Some of you knew my father, Bob Chester, well. Some knew him a little, and some here not at all.

So let me start with some facts:

Robert Chester was born in 1930 and grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, when it was a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. My grandparents, Constance and Theodore, were East European immigrants.  Bob was the younger of two bothers. They were surrounded by a fairly large extended family -uncles, aunts, cousins, all of whom lived in close proximity.  I am not quite sure of the relationship my father had with his older brother, my uncle Alan, when they were kids. I do know they stayed close in later years despite geographic distance.

One anecdote that has grown in the re-telling over the years into family lore- has it that when my father was 5 and my Uncle Alan was 10- my uncle tied him to a tree in some neighborhood yard, and proceeded to light a fire around the tree. As it was told to me, my uncle then rounded up all of the neighborhood kids and charged them a nickel each to watch the spectacle.  Luckily for both of them, my father escaped physically unscathed.

My sense is that my father’s childhood and adolescence were pretty typical of a first generation Jewish- American growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930’s and 40’s.

However, a defining moment, which would change his life forever, occurred when he was 19 years old. Working as a counselor at a summer camp in the Catskills, he contracted polio. It is hard for us sitting here today in 2013 to understand what a scourge and dreaded childhood disease polio was in the United States prior to the introduction of the Salk vaccine, which has for the most part eradicated the virus in the western world. 

Polio left my father without the use of his legs. He could no longer walk without the use of braces and crutches. He became- what we currently call “disabled”.

Despite this devastating illness, my father went on to college. He got his undergraduate degree at Brooklyn College at a time when getting in to Brooklyn College was both competitive and prestigious. He then went on to get a masters degree in social work from Columbia University.

He got a job; he met and married my mother Marilyn, they had two kids- my sister Jill and me, and they bought a house on Long Island. He got a job teaching at Adelphi University in Garden City, among several other jobs. He worked at Adelphi for decades, and became a well-liked and full tenured professor. He co-authored and published a textbook for mental health practitioners in 1993.

About eight years after my mother passed away, he remarried Frances, his widow. From what I could see, they had a strong and loving marriage for over thirty years. When he was in his sixties, my father retired to Arizona, where he and my step-mother seemed to have a pretty active life. Later when my fathers’ health had deteriorated, they moved to Nashville, Tennessee, so my step-mother could be close to her grandchildren. As my wife reminded me the other day, you go where the wife wants.

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It’s funny because although my father was disabled- as a child I never saw him as disabled. I did not see him as DIS-abled, because he was so ABLE.

ABLE to do all the things that all of the other fathers did -despite his physical impediments. ABLE to go to work every day, able to make sure there was always plenty of food in the house. ABLE to drive a car, ABLE to take family trips, ABLE to take care of the family finances. In short,  ABLE to make sure that everything got done that needed to get done-even if it was not him that was doing it.

My father endured and conquered enormous obstacles. Obstacles that I don’t think I could have managed. If the polio and his disability were not enough to bear, my mother Marilyn was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in her twenties. The disease lay dormant for many years.

However from the time I was 10 or 11, my mother’s health started to rapidly deteriorate. So my Dad, with the help of my maternal grandparents, also had to take care of a sick wife. Yet somehow he managed to do it all.  My mom passed away at age 42, when I was 15, my sister was 12, and my father only 43 years old.

My father raised two kids, virtually as a single parent, and he did the best he could. He held multiple jobs. In addition to his professorship at Adelphi; he worked part-time at various state facilities on Long Island, treating patients with substance abuse and other mental health problems. He also kept a small private practice where he would see some patients at our home.

I don’t even remember him missing a day of work, although I am sure he did. Even in bad weather, he would go. With the help of special attachments for his crutches or wheelchair, and snow tires on the car, he would just go.

In retrospect, from my current vantage point in life, I don’t know how he managed to endure. But he did endure. He lived a full and active and accomplished life. Despite all the obstacles and hardships that life had thrown his way- he just soldiered on-in his own quiet, stoic way.

I never heard my Dad complain (except about my behavior).  Seriously, never once did I hear him complain about his lot in life. No woe is me. No what did I do to deserve this. No wistfulness or wishing somehow his life had been different.  He simply accepted life’s circumstances as they were and dealt with it as best he could.

When I was a young adult with my own family, my father once told me “that to be a man ( he may have used the Yiddish word “mensch”) -means you do what you have to do to take care of your family.  Period.  Whatever it is.  Whatever you have to deal with-you rise to the occasion and deal with it.  And that was my Dad’s simple, but noble philosophy on life-and he lived by that creed.

The last several years, on-going health issues prevented my father from living a full, active life and the quality of his life had diminished. Even then-he never complained, was never negative. Maybe an occasional “what can I tell you- getting old is no fun”, but that was about it.  He was more upset about being a burden to his wife than he was concerned about himself.

Elizabeth and I visited him this past spring. In poor health, but good spirits, he bantered with us and cracked jokes. When we left Nashville, I told Elizabeth “this is the last time I will see my father”.  I just knew.

My Dad wasn’t perfect-he could be quite ornery and very stubborn. There were times when our relationship was strained. But none of that matters now.

Last Friday, the day he passed away, I spoke to him on the phone. He knew the end was very near and he sounded weak. We both said ”I love you” and “goodbye”.

So goodbye Dad. You were the strongest person I ever knew. You were tired and you have more than earned your peaceful rest.

You will be missed.

I love my father, the unconditional kind of love that is so rare in life. We were extremely close… I was his only daughter and when my mother passed during my early adolescence, after a long battle with MS, he chose to raise Jeff and I on his own. Even though my childhood was difficult at times, my father never complained of his plight in life. He had a gregarious and ornery personality and could make me laugh uncontrollably.

My father was an intelligent man and even though he fancied himself an intellectual as a younger man, he was at times a light-hearted clown, much like Ted Chester; his father. He was a well-respected university professor, an Ivy League graduate, who had overcome tremendous adversity. He was the child of immigrant parents, growing up in the 30’s and 40’s…, like many of his generation, but at the age of 19 was stricken with polio which left  him a paraplegic. The way my father lived his life was an excellent example of perseverance and emotional strength….which taught me a lot about being who I am today. It is hard to imagine what life will be like going forward without his love and support.

Some children miss out on their fathers, because they are physically absent, choosing work or their own personal life over spending time with their kids. Other parents are emotionally absent, not letting their children see that they even have emotions, hiding who they truly are, maybe because they are afraid to be emotionally connected to their children

With my father, this was not so….

At tragic times like these, so many children worry about all the things left unsaid because they were not brave enough to say them or they ran out of time.

I was lucky, because of my father's openness, we always said to each other what needed to be said. There are no regrets about that, thanks to his willingness, his understanding and his love.

Dad: Your love, your understanding, your wisdom and your sense of humor will live on inside me forever. Goodbye, Dad. You will always live on in my heart.