95 years of lessons worth learning

Before I was born, the man who would become my stepfather had already lived a full life.

Forrest Palmer grew up in the Great Depression, and for the rest of his life he ate every bite on his plate. He fought in World War II in Europe as a combat engineer, where he learned to do things like build a bridge or disable a tank with a crowbar, should the event arise (it never did). And he had held leading positions in two newsrooms at a time when newspapers were at the center of civic life, when such a thing as a cohesive civic life could be said to exist. On top of that, he had raised twin boys into adulthood.

In 1985, when he was publisher of The NewsTimes in Danbury, he married my mother, who was then raising four children of her own. He decided at a relatively advanced age to reenter the world of school pickups and driver’s ed classes for a simple reason, which is that he loved my mother and being with her meant the rest of us came along, too. But that doesn’t mean it was easy.

We didn’t need a father; we had one of those. But since Forrest was going to share a home with us, we all had to find a way to make it work.

It wouldn’t do to compare his professional or wartime accomplishments with his laterlife navigation of what could have been a difficult family environment, where he jumped into a household with four boys aged 7 to 17 who were used to doing things a certain way and not all that interested in changing things up. But he figured it out nonetheless.

He died just before Christmas this year. He was 95 years old.

His age, from the beginning, raised some eyebrows. He was the only person in his 60s at my school’s parentteacher conferences. I got more than a few “He’s not your grandfather?” comments over the years. I would sometimes respond, truthfully, that he was as healthy and active as many people 20 years his junior, and that remained the case until recently, as he made daily trips to the gym and served on volunteer boards. Only once he entered his 10th decade did he slow down.

Not that it was anyone’s business, anyway.

He didn’t fit the Greatest Generation cliches. He didn’t usually volunteer to talk about the war, but he would answer questions if you had them. He would tell us at the dinner table, mostly in jest, that if it wasn’t for him we’d all be speaking German.

He did not get more conservative as he aged. He never lost interest in the world around him, staying up on the news until the very end, as depressing as he often found it to be.

He also planned ahead, making his endoflife wishes known to everyone around him so that when the time came that he could no longer speak for himself, there would be no question as to what he would want.

Even with all that, and no matter how old a person is, there’s never anything easy about this. Someone you loved is gone forever, and there are no mitigating circumstances that can change that.

But there also comes a point where it’s time to let go.

It’s no overstatement to say Forrest hated being old. He couldn’t stand how it limited his mobility, how he couldn’t do the things he used to do. He knew that his world was shrinking in the last years, and he wanted more than anything to ensure it didn’t shrink too far. He never wanted to be kept alive for its own sake.

And though he loved his family, he had watched over the years as nearly every one of his contemporaries had died. People he knew from the war, old friends from Plymouth, his college classmates, coworkers from his earlier days — “They’re all gone,” he would say.

Toward the end, he wondered what it had all been worth. He lived a life that was, to outsiders, full of accomplishments and recognition. He had deeply held principles, including in the importance of the news media to keep the public sector honest and ensure an informed populace. He saw things in the war that colored the next 75 years of his life.

To those who knew him best, it was his more private moments that will be remembered. Whether it was during vacations at the Outer Banks or opening up his home to multiple generations of family on a regular basis, Forrest was at the center of our lives and leaves a hole that can never be filled.

That’s about as good a legacy as any of us can hope for.