I see my short, dignified father in his finely tailored, dark grey business suit walking toward me down the stairs of Boston’s Parker House. He is smiling. We have arranged to meet and drive home together in my car. It is a most unusual occasion. I am in my late forties, and it is the only time I can remember getting together alone with Daddy except for two Father’s Day Weekends at Smith College.

It is not intentional. I know my father loved me very much, but he always seemed busy, unavailable to just hang out or chat over lunch for no particular reason. He died at eighty-eight still working conscientiously. When I brought him to the hospital for the last time, he told me he was waiting on three orders. They came in the day of his funeral.

On the way home to Newton from the Parker House, we drive down Beacon Street past the golden domed Massachusetts State House. My father smiles broadly and exclaims, “This is near where I used to live, down that side street.” He is very excited recalling his now demolished old Jewish neighborhood.

Daddy worked seventy-eight years of his life. He started selling newspapers near Boston’s South Station in 1912 when he was ten years old and never quit working until he died on November 27, 1990. When I was young, I never realized how hard it must have been for him struggling to make a living from the time he was a child; only now do I realize fully what an amazing man he was and how lucky I was to have him as my father.

Daddy was born and grew up on the wrong side of Beacon Hill in Boston’s Jewish ghetto called the West End. His father and mother came from Russia and eked out a living in their tiny candy store. They made money, also, by renting out rooms to boarders in their home. One of the boarders, Leo Albert, ended up marrying my father’s sister, Fanny. According to my mother, who never had any great love for my extremely possessive grandmother, “Bubbie”, my grandfather was a difficult, demanding man with an explosive temper. My father, Harry, was the family’s hero whose two older sisters, Ida and Fanny, adored him.

I always thought my father was big and tall. Even as an adult, I regarded him as powerful and in control. He would always be there for me if I ever needed him or were in trouble. I don’t think I ever really thought he was little either in the way he talked or walked. In reality, though, he was only five foot five at his prime. Towards the end of his life, he was quite small physically but never in his thinking, acting, or lust for life.

My father’s name was Harry Sidney Horne. His father, Bernard, and mother, Lena, must have been given their names when they debarked in New York’s Ellis Island in the 1880s. How else would they have such Anglicized names when their origins were embedded somewhere in Russian soil?

When I remember my father, I think of his laughter and sense of humor. He could remember lots of jokes and relish telling them to receptive audiences. He loved being the center of attention and kidding around. I always wondered how he could remember so many jokes.

But there was another side to Daddy—the dark side when he would retreat into himself and become silent. Mom used to observe, “Daddy is in one of his moods.” At the time I never quite knew what propelled him to the darkness, but it lasted a day or two, and then he would return to his usual outgoing self. Now that I am older, I think perhaps Daddy’s moodiness originated from the enormous family responsibilities he shouldered. He had no fall back position. Everyone depended on Harry: his two sisters, brother-in-law, two nieces, a nephew by marriage, and mother as well as his wife and three children. If he faulted, the whole family enterprise came tumbling down. His father was dead, and he had no financial means other than what he generated on his own.

Daddy was trained as an attorney and upon graduation at twenty had to wait a year to pass the bar when he turned twenty-one. When he went to Boston University Law School, a student could enter without earning a bachelor’s degree first. After two years at B.U., Daddy enrolled in Suffolk Law School where he could attend at night. He needed to work during the day to accumulate funds for his tuition. Daddy told me he was elected to the B.U. Law Review before he transferred to Suffolk.

My father was very proud of his status as an attorney, even though after graduation he elected to enter the business world. Having worked at a paper company selling office supplies, he decided he preferred commerce over the law, rejecting the confrontation often demanded in legal affairs. Daddy started H.S. Horne & Company, a commercial enterprise offering all the paper, pencils, and business services needed by schools, law firms, police, and fire departments. His sales acumen focused on those businesses that placed a high priority on personal service and a hands-on approach to individual needs. People loved my father’s caring, warm personality, and upstanding ethics. The business flourished. He retained some of his customers for decades.

Once I picked up my father after work at the train station in Waban, Massachusetts where he and Mother lived for over forty years. He didn’t expect me to be the chauffeur that afternoon, and his face glowed as he approached my car. He smiled with such joy to see me. It was the same happy expression I always remember when he saw me. It was the smile I saw at the Parker House when he walked down the stairs and the one that stirs me every time I remember the week before he died.

My mother, Daddy, and I were sitting in their lawyer’s office. He and Mom had made final changes to their will, dividing their property equally among their three children. The attorney reassured my parents that all the changes had been made and that both could sign the documents on the table. Daddy sat back in his wooden armchair looking at me and smiled. He was so happy. It was as if he were saying to me, “My work is done; I’ve tried for all of you, and I’ve done my best.” And he did—for everyone—all his life.

Daddy died two weeks later of congestive heart failure.

Rosalie H. Franks, Ed.D. is an adjunct professor with the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Composition at Roger Williams University in Bristol.