Uncle Pat symbolized family motto: No matter how bad things look, never give up

The newspaper photo shows my Uncle Pat, miraculously unhurt, sitting despondently in the wreckage of his home-built airplane, with bits and pieces of wing and fuselage littering the intersection around him. He looks very dejected. The defeat was only temporary.

Uncle Pat started life as Gugliamo Pasquale Franco, the third of five sons born to Italian immigrants. He followed his brothers into the Navy when World War II started. His name was Americanized to William Patrick and he became was one of those technicians who kept the Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats flying off aircraft carriers in the South Pacific.

He was a Machinists Mate First Class when he got out of the Navy in 1946 and promptly became so bored, he decided he needed to build a plane of his own. He created what was called an amateur built (or kit) plane and took to the air. It worked perfectly for about 35 minutes. He sailed smoothly into the California sky and enjoyed a slow curved flight over the Manhattan Beach Pier. He could see his home below and then he crashed right in the middle of a busy Los Angeles intersection.

The picture that the papers carried the next day has become a symbol for our family, a reminder that no matter how bad things look, how much things change, you never, ever give up.

June has done it again, busting into our neatly scheduled days with the reminder that with, Pride Month, D Day, Juneteenth, Father’s Day, and countless graduation and wedding days, it’s amazing that June doesn’t contain a “You might as well get used to the changes” day. Maybe it does.

Some years ago, as I enjoyed a visit with one of my grandsons, he announced cheerfully, “Next time you see me, I’ll be in puberty.” And sure enough, when I talked to him on the phone a couple of months later, his voice had changed almost overnight. “My new deep voice,” he said happily. I’ve often said that this second half of life, where I find myself, often feels like an extended adolescence, only you don’t get the new deep voice..

Stopping for lunch at a popular Mexican restaurant last week, the host cast one dismissive glance at me and then asked my daughter, “Can she walk up steps?” That’s the first time it’s happened to me and I didn’t like it.

“Why not ask me?” I demanded. My legs don’t always work well, but my mind is fine — at least as good as ever.

A little boy of about 8 came up to me as I was out on my walk and bowed respectfully in that way 8-year-old boys have. “Are you a member of the Elderly Community?” he asked. “You should have told him you were the ringleader,” a friend remarked.

Kamala Harris gave the graduation speech at West Point. High time. We didn’t throw caps in the air at my graduation. Caps and gowns were rented and had to be back by Monday at noon or you lost your deposit. They let us keep the tassel though.

A local high school got it right. Before the graduation ceremony, as people were filing into the bleachers, they played thank-you messages to family and friends from the graduates over the PA instead of music. One of them included “... and to my Grandma, for always cutting my fruit for me,” which I’m supposing was a little bit of an inside joke, but it was still sweet.

I think of Uncle Pat a lot on these long June days and how much it matters not to give up, and if one plane crashes, build another one. In high school Pat created a car of his own. It was part Buick, Part Model T and had a lot of eccentricities, but he loved it. That didn’t stop an Oregon State Patrolman from giving him a lengthy series of tickets listing more than 25 infractions, which once again, was featured in the local papers. Among the violations and citations, the patrolman noted that the car had no windshield and no windshield wipers.

That was the final blow for Uncle Pat. Why would he need wipers if he didn’t have a windshield?

The newspaper article concludes, “Franco is quoted as saying, ‘What we ain’t got, we don’t need.’” Well, he was a machinist, not a linguist.

It’s June and the world is changing around us. AI will turn out to be much smarter than we are, and traffic on I-5 will be challenging. But we’ll manage — and what we ain’t got, we don’t need.

Where to find Dorothy in June

June 5: 9 a.m. Coffee Chat and Change the World

Swimming Upstream Radio Show at https://swimmingupstreamradioshow.com

• June 5: Generation Gap — What’s ahead for graduates
  
  

• June 12: Tacoma Boat Builders, from building boats to rebuilding lives.

• June 14: Legendary Black Heroes — Diedri Webb celebrates Juneteenth with the story of Ida B. Wells, Truth Teller.

• June 26: Do You Think Chocolate Grows On Trees? Chocolate Maker Jan Calkins explores our love affair with chocolate.

Contact Dorothy by phone at 800-548-9264 or Dorothy@swimmingupstreamradioshow.com for more information.