Sixty years ago today, my father passed away. He was only 52.

September, 1966…

I had just turned 11. Barely two weeks earlier, I had come home from another summer with him—a summer I assumed would be followed by countless more. At that age, I believed summers could last forever. I believed fathers did, too.

To the world, he was Jimmie Marando: a supper-club owner, restaurateur, and a man many people remembered. To my brother, Jim, and me, he was simply Pop—the man whose voice, laugh, lessons, and presence made us feel safe.

We lived in Milan, Illinois, just outside Rock Island, in the Quad Cities near the Mississippi River. Pop ran Marando’s Restaurant with my uncles, Jeff and Ernie. Entertainers such as Clyde McCoy, Sophie Tucker, Carmen Cavallaro, and Guy Lombardo appeared there. New Year’s Eve could become a three-day event.

Pop belonged in that world. He knew how to make people feel welcome. He knew how to run a room. He always believed patrons came first.

My earliest memory of him is from 1959, when I was 4. It was a cold, drizzly evening at our Andalusia Road home. I sat on his knee, bouncing gently, looking up as snowflakes drifted down.
It is a small memory, but it has lived in me all these years..

My parents divorced later that year. My mother, Myrna, took my brother and me west, while Pop stayed in Milan. But neither of them ever spoke badly about the other in front of us. Years later, I learned that this had been an agreement between them. It was a gift—an act of grace that spared us from carrying burdens children of divorce should never have to carry.

From 1960 through 1966, Jim, my brother, and I returned to Milan every summer. The day after school ended, we boarded a plane and headed east. Around Labor Day, just before school began again, we flew back to California.

Those summers became the rhythm of my childhood. I waited for them all year…

At Marando’s, I learned to play gin rummy by watching Pop at the bar with friends while a big General Electric radio carried Cubs games. The unmistakable voices of Jack Brickhouse and Lou Boudreau calling the games came through the static, sometimes interrupted by summer storms. Frequent bursts of mid-day lightning seemed to crackle right through the radio…

In 1963, Pop took me to Wrigley Field for my first big-league game. We sat in the center-field bleachers, joining the roar of kids chanting, “We want a hit! We want a hit!” whenever a Cub came to bat..

The next summer, he bought me my first baseball glove at Zayre’s Department Store in Rock Island. We went into the parking lot, he rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, and we played catch.

Just the two of us.

It probably lasted only a few minutes. But to me, it lasted forever..

The following year, I kept bugging him to take me to a White Sox-Yankees game. Now, Pop knew what would happen if I saw Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Whitey Ford up close. He was right. I became a Yankees fan—something Pop, a Cubs fan, never fully appreciated…

He also signed me up for Little League in Milan. Since the seasons in California and Illinois ran at different times, I got to play two seasons every year. To a baseball-crazy boy, that was about as close to heaven as it got.

At Milan’s Eaglewood Park, the outfield fences were covered with sponsor signs. Every team name ended in “Sox,” and I played for the White Sox. Pop came to see me twice each summer. I remember those games especially because Coach Eddie let me pitch. I wanted Pop to see what I could do. I cannot recall how I did, but I wanted him to be proud of me..

Pop smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. Sometimes, when I was 8, he would give me a dollar and send me to the corner store for Newports. The guy behind the counter sold them to me because he knew Pop, so it was OK. The cigarettes cost 35 cents. When I returned with the change, he would say, “Jeffie, keep it.”

Sixty-five cents! That bought 13 packs of baseball cards at Eaglewood Park!

I did not know then that cigarettes were helping take him away from us. I only knew there were baseball cards waiting at the snack bar.

As a kid, you begin to notice stuff. Every morning, Pop reached for an ice-cold Coca-Cola. The carbonation helped with the effects of the throat cancer he had been fighting for years, though I did not understand that then.

And one summer evening in 1965, he handed me a clipboard and gave me the most exciting assignment of my young life.
“Jeffie,” he said, “go out and track the out-of-state license plates—everything except Illinois and Iowa. Bring me the results at precisely 6:50.”

For nearly an hour, I roamed Marando’s parking lot like a little investigator, writing down plates from Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, and beyond. Rain poured down, and then a big truck hit a pothole and splashed me soaking wet. I still hurried upstairs, fighting the mass of humanity in the foyer waiting to get into the main dining room, with clipboard in hand just before the deadline.

Then Pop walked onstage, dressed to the nines—handsome as Cary Grant.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “I’d like to welcome our friends from as far east as Tennessee, to Michigan, Nebraska, Texas, and as far west as Nevada. Welcome to Marando’s.”

I sat there in awe.

I had helped him do that.

Afterward, he handed me ten dollars. But I had already received something better: I had watched my father at the top of his game.

Another time, he came home early and immediately tossed me a roll of coins. “Heads up, Jeffie.”

I remember catching them on the fly. They were a roll of 1964 Kennedy half dollars, fresh from the bank. He told me they had never been touched by human hands. I still have that original roll. In 1997, I gave a similar roll to my daughter Mia when she was 9—the same age I had been when Pop gave mine to me.

Then there was the Great Garden Caper. Oh, man was I in trouble for that one..

One Saturday, Pop offered my friend Don and me three dollars each to fill two gunny sacks with green beans and tomatoes from his garden. Instead, being boys, we began throwing green tomatoes at each other. Soon, another kid joined us. Tomatoes flew, plants were ripped from the ground, and we were having the time of our lives—until Don looked up and said, “Hey, isn’t that your dad?”

There was Pop, walking toward the garden and taking in the wreckage.

Gulp.

He turned to Don and said, “Don, there are three one-dollar bills on the kitchen table. Thank you for your work today.”

Then he looked at me.

“Jeffie,” he said quietly, “there are three one-dollar bills on the kitchen table for you, too.”

But I knew I would not be taking them.

He sat beside me on the living-room couch. He did not yell. He did not need to. The disappointment on his face told me everything. I began to cry, apologized, and he hugged me.
Then he grounded me for a week.

During my childhood, he taught lessons like this without lectures or raising his voice. One look was enough.

That final summer, 1966, became the most memorable of all, although I did not know it would be our last. He came out for Jim’s high school graduation that June, and during dinner at the Cordova Lodge, Pop took a pill, began to choke, and went outside near the pool. When he returned, he said, “It just went down the wrong pipe, Jeffie.”

It was the first time I truly sensed something was wrong.

On September 22, 1966, Pop died of cancer. He was 52.

The next day, longtime Quad Cities sportswriter John O’Donnell wrote that Pop always put the customer first—whether on the chartered trips he organized, through his club, or on the trips he sponsored to the Kentucky Derby. “The man had a good heart,” O’Donnell wrote.

That was my father.

Years later, Mom told me things I never knew. One of them is a real heart-breaker: Pop had made secret trips to Rancho Cordova to see her. Sometimes he would drive to Peter Shields Elementary, park nearby, and wait until I came outside for recess.

But he never let me see him. He did not want to give me false hope that he and Mom would get back together. When Mom told me that, it touched something in me I still cannot fully explain.

In 1998, she told me one of her two great regrets was divorcing Pop. Three months later, she died of lung cancer—the same disease that had taken him 32 years earlier..

Today, 60 years after losing him, I understand how lucky I was..

No son would ever say 11 partial years was enough. It was not. But I had summers full of baseball, radio broadcasts, cornfields, late-night ribs, Coca-Cola bottles, old coins, Little League games, supper-club spotlights, and quiet lessons from a father who made a boy feel loved without saying very much.

Those memories are treasures.

And each one, in its own way, brings my Dad back to me—especially today.

Thanks Pop, for the memories of a lifetime. I love you.