Today, while searching for something else online, I came across this article I wrote in 2021 about my Dad for Father's Day. I'd like to think my finding it just now is a message from my Dad - or about him - since I wasn't looking for it, forgot I had ever written it, and it's Father's Day. The story was published in the Pacific Daily News on June 20, 2021.
Martin Henry Rohr had a tough Ohio upbringing
Dad was a big strong man with a big strong name: Martin Henry Rohr. He was born in the 1930s during the Great Depression and grew up in what was already a hundred-year-old farmhouse outside of Massillon, Ohio, on what is still called "Mudbrook Road."
Martin Henry was the 10th of 14 children born to Elmer Rohr, a veteran of WW1, and Helen Lindberger. ... The Ohio Rohrs were farmers who carved their life out of the tough Ohio climate, a life that hammered my Dad into a tough, massive man at an early age.
During the Korean War, Dad joined the Navy. And while stationed in San Diego, Dad met a Mexican señorita through a Navy buddy who was my mom’s first cousin. Eight children were born of this union, starting with me.
It was not an easy life. One of my earliest memories of Dad is seeing him trudging into our flooded backyard in pouring rain with a bicycle on his shoulder. Dad couldn’t afford a car so he rode a bicycle to work, and that day his bike had a flat tire.
I never knew we were poor then. Mom and Dad never talked about it. They worked and worked and worked. Dad was a milkman, a paperboy, a lineman, a ditch digger, and finally a “rod buster” - the equivalent of a human mule who carries rebar on rough and bloodied shoulders down into a ditch or onto a bridge deck.
Today, most of the freeways in and around Los Angeles are stained with Dad’s blood and sweat — and pieces of his shoulders.
In memory of Dad’s brother, Albert, who was killed in 1934 when he fell down the cellar stairway, Dad named his second son after him. Albert, my brother, was killed in 1989 when he fell down a different stairway in Irvine, California. Dad never got over it.
Martin Henry Rohr died in February 2014. He left his body to science and there is no grave to mourn at. I believe he wanted it that way. But I don’t need a grave to mourn at. I only need to look at your picture.
Requiem Aeternam (Eternal Rest), Dad.
Your firstborn, Tim
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