A couple of years ago, I wrote a column for NRO about my father-in-law, the author James Brady. It was an (admittedly very public) attempt to tell the old man how I felt about him. He liked it. As a newspaperman, journalist, and columnist (and also a bit of a ham), he knew the value of getting good ink–even in a publication that caters to Republicans.
Brady, like most Depression-era Irish kids from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, was a lifelong Democrat. As a young reporter in Washington, D.C., in the Sixties, he admired that other young, dashing Irish Catholic fellow, John F. Kennedy. I’m sure he thought LBJ’s Great Society was pretty great; I think he was probably a bit perplexed by Carter; I know he was very disappointed in Clinton and had very high hopes for Obama.
As a highly decorated U.S. Marine Corps Korean War hero (in 2001 he was awarded the Bronze Star, 50 years late, in a ceremony aboard the USS Intrepid–Gen. James Jones pinned the medal on), Brady was highly skeptical of our leaders whenever his beloved Marines were sent into combat. He was no fan of Douglas MacArthur, or of George W. Bush.
So rare in the world today, Brady had the great gift of being able to talk politics without making enemies, and without ever losing his sense of humor. We had a healthy 20-year reverse Archie and Meathead debate going. It rarely got heated. He’d call me (with a smile) a “fascist” and I’d call him (with a smile) a “Bolshevik.”
There will be many eulogies for this man in the weeks and months ahead. I am fairly certain that the majority will take place in establishments where adult beverages are consumed in large quantities. Stories will be told of Brady the journalist, the publisher, the author, the celebrity interviewer, the raconteur, the character, the war hero.
But in other rooms, where the beverages are served in sippy cups and small cardboard boxes with little straws sticking out and large glasses that somehow manage to get knocked over at the dinner table virtually every night, there will be other stories–stories about a grandfather known as Pop-Pop to his four grandkids.
Years ago, before my wife Susan and I had all these kids, we were visiting Brady at his home in East Hampton. It was around Christmas. At about 9 p.m., as he did most nights, he announced it was his bedtime. Susan said “Goodnight, Pops.” I said “Goodnight, Mr. Brady,” and off to bed he went. A few minutes later, he came bursting back into the room. He was wearing an old flannel bathrobe, his pale, scrawny legs sticking out. His thick shock of hair was crazily disheveled, sticking up all over. His eyes were bugged out, and his mouth was stretched in a big goofy grin. He was rattling a big old chain.
“I am the spirit of Christmas Past OOOooo!!!” He jumped around the room, hamming it up like an over-caffeinated Red Skelton. Susan cracked up; Mr. Brady succumbed to a convulsive giggling fit. I watched this little vaudeville act unfold and thought to myself: “We’ve really got to get this guy some grandkids soon.”
Not long after, we did. For the next 14 years I watched as Mr. Brady embodied the role of Pop-Pop completely. And I was grateful, because he gave my kids a love for all sorts of things they never would have gotten from me: football, skiing, fishing, literature. Plus he had the patience only a grandfather has to actually sit and discuss SpongeBob plots in great detail with a three-year-old.
He taught them some pretty big, important things too. A few years ago he took the whole mess of us up to Vermont to go skiing. He was a lifelong skier, as are my wife, our four kids, my sister-in-law Fiona, and her husband Carl. I had never skied in my life. I spent a day or two glumly and wildly careening down the Donald Duck slope–then I found a nice, safe pool table and stayed contentedly indoors, where I belong, for the rest of the trip.
Mr. Brady was just recovering from a stroke. He was in his 70s. And he had not skied in years. Any one of those things would be reason enough to sit in the lodge, sip hot chocolate, and watch your grandkids have fun. The combination of all three meant you would have to be, well, a little nutty to attempt to ski yourself.
So, of course, Mr. Brady was determined to ski. Not just ski, but ski down a pretty good-sized hill. The first day he just walked around, got the lay of the land. The second day he tried walking around with the skis on. Day three he tried a little skiing on flat land. By day four the old Marine was ready to take the hill.
Before he did, he confided in me. He told me, uncharacteristically, that he was a little apprehensive. He wasn’t sure he could do it. He knew there was a chance he might hurt himself, and he knew he wasn’t a young man. He was afraid.
But our kids were watching. He wanted to show them something. Not that he could still ski. He wanted to show them that sometimes you’ll get knocked down in life, sometimes bad things will happen. He wanted them to know that if you have faith, you can do great things, even if you’re afraid.
He skied beautifully down the hill. Strangers stopped to watch this old guy ski–25 years older than anyone else on that mountain. They applauded.
I will tell our kids that when an 80-year-old man dies, he doesn’t go to heaven as an 80-year-old man. I will tell them that he goes to heaven in his strong, fast 20-year-old body. And if they want to know what their Pop-Pop was like when he was in his 20-year-old body, I will read them this. It’s from his best book, his autobiographical war memoir The Coldest War. Brady is a young lieutenant. He’s at the top of a hill in Korea. He has to get to the bottom of the hill to help a fellow Marine, Simonis:
From the wire it was easy going, like skiing, and I found myself going too fast at first, the deep, light powder giving easily, flowing out to the sides, slipping over the frozen pack underneath. I took giant steps down through the draw, leaping eight or ten feet at a time, the way you did as a boy downhill, moving so fast you couldn’t stop with your legs pumping to stay up with you, until you ran out on the flat and came to a standstill, winded and excited. But the valleys were too far for that, and every hundred yards or so I grabbed a tree, swinging around the trunk first on the right, then on the left, like a slalom, trying to keep momentum under control. Ahead of me another marine was doing the same; behind I heard a whoop. It was kid stuff but it was good to be moving, to be going down to get Simonis. . . . I kept thinking how much it was like skiing, like the first time I’d ever taken a serious ski trail from the top, at Mount Mansfield, starting with the Seven Turns, knowing that my competence was only a pose, my legs and stomach not sufficient for it. But on Mansfield, as here, there were people watching, pushing you into doing what you did not really want to do, until the climactic instant when shame balanced fear, then overbalanced it, and you pushed off towards the first of the Seven Turns, and then it was all right and you knew it was.
That was the point of what I was doing: afraid, I went anyway.
I will tell our kids to know that their Pop-Pop is in heaven, playing in the snow in his 20-year-old body, running and skiing down hills, leaping into the air, having the time of his life. And with the added bonus that in heaven, there are no Chinese shooting at you.
– Dave Konig, a comedian, has won three Emmy Awards. His website is www.DaveKonig.com.