I Wasn’t Trying to Write a Book

The story of how a few phone calls during the COVID lockdown led me to discover the extraordinary life my father lived before I knew him.

My dog had just died.

A global pandemic had just descended upon the world.

I was air-gapped from the rest of humanity while working at home in a living-at-work-kind of way when I got a text message from my father.

“Tell everyone I’m fine.”

My father was 89 years old. He had a daily exercise regime that made me gasp for air. He could drive a golf ball 300 yards, and last thing I knew he was living large in Waikiki where his balcony overlooked the Ala Wai Golf Course.

My father was many things, but fine, wasn’t one of them.

When I finally got him on the telephone, the first words out of his mouth were even more shocking.

“You remember Merv, don’t you? I need you to find him. I think he’s somewhere in Las Vegas and I need him to change my will.”

Finding Merv, despite sounding like a B-movie plot about trying to find a retired attorney somewhere in the middle of a desert in the middle of a pandemic, was honestly easy.

He’d always been a fan of my writing. Wanted me to write the story of his grandfather. But I’d never had the time. Who ever has that kind of time?

But daily calls to the hospital made me realize that life is short, and if I didn’t make the time then, the time might pass me by.

And that’s how our adventure began. With me sitting at my desk thousands of miles away in a high-tech audio filled room consisting of a cellphone and a pocket recorder hanging on his every word.

“Where would you like to start?”

“What?”

No longer in the hospital but still recovering, his words flowed as quickly as mint-flavored tooth paste. I had offered to interview him because I thought talking would help with his recovery. But I was frustrated that no modern-day technology, like video calls or transcription services were acceptable tools to him, and I had started our first interview without a clue as to what I wanted to hear.

“How would you like to do this? Do you want me to ask questions, or do you know where you want to start?”

“I’d like to start at the beginning.”

I assured my father that the beginning was an excellent place to start his recorded memoirs, and then I turned it back to him. He cleared his throat and began again.

“I was born. I was born…”

And then my head hit the desk.

Those conversations continued for the next four years and eventually became the book Before Falcons Flew.