#1,041: Every Day is Father's Day

Henry Ellis Schimberg, Age 20, Upon Arriving in Hollywood

I would imagine that most - if not all of us - when, as children celebrating Mother’s or Father’s day, asked their parent(s) “Why isn’t there a ‘Children’s Day’?” For those who did ask that question, the answer was likely "Every day is ‘Children’s Day’.” And, unless you grew up in an emotionally straitened family, that answer was true . . . even if, as youngsters, it went in one ear and out the other. I begin with this memory we all have in common as a bit of an excuse for sharing my Father’s Day post two days after - not precisely on - the one day in the year when we “officially” honor our fathers. From a (or an) historic perspective, Father’s Day was the brainchild of one Sonora Louise Smart Dodd back in 1910. That year, Dodd (1882-1978), the daughter of Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, heard a sermon in her Spokane church about Mother’s Day, which had recently become a recognized holiday. After hearing the sermon, she found herself wondering why there was no Father’s Day. On June 6, 1910, she suggested establishing such a holiday to both the Spokane Ministerial Association and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane on June 19, 1910, fourteen days after her father’s birthday. Despite being recognized (and observed) by Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge, it wasn’t until 1972 that President Richard M. Nixon made Father’s Day a permanent national holiday to be observed annually the third Sunday of June.

Ernest Hemmingway once noted that Every man has two deaths: when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. To my way of thinking, this is one of the very best (and most hopeful) definitions of immortality. It tells us that so long as we tell stories about those who have shuffled off this mortal coil (found in Hamlet’s To be or not to be soliloquy) they are not truly dead. Perhaps - just perhaps - this is the purpose of Father’s (and Mother’s) Day: to keep them amongst the living . . . warts and all.

Our father, Henry Ellis Stone (nee Schimberg) was born in Baltimore, Maryland on January 21, 1915, the first of Isaac and Sheva Schimberg’s 3 children. His father, our “Grandpa Ike,” (who my slightly-older-sister Erica and I barely knew), was a clothing cutter. Depending on the season, the family would live either in Baltimore or Richmond Virginia, where grandpa plied his trade. Grandma Shiva, so the story goes, was so intent on her first-born attending the about-to-open Forest Park High School, that she actually camped out overnight on the newly-built school’s cement steps at 4300 Chatham Road in order for “Hen” to be the first to enroll. He graduated at age 16, spent 2 years at the University of Richmond, and then, filled with dreams of becoming a movie star, moved 3,000 miles away from home to Hollywood. (That’s Dad in the picture above; newly arrived and already an Adonis who dressed for success).

There is an old adage in Hollywood which goes “If you can’t act well, then at least know how to behave.” Although Hen (never “Hank”) had a lot going for him, acting ability just wasn’t in his satchel of talents. And so he wound up making ends meet doing a lot of things . . . including being a jeweler for Kays. As a memory of those days, I have, hanging on my living room wall, a shadow box with parts of watches he may or may not have taken apart, ready for repair. (The shadow box was fashioned by Fred Kaplan our mother’s “significant other” for many years after Dad passed away in 2002). One thing that Hen was learning about himself in these early years is that he was a pretty good salesman; the only thing he was missing was what to sell. In its own way, salesmanship is just another form of acting . . . selling yourself. Dad’s most successful job of selling came about when he attended a party in Beverly Hills, given by a friend named Mitzi. While at the party, he met an absolutely stunning teenager named Alice Kagan, who was visiting from Chicago and happened to be Mitzi’s first cousin. Alice had been a student at the Chicago Art Institute and an actor with the Chase Street Players. She had recently played the role of “Linda Seton” in a production of Phillip Berry’s romantic comedy Holiday (the role which had catapulted Katharine Hepburn to fame a decade earlier), and after being complimented by the luminous Lillian Gish (who was starring in a historic 66-week run of Life With Father at Chicago’s Blackstone Theatre), decided to move to Hollywood and give it a try. Alice met Hen, Hen met Alice and before you knew it, he had sold himself; they would be together for the next 61 years . . . 59 of them as husband and wife.

By the time Mom and Dad got married on July 27, 1943, Hen was already a Tech Sgt. in the United States Army Air Corps (the precursor to the Air Force). Realizing that he would likely be drafted for a two-year hitch, and smartly determining that the war would last a heck of a lot longer than 2 years, he decided to enlist, thereby foregoing the agony of being merely assigned to an MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) and instead be afforded to take a series of tests to see what he was best suited to doing. As things turned out, he was assigned to become a weather forecaster. As such, he (and Mom) went from one post to another in the United States, all the while learning how to forecast different climates. One of their postings was the Scottsbluff Army Airfield where Mom got a job in an Italian prisoner of war camp and Dad learned everything you needed to know about forecasting weather in a frigid climate. The one thing we remember Mom telling us about their time there is how she used to carefully remove the labels from Campbells soup cans, frame them, and hang them on the wall . . . long before Andy Warhol! Their basement apartment also came with a retriever named Sandy.

Having learned all about sub-zero weather and snow, snow, snow, the military, in its infinite wisdom, sent him to India, where he spent the remainder of his military service forecasting weather for planes flying over what was known as “The Hump.” To fly the "Hump," transport aircraft would take off from just 100 feet above sea level in India and climb at a drastic rate of 300 feet per minute until they reached 18,000 feet to navigate the Himalayan Mountains. The descent into the mountains of China at roughly 6,000 feet completed the route.

Dad never, ever talked about his time in India. Finally, when he was in his 80s, we asked him why, unlike many other of our friends’ fathers, he never spoke about it. His answer was pure Hen: “You know something? I feel sorry for the guys who are still talking about something that occurred more than half-a-century ago . . . as if that was the high point of their life. And besides I have found that the more they talk, the farther away from the truth they get. And personally, I don’t want to remember India . . . I lived well in the midst of so much poverty, starvation and disease. My life was great before the war and fantastic after it. That’s really all I care to remember . . . “

After the war, Alice and Henry returned to Southern California had their “mismatched twins” (Erica and myself . . . we are a mere 19 months apart) and Dad, kept looking for precisely what he should be selling. He had a visionary streak. In the early 1950s he created “Flash TVs,” a store that sold color television sets. Problem was, there weren’t any television shows in color back then. He sold one of the earliest series of visitor guide books that were placed in hotel rooms all over the country (“Guest Informant”) and then . . . he immersed himself in the world of Mutual Funds. Along with a partner named Stanley Ross, they created what was probably the first firm that specialized in this type of investment. Dad and Stan created “California Investors,” in the 1950s; mutual funds really did not capture the attention of American investors until the 1980s and 1990s. Although the first fund was founded back in 1924, California Investors was essentially there at the creation. Eventually they would have offices all over California and a client list that included lots of Hollywood folks. Eventually Dad moved into financial and estate planning.

I actually got a chance to work at his central office on Olympic Blvd., shortly after graduating from high school. The job didn’t pay all that well, and I spent most of my time filing "CIPs,” Comprehensive Investment Plans.” The only promise I had to make was that I wouldn’t tell anyone that I was Mr. Stone’s son; Dad didn’t want me treated with kid gloves. It turned out to be a wonderful decision; I got to hear what people really thought about "the boss.” They loved him and thought him one of the finest gentlemen they had ever met. . . . which of course made me silently kvell. Dad’s firm was probably the first that hired and trained women, Hispanics, African Americans, Asians and gay people to become licensed brokers. Dad’s reason was as logical and practical as you could imagine: people tend to trust those who look like them and share a common experience. Within a few years we moved to a bigger house . . . right next door to Mr. Greene, the man who owned Orange Julius.

Dad was quite a visionary in his own way. When we had a math project involving graphs and charts, we were instructed to find a marketable item and track its ups and downs. Hen recommended that we “invest” our imaginary dollars in something brand new called “Xerox.” By the end of the term I was - at least on paper - ready to retire! In the early 1960s he also began putting his clients into a company called “Finger Matrix,” the first developer of electronic fingerprinting technology. When he and Stanley Ross first started out, Dad had a business card that contained the name and number of every Mutual Fund manager in the world. By the time he "retired,” it would have taken a telephone book-sized document to list them all. Dad tried to retire in his early sixties. By that time he and Madame had sold their house and moved to a condominium in downtown Sherman Oaks. He quickly grew tired of just sitting around, and decided to take a walk down Ventura Blvd. He told Mom that if by the time he returned he hadn’t found a job, he would retire. A couple of hours later he returned with the good news that he was now the "senior account executive” for a firm called “Beneficial Standard,” and thus would keep on working. When asked how he could so quickly become their "senior” executive, he quietly responded "Oh, I’m the oldest person there.” For Hen, that passed for riotous humor.

In 1968, Mom and Dad celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. They took over the Sportsman Lodge in Studio City . . . the place for cast and crew during Hollywood’s Golden Age. Surrounded by lots of family and friends, Dad toasted Mom and Mom toasted Dad. Those toasts are, some 57 years later, still etched in my mind, for they showed, better than anything, the essential character differences that made them an ideal couple. First, Dad held a glass of champagne and gave a pretty romantic toast to his bride . . . which had most of the women in the room poking their husbands in the ribs and muttering "Why can’t you be more like Hen?” Then it was Mom’s turn. Holding her glass aloft and turning on her best "Auntie Mame” megawatt stage voice, she said: “Here’s to Henry: In 25 years of marriage, we’ve never considered divorce once. . .” Then taking a carefully-timed pause that would have made Phyllis Diller proud, concluded " . . . BUT MURDER? MANY, MANY TIMES!” That quip had the “people in the cheap seats” laughing and rising to give Madame a standing ovation. Indeed, two very different kinds of people whose marriage lasted through thick and thin.

Hen, unlike Alice didn’t really have a fully-developed sense of humor . . . except once . . .

At one point, when I was away at school, Dad called and asked if I would like to fly to Las Vegas and spend a couple of days with him, his youngest sister, my Aunt Jackie and her husband, my Uncle Marty at Caesar’s Palace. Of course I said yes, packed some clothes drove to the airport and found a roundtrip ticket waiting for me. In those days, Las Vegas was a pretty small town lacking the million-watt brilliance it is so well known for today. (Erica and I remember the days when we would pack up the family car, rent a portable air conditioner for the Pontiac, and then drive for a couple of hours through the desert heat. In those days, there were a only a couple of hotels and casinos; it was so small that it seemed like “Welcome to Las Vegas” and “Come Back Soon” were on the same side of the sign.)

Well, we had a grand old time, eating ourselves silly, lying out by the pool (you could do that back then) and seeing Sammy Davis, Jr. do his thing. On the last night, as Aunt Jackie and Uncle Marty were heading up to their room Dad said “Let’s go downtown and see another show.” And so we did. Unbelievably, he took me to what can only be described as an old-fashioned burlesque house . . . complete with slightly underdressed showgirls, and baggy-pants comedians who were bluer than blue. The show on stage wasn’t nearly as captivating as the man sitting next to me at the table: it was Hen, loudly laughing until there were tears in his eyes and mucus dribbling from his nose. And this went on for nearly a half-hour! I had never before - and would never again - see Dad in such state of utter hilarious delight. To this day, I remember thinking “Where in the hell did that come from . . . ?”

Like all fathers and sons of that era, we had our disagreements. Our politics were a bit different, to say the least; he was a proud veteran and I was militantly anti-war; he was all business and I was all philosophy. He couldn’t understand why in the world I was taking so many courses in classic literature, Latin, Greek and other assorted liberal arts. “What are you training yourself for?” he asked time and again. “To be an educated person,” I would always respond. I remember that in 1968 he told Mom that he was considering voting for Richard Nixon, rather than Hubert Humphrey. She was a staunch liberal who had given a brief moment’s thought to voting for comedian Dick Gregory. Instead of arguing with him, Mom “pulled a Lysistrata” on him; he wound up voting for Humphrey.

Dad wasn’t too happy with my long hair and beard, although both were kempt and clean. I remember once he grew a magnificent blindingly snow-white mustache and goatee. He looked like a million dollars after taxes. One day he came home and had Mom shave it off. “Why did you do that?:” I asked. “It looked so good on you.” His answer was both simple and quintessentially Henry: “I couldn’t live up to its reputation.”

Dad lived a long life filled with everything good. On our last night together, we watched our Los Angeles Dodgers playing the reviled San Francisco Giants. The love of baseball - especially DODGER baseball - was the one thing Mom, Dad, Erica and I shared from the first game they ever played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (April 18, 1958, when they beat the Giants 6-5 before a then-record crowd of 78,672) until that last night, when once again, they beat them by the same score in the 11th inning. By the time the game ended, Dad had slipped into a deep sleep from which he never awakened. I remember thinking “There’s nothing like going out on top.” He was 87 . . . Mom would continue on for nearly a quarter century more, finally passing away a week before her 97th birthday in 2021.

Thanks for the memories Hen. You provided us with a set of standards and guidelines for how to live lives of decorousness, good taste and restraint; you taught us by example that there is a whale of a difference between being proud and being prideful. We hear your voice daily and continue to tell stories about you and Mom. Hemmingway was right: you are immortal . . .

And that’s why everyday is Father’s Day.