Dad’s buddy, part two
Wednesday July 06th 2022, 10:42 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Life

I sent a card and note off to Dad’s old Army buddy Walt south of here, not knowing if he would ever get it because he’d apparently moved and knowing that he’d survived at least initially after having been hit by a car. At 95.

Turns out he did.

He sent me a hand-written card in return.

On its front was a painting at the LA County Museum of Modern Art, Diego Rivera’s Flower Day. The link is to an ArtNet article telling the history of it: it was that painting, and Rivera, that sparked New Deal public art commissions in the US. I’d had no idea.

What leaped out at me the moment I opened that card, though, was a symbolism Walt had no way to know anything about: when my dad died, my friend Afton sent me a white calla lily plant. It has bloomed almost nonstop since. It is by our front door and those flowers and that greenery remind me of my dad and my friend both every time I go in and out.

And now it will remind me of my dad’s friend. Walt. Who sent the sweetest note. “Dear Alison,” it begins, “Your dad and I were best buddies and my only regret is that we ended up living so far apart.”

And yet they kept that friendship going to the end of my dad’s life.

I feel privileged to have a little of Walt now in mine.


2 Comments so far
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I did not know that. About the painting sparking the New Deal art commissions (saw a lot of that out west growing up). Knew about the flower. ?

Comment by Afton 07.07.22 @ 6:00 am

What a nice connection!

Comment by ccr in MA 07.07.22 @ 10:30 am



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