My father is the captain, always at the helm.
He steers the ship ‘cross all the seas, through storm and gale or calm.
He guides us when he’s weak. He leads us when he’s hale—
O’er many a swale, past all the wrecks, or through the gates of Hell.

My father is the captain of our family’s long campaign.
His seamanship is steadfast. His devotion never wanes.
For at the helm he navigates with but one goal in sight—
My mother, she is Polaris, the captain’s guiding light.




Mom and Dad met at Franklin High. When Mom asked Dad out on their first date, the book was closed. They graduated in 1941, so before Dad could finish college, he was an ensign in the Navy delivering troops in landing ships onto hostile shores. A few years later, he also served that duty in Korea, north of Inchon. The enlisted crew admired Dad for standing up to the skipper who harshly punished a gunnery mate for a minor indiscretion. And Dad made sure all the men who hadn’t graduated high school were enrolled in correspondence courses for a G.E.D., and he made sure they finished. Dad never had a kind word to say about his own father, so he never said a word about him. He never said much about his Mom, either, but on Memorial Day when I was about six, he took my big brother and me to the grand mausoleum at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery and showed us where she lay at rest. I can see him to this day, standing in the sunlit hall with his head bowed and his hand laid upon the stone. He stood remembering his Mom with my Mom by his side. Dad didn’t get many vacations throughout his career working for the phone company. He spent them all on active duty as an officer in the United States Naval Reserves. Upon retirement, he was a captain.

Mom was not a career woman even though she did finish college while Dad was in the war. She raised four boys and still found time to work for many groups and causes—PTA, Church Women United, Older Girls Conference, Portland Action Committees Together, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. She joined the march on the Pentagon in 1985 with her hand-made section of the Peace Ribbon that read “Save History, End War.” And they encircled the Pentagon with it. Married to a line officer of the USNR, she stood strong for peace, justice and equality. When Dad and friends began a Men’s breakfast tradition at church in the 1950s, Mom wouldn’t join the other women as servers until women were allowed on the Church Session. That didn’t happen until after Mom died in 1994, but it happened. Mom’s one paying job was as a fair-housing expert for the City of Portland in the 1960s. She believed that all housing should be well-built with off street parking and green space and, most importantly, there had to be good affordable housing for all citizens.

To me, their marriage was a Heavenly match. Dad was devoted to his “Lovely Momsy.” He drove her nuts with his frequent tributes of “Lovely Momsy! Lovely slender Momsy!” And “Moth-a-wer-wer-wer-wer,” and so on. But he truly was devoted to her. Mom knew this, too. She might have known that Dad would follow her with speed upon her death. And he did. Two-months after she died, he died—right before Christmas 1994. He was strong. But her year-long struggle to battle infections took its toll on the Captain as it slowly wore Mom down. He surely did not wish to spend Christmas without his “Lovely Josephine” like he did in 1952—when he was north of Inchon in Korea.

So, on this Memorial Day and on every day, I remember our family’s Skipper and his Mate in this way—the road to peace is paved with unity and love and humor and hard work. Each member is a worker and a leader in her way and in his way, like Mom and Dad, “The Captain and Polaris.”