Dad

My father’s name was Ralph Cornelius Klamer, Jr (although he never used the Jr). He had a brother (Oscar) and a sister (Caroline). As children we did not have much contact with his parents or his siblings.

Dad was fiercely independent and pretty frugal. He was gregarious and well liked although he had few close friends. He was a great role model for being financially responsible, for honesty, for integrity, for work ethic, and providing for your family. Dad was not so great at the warm and fuzzy stuff – the emotional side of life.

I was not very close to my Dad when I was young. I was closer to my mother and I felt he favored my next oldest brother (I have three older brothers). When my parents marriage came apart they had several physical fights and I was in some of them (including the one that went out the front door and into the front yard). When the divorce happened my mother moved out and my brothers and I were left with my Dad. I didn’t know him very well and I wasn’t sure I liked him much. But during my high school years I became closer to him. He gave me two great gifts during that time – golf and skiing. When I was a senior in high school there was only me, him and the family dog at home. That was the year we became very close and we remained close until he passed away in 1997.

When the divorce occurred my brothers and I became some of the early latch-key kids. My Dad worked in Rochester, MI which was an hour and a half away from our home in Flushing (by the interstate I-75). We had to fend for ourselves – do our own laundry, get our own meals, and handle things on our own. There was no one to come get you if you felt sick at school or to tend to you if you stayed home with an illness from school. It was a hard way to grow up but when I went to college I was much better prepared than other kids to live my own life.

Dad was an accountant and worked as a middle class, white collar worker. During my life he worked at General Motors, then Higbie Manufacturing (a supplier to the auto industry) and then IT&T when it bought Higbie Manufacturing. During my senior year of high school he was working for Higbie and had to visit some of their plants for accounting work (in Arkansas, Ohio, upstate New York). He would make sure there were groceries in the house and food for the dog. And then he would be off for a long weekend or up to a week. I had the extra family car so I drove myself to high school, fed and walked the dog and managed on my own while he was away (there were no cell phones at that time – I had no close friends and there was no family close by except my mother and her husband in Flint, MI).

Dad and I became very close. He paid for my college education but in a bare bones basis. I did not have the luxury of a 5 or 6 year college plan or the ability to change my major multiple times. I needed to go to college and then be out on my own in life.

I chose computer science as my major since it seemed to offer the chance to get a job after college. It was not about what I wanted to do but what I needed to do. My Dad got me through college and we ended up working in the same kind of corporate working environment.

My Dad came down with cancer in 1996 and I was fortunate to visit him in late February 1997. He took his own life on March 15, 1997 by a gunshot to his head. I will always regret not doing more for him in his final days. I miss him now after all these years. He meant a lot to me.