Dad is turning 87 this week. For the past couple of years he’s been working on going through old things and clearing out files he no longer needs.  He knows I enjoy collecting and reading old papers and correspondence so when he finds something he thinks I might appreciate, he sets it aside to show me the next time I visit. During one of my recent visits he said, “Hey Shauna, when you have a minute, I’d like to show you something.”

We step into his cozy little bedroom and he hands me an old file folder.  It’s about half an inch thick and labeled “Diplomas and Awards” in his handwriting. Nothing otherwise very remarkable.

Opening it, I see on top an old sheet of lined school paper covered in the penmanship I’ve known most of my life.  He’s saying something about whether I’d be interested in looking at and having these old papers when I interrupt.

“Yes, I’d love to have it, thank you so much.”

“But you haven’t even looked at it.”

“I know, but I can see this is something you’ve written, and the rest are things you felt important to keep, so I’d like to save it.”

“Alright, then it’s yours.  I figured if anyone would want it, it would be you.”

We chatted for a few more minutes, he points out the manilla envelope in the back contains his military records, and that was it.  I went back to fixing potatoes for dinner and he returned to completing his current jigsaw puzzle.

Later in the evening, while some are clearing and cleaning dishes, others chatting, I took advantage of the lull to look more closely at these papers I saved from “the round file.” The page covered in his writing looks like it’s a paper he wrote, for which he got a “C” grade – nothing too remarkable. 

Next, there are a few certificates showing his completion of courses in working with radioactive materials, something from his high school and several certificates of courses he completed through his work and his service in the US Air Force. I’ve known for a long time that he worked with Uranium and other radioactive materials, so I’ll look into those details more when I feel like taking the time. Right then I was looking for anything extraordinary, anything I wanted to ask questions about. That’s when I came across a thick white diploma case in a flimsy sleeve with “Titan I” printed on the front.

Let me take a step back in my story for a moment . . . 

I’ve known since I was little that my Dad worked at a missile base for a time before I was born and until I was about four years old. I was quite certain that Major Nelson from “I Dream of Jeannie” and Steve Austin of “The Bionic Man” were both based on my Dad. They were astronauts after all, and if you worked with rockets and/or missiles, you were an astronaut, right? Basically, he was all that and the bag of potato chips. No one was smarter, stronger or better in any way than my Dad.

As I got older and understood better what his job had entailed, my point of view altered enough to bring him a little closer to earth, but I still would occasionally tell people, “My Dad actually was a rocket scientist!” In my mind it was a bit of an overstatement, but basically true.

Back to the old white diploma case . . .

Along with “Titan I,” the company Dad worked for long ago “Martin Marietta” is stamped on the front. I opened it to find an old pristine photo of a rocket just leaving the launch pad on the left, and a “Titan I Achievement Award” on the right. 

Here I hold in my hands a document from July of 1963 that says my father was instrumental in testing and successfully launching the United States’ first multi-stage ICBM. The last two sentences are “His technical competence and abilities have been reflected in a flight test success profile unparalleled in the Ballistic Missile Program. The Titan I will long serve as a tribute to his distinguished service.”

I whisper, “Holy shit!” then quickly look up to make sure no one heard my profanity.

I am reminded of a story I heard just a few years ago, while sitting around after dinner in my childhood home, talking with my parents. We were talking about life before me and the timeline of how my parents ended up in Moab.  The story had reached the point where my sister had made her entrance and how much time she spent in hospitals and doctors offices early on in life. I don’t remember how exactly it came up, but Dad casually mentioned he was called back to the Air Force after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. At the time, I was astounded to find myself realizing that my parents knew about the Invasion, let alone lived through it. History all too often has seemed remote and impersonal to me and here it was, getting personal in a hurry! Dad added that he had been part of the team to arm the missiles in the Cuban Missile Crisis that followed with nuclear bombs. 

Words are hardly sufficient to describe my feelings at that moment as I sat there with this pile of history in my hands. I have known people lacking an ounce of common sense that insist on being called “Doctor” just because they had a piece of paper that said you could. Here I held a piece of paper that said my Dad really was a rocket scientist, and an “outstanding” one at that. Here it says that he was a “defen(der) of our freedom and way of life.”

Instead of those titles though, he cherishes being “Dad” and “Papa” to me and my siblings. He holds dear each time he’s called “grandpa” and he dreams of the day he’ll be with my Mom again and be called “Honey.”