"Years ago, must have been the late 80s, early 90s or so, my Dad got a call from a Television news producer from a local station somewhere in upstate New York. They were doing a story to commemorate the anniversary of some major news event from years gone by. By this time this happened, I was out of high school, and old enough to at least sort of grasp the fact that my father was kind of a big deal.
(The man had his own phone line, with a RED phone on his desk for Pete’s sake. Apparently the powers that be at the Reader’s Digest, and the White House for that matter, didn’t appreciate having to wait to talk to him until a dozen or so teenagers were done talking to their friends, or Mom was done placing her grocery order at Hawkinson’s.)
Anyway, Dad took the call in his home office, like he did for most calls. It was Mom who told us after the call that some TV people were coming to the house to interview Dad. I assumed it had something to do with the POW experience in Vietnam. All kinds of people had, for many years by that time, sought Dad out to talk about the POWs in Vietnam. But no, Mom told us that these folks were actually coming to talk to Dad about the Cuban Missile Crisis. They wanted to interview him as an acknowledged expert on that event, having co-authored Strike in the West, The Complete Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963, and get his recollections of the events of that time.
Anyway, this crew came to the house a couple days later for the interview. Their equipment wouldn’t fit into Dad’s office, so they set up and did their interview in the living room. We all stayed away so as not to disturb them. They were there for about 4 hours or so, then they left. It was pretty exciting, at least to us. There was definitely a buzz throughout the house. Dad downplayed the whole thing:
“It’s just some local station, not even in our market,” he told us. “We’ll probably never even see it.”
A week or so later, a VHS tape comes in the mail from the station. So, we all go into the TV room as Dad puts on the tape. And suddenly there he is, on TV! And not in a “hey, I blinked and missed it, rewind that” kind of way either. I mean, he’s center frame, speaking at length, intelligently, and with clear knowledge about the events that led up to The stand off, the Kremlin, the Kennedy administration, who did what, who knew what, who didn’t know what. There he was, on TV, demonstrating his professional experience, his encyclopedic recall, hisstunning intellect - all the things that made him arguably the world’s top journalistic mind on Foreign and Military affairs. To put it mildly, it was impressive.
The tape ends, the screen goes dark. And for a long moment, we all just sit there, quiet. Dad, he’s just looking at the dark screen with a kind of serious, focused look on his face. It was really the only time I ever felt like I was in the room, not with my dad, but with John G. Hubbell.
Finally, Mom breaks the silence, and says, “What did you think, Johnny?”
He keeps looking at the dark screen for a long beat, and then he turns to us, John G. Hubbell turns to us, and says -
“(deep breath) God I’m funny lookin.”
That’s the man that we knew, that other people didn’t know, or get to see. That guy? He was OURS. That was Dad. To the rest of the world, He was a renowned journalist, he was talented, he was respected, he was influential on a global geopolitical stage - and NONE of that mattered AT ALL inside our house.
He was a storyteller, and he raised a passel of storytellers. He wrote for an audience of MILLIONS, but it was the ability to spin a yarn, to make people laugh, that was always the coin of the realm at home.
He was funny, and goofy, and lovable.
He was the absolute Gold Standard for Fatherhood.
What I find really hard to fathom about that, is that he didn’t have anyone ever show him how to do that, to be a father. His own father was not a good one. To my Dad’s credit, I was an adult before I knew that my grandfather had not been good to his children. I asked my Mom recently - how can it be that dad, - DAD - the funniest, most dependable, most trustworthy, and patient? Good Lord, the things he put up with from us, are you kidding me?? Someone should write a book.
He didn’t have a role model? How did he learn to be the father that I know?
She said “I don’t know, but I think he must have gotten it from his mother.”
My grandmother, who died many years before any of us were born, was clearly a wonderfully loving, and nurturing parent, as my Dad and his brothers and sister adored her. And while I’m absolutely sure that his mother helped him become the man that you met, we here, his 9 children, our spouses, his 28 grandchildren, 3 grandchild-in-laws, his 6 great grandchildren, we know. It was the love he found in you, Mom, that transformed him, allowing him to become the father, the father-in-law, the grandfather, the grandfather-in-law, and the great grandfather that we have all been so blessed to call our own.
Dad was the tall ship for all of us, and you are the star he steered her by.