This is my father, Gilbert Merritt, the little boy who came to Midland when he was 10 years old and lived the rest of his life here. His understanding defined my life. I had an accident with our new Ford when I was 20 and he just said, “Things  happen, Babe. Are you all right?”  He never said another word about the accident.

My father, Gilbert Merritt, was buried on the last day of summer, September 22, 1990. The last week of his life, I had felt a strong compulsion to visit him every night in the facility he was in. The last night of his life, I decided to spend the night with him.

He had been diagnosed with pneumonia, and every hour or so, a nurse came in to check on him. I sat at his bedside. He was sleeping peacefully, it seemed. I called my brother to tell him I had to go to work at eight o’clock. Could he come and be with Dad until I got off work?

I was taking a roomful of fifth-graders on a tour of Ariel Haebler’s 64-acre woodlot that morning. When we came in for lunch, I called the facility where Dad was living. The receptionist said, ‘Your father died at 10 this morning.” I hung the phone up and began crying.  One of the fifth-graders asked his teacher why I was crying.  She said, “Her father died.”

My father was the second son born to Earl Jay and Nina Merritt in Paradise Township, Summit City, in Grand Traverse County. He was named Gilbert Delos, after his grandfather. Summit City consisted of a grocery store and a half dozen houses. 

My grandfather, Earl Jay, was a hard-scrabble farmer, moving around from farm to farm. Manton. Kingsley. Summit City. World War I came in 1914 and the Merritt family moved to Midland, where Grandpa got a job at The Dow Chemical Company. Life didn’t improve that much, even with a steady paycheck coming in.  Earl Jay bought a two-story home in the First Ward. 

When Dad was 16, he quit high school and moved to Detroit, where he lived with his Aunt Tillie and Uncle Bert and got a job in a car factory.  Life was better, for some reason. Aunt Tillie belonged to a church and there were camp meetings in the summer.  Apparently, Dad attended one because he met a young woman named Delores Chambers. They fell in love and were engaged. She wrote a letter to Dad after meeting him, telling him that she had bought the sheet music to the song, “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and would play it for him they next time they got together. 

But the youthful love affair didn’t last, and in the summer of 1927, when Dad visited his folks for the Fourth of July celebration, he met a young girl named Glatise, and in eight months, they were married.

When my parents moved to Detroit briefly, Mom got so homesick that Dad quit his job and they moved back to Midland. By now, Mom was pregnant with their first child, me. The story goes that Dad got his job at The Dow Chemical Company the day I was born.

In a year, Dad, his brother-in-law (my mother’s brother) and his father-in-law put their money together and bought some land on Sturgeon Road. By the time Dad was 27 years old, he had four children. 

Fathers change as we grow up. Because we are changing, too. I remember standing in front of my dad, who had just gotten home from work. And he said to me, “How many bushels do you love me?” And I said, “One.” And he said, “Oh, that’s not enough.” Why do we remember such trivia?

My father was a complex man, which never occurred to me when I was younger. A man who had quit high school after the 10th grade was nevertheless a voracious reader. Our house overflowed with books, magazines, newspapers. He read William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, Leo Tolstoi.  For birthdays, he gave me books by Robert Frost, “The Rubayat of Omar Khayyam,” A.E. Housman’s  “A Shropshire Lad.” A paperback of  C. S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters” shared shelf space with “The Short Stories of Leo Tolstoi.”

He loved being a father. In November of 1944, Mom went to help her dad care for her mother, who was dying. From that November until February 15, 1945, when Grandma died, Dad was left to take care of the four of us. I was 15. My sister Jean was 13. The twins were 10. 

Mom came home for Christmas and New Year’s, but basically it was we four with Dad taking care of us. Oddly enough, it was a quiet time in our lives and we got to know our dad. It was a cold winter, and I remember at night we would all sit around the dining room table. Dad would read the paper. Jean and I did  school work. Delores would sort her paper dolls. I don’t remember what Bud. did. Was he reading Big Little Books about cowboys and Indians? Then Mom came home, and things went back to the way they were.

Living in Averill at the time meant that I rode into high school on Rodd Street with Dad each morning and he picked me up every night. One morning, before I got out of the car at high school, Dad said, “Babe, meet me uptown by Newberry’s tonight.” That night, I walked downtown to stand on the corner of Newberry’s and Kaye’s Clothing Store to wait for Dad. I can see him now, the car turning the corner. Stopping by where I was standing. Dad leaned over the passenger’s side of the car, the window rolled down, and he said, “Here Babe. Get that sweater you want.” And he handed me some money. I didn’t even know that he had heard me talking to Mom about buying a new sweater.

Back when I was eight, I went through a long convalescence and nearly died. I missed the last half of the third grade at Carpenter Street School that year. And for weeks, my dad drove downtown after working and brought me something as a surprise. I remember paper doll cut-out books. Coloring books. New crayons. Small sacks of chocolates. After awhile, as I recovered, he got me a library card from the little Andrew Carnegie Library on Townsend Street. He would stop at night to pick up a new book. Sometimes, several books. In retrospect, it wasn’t the “surprise” every night. It was his caring. His love. Spending his time to brighten my day as I lay in bed for weeks.

When I left for college, I was gifted with a navy blue wool bathrobe and a tabletop radio. That same Christmas, I was given a portable phonograph.  Where did the money come from? I had a brother and two sisters younger than myself.  Still, I was given gifts that must have meant stretching Dad’s paycheck.

When we lived on the Sturgeon Road, I would stay up on Saturday nights to listen to the Grand Ole Opry with Dad. I always fell asleep, my head on his lap, and he would carry me into the bedroom that I shared with my sister Jean.

We went to movies often at the Frolic Theatre on Main Street. Jean and I were small enough that we sat on our parents' laps so we could see over the people sitting in the row ahead of us. As with his reading, Dad had a wide variety of movies he liked. We saw “The life of Emile Zola” and we saw “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” We saw “They Died with Their Boots on” and we saw “Alexander Graham Bell.” When “Gone With The Wind” came to Midland, I was 11 and I had my choice: get a new dress for Easter or get $1.10 for a movie ticket. Jean chose a new dress. I chose the movie ticket.

Time shrinks and stretches at the same time. Sometimes my dad seems near and sometimes far away in my memories. But I always remember how I loved  him and how he loved me. The best gift he ever gave me was loving me.