Dad’s birthday

Today, October 24, 2025, I remember my father on his birthday.

Born in Thacker Hollow, West Virginia, October 24, 1922, my grandparents, Alonzo and Laura O’Brien, named their eighth and last child after the presiding President of the United States, Warren G. Harding.

As my father seldom discussed such family history with my four sisters and me, not long before his death March 3, 1995, he at last disclosed this fact when I asked who named him.

I remember the day, but not the date.

Alone after a divorce from my mother in 1967, and another from his second wife, Dad dropped in my home on a weekday while my husband worked and my youngest attended high school.

Our middle daughter studied in Paris through her studies at Alma College. Our eldest daughter lived in Kentucky with my mother who hoped she could help rehabilitate my eldest child into the drug-free and gifted young woman she once was.

Dad held onto the door jam, his legs weak from varicose veins, and refused my arm for assistance up the step and into my kitchen.

Thirty years later, this moment returned without warning when I opened the kitchen door. I heard Dad’s voice, smelled the cigarette smoke on his breath and clothes.

His Irish pride entirely collapsed, he sat in a chair and panted until he could speak.

Alarmed, I offered him water, yet he preferred coffee which I served with a disclaimer, for he drank a strong brew.

“Have you had breakfast?” I asked.

“No.”

He accepted my offer for eggs and toast. I aimed to cook the yolks runny per his preference.

In our awkward conversation I asked who named him.

“Why, you don’t know?” he replied.

“How could I? You’ve never told me.”

“My father named me after the President,” he said.

Considering my father’s interest and investment in politics throughout his lifetime, and his victory in Michigan’s 25th district as a State Representative November 7, 1972, that made sense.

At last, I summoned the courage to ask my father, a former Marine, where he served during World War II.

“You don’t know?” he asked again.

I replied as before. My father’s tired, brown eyes looked into mine. “Guam.”

With what little I had heard and read of America’s Pacific Theater, swift empathy for my father seized me.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked.

“Our commanding officer said ‘What happens here, stays here,’” Dad said.

Dear Reader, by the power of love, honor, and forgiveness, my sisters and I stood by our father’s side when he exhaled his last breath, his burdens at last lifted.

My eldest daughter succumbed to her addiction July 6, 1996.

My mother left us June 3, 2007.

January 30, 2024, my husband’s heart stopped beating.

My father began my family’s exodus from this beautiful, troubled world. Today, his birthday, I thank God that Warren G. Harding O’Brien survived Guam’s foxholes.

Contact Iris at irisfarmletters@gmail.com