'Stone Phillips: 15 Years of Dateline'

"Going Home," 1997

Waxahachie, Texas. The farm where my father grew up. The place he left behind when he went off to war.

Stone Phillips: How did you feel about going into war?
Dad: Well, I was--I was frightened and I wondered--I could just visualize what ha--would happen if I took a shell burst right in my chest.

In Belgium, on January 8, 1945, my father was hit--one of more than 60,000 American soldiers killed or wounded in the battle of the bulge.  Shrapnel from a German artillery shell slashed and nearly severed his right arm.

Dad: I thought--I thought my arm was blown off … it's just no feeling.

Dad spent the next three years in and out of Army hospitals.  But his right arm would be paralyzed for life.

It's ironic, but actually my father found in his paralyzed arm some relief from a handicap he always considered far more debilitating--his paralyzing shyness.

Dad: If anything, I say it was a help, in that...
Stone Phillips: Because you were self-conscious and shy to begin with and this sort of...
Dad: Yeah.  And without a reason, perhaps, you know.
Stone Phillips: And this gave you a reason.
Dad: It did.

Though there were many things he had trouble doing, Dad never stopped trying.  As unnatural as it may have felt, Dad threw a decent left-handed spiral.  He taught me to throw, and I became a quarterback back in high school--even got the chance to play in college.

The Yale Bowl seats 70,000 people but I always played for an audience of one.

Stone Phillips: I realize today, looking back on it, that--that I needed to play football.  I needed to because I needed to try to make it better for you.
Dad: Yeah.
Stone Phillips: I wanted the guy with the bad arm in the stands to see a good pass and be able to say, `That's my kid.' 

As if throwing a good pass could really have made things better for him.

Dad: Unexpected kindness.  It's--it's devastating.  (crying)
Stone Phillips: It's paradoxical, I think, that the--the disability that I wanted so desperately to make better for you wound up making me better. Because I--I--I strove more, I worked harder, I practiced more.
Dad: You did.
Stone Phillips: And in a--in a sense, it winds up being a--a gift from a--from a parent to a child, I think.  I think it certainly has been that for me. And I don't know whether to thank you or to say I'm sorry.  I guess I should say both.  
Dad: I should say thank you.

A retired chemical engineer, my dad survived not only the battlefields of Europe, but open-heart surgery and a major depression.  So the challenge of joining the computer age has been relatively easy--though at times, it can be a stretch.

The other keyboard he leaves to my mother, a Dallas girl who read the first letters he wrote left-handed as she waited for him to come home from the war.  Though his hugs would never be quite the same, she married her farm boy from Waxahachie in June 1945.  Together they raised three kids in Texas and later at our home in Missouri. 

Going home to interview my father helped me get a little more comfortable with some uncomfortable feelings, comfortable enough to tell him something I should have told him long ago.

Stone Phillips: I think you have shaped my life more than you know.  You talked about your emotional struggles, the depression.  I think I tried to be cheerful as a result.
Dad: Yeah, I suppose so.
Stone Phillips: I think as a result of your--of your bad arm...
Dad: You wanted to compensate -
Stone Phillips: I went into sports.  And because of your shyness, being a farm kid, I went on television.
Dad: Yeah.  Well, one thing I will never do is go on television.  
Stone Phillips: Well, thanks.
Dad: Sure.
Stone Phillips: Thanks--thanks for doing this interview.  I love you, Dad.
Dad: Well, I love you, son.  Thank you.

One of my last reports here at Dateline was about a son following in his father's footsteps as a high school football coach.

He had a lot of good soundbites, as we say in the business. And one came to mind as I thought about how to wrap this up.

"No matter what happens on the field, or in life," he told his players, "the most important play is always the next play."

To all of you who have shared your stories, it's been a privilege. To all of you with stories yet to tell, stay in touch. To all of you who have tuned in over these past fifteen years, I hope, in some useful, positive way, the stories that reached you, touched you.

I'm Stone Phillips.

Thanks for watching.

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