliated by the things he said to me. Ashamed. He would try to apologize.

Larry De Morier was a sensitive man, but like many men of those days he was unable to express himself. Fathers didn’t tell sons they loved them back then; that was for hippies and weirdos. My father would try to joke with me, try to get me talking, try to tell me how sorry he was and I — the insecure and cruel kid that I was — never let him. Not one time.

On November 17, 1990, Larry De Morier died. He had six dollars in his wallet — two more than he had on that day in 1955.

Throughout my life I was embarrassed by my father, who didn’t own a pair of blue jeans or sneakers and whose favorite color was polyester. I was embarrassed by how fast he was aging, that he knew nothing of sports or the outdoors. I was embarrassed because he rode an old bicycle instead of driving a car and I feared those times during school plays when the crowd would suddenly start mumbling and moving and I knew that out there in the dark area below the stage, my dad was having a seizure and people were trying to help him to his feet.

Who was I to be embarrassed by such a man? Who was I to look down on anyone who took such good care of all those around him, no matter what? A man who never complained. A man who never called “foul.” A janitor who kept us fed and safe — whose Bible was dog-eared with use, who never had a regret, and who was grateful for everything he had.

In the 24 years since my father died I’ve forgiven myself for the way I treated him. I’ve also realized how truly lucky I was.

Larry De Morier was a much better father than I was a son. He was a gentle, loving, unselfish man. And my goal is to be half as protective and giving a father as he was to me.

So happy Father’s Day, pop.

I now get it.