Samuel
D. Slade
May
1, 1913 – October 15, 1973
Daddy
was the son of a shyster lawyer (David Harold Slade) and a Vaudeville
comedienne (Agnes Simonds, stage name Agnes Lynn). The lawyer parked his wife
and son, along with his tough stage-mother mother-in-law (Sophia Augusta
Josephine Byrne Simonds) and a Roumanian cook, in a large house in Freeport,
Long Island. David then went off to gamble on trans-Atlantic ocean liners, have
affairs with clients, bribe witnesses, and complain about the income tax. We’ll
get to the bigamy part later. And he claimed he’d be reincarnated as a cat –
stay tuned for more on that topic as well. Daddy did not speak of his father
with love or respect but there was certainly longing there as well. His mother
he adored – and he took care of for her whole life.
Daddy
finished high school in Freeport when he was 14 so they sent him to boarding
school: Cheshire Academy (since he was too young for college). There he took up
smoking (3 packs a day for the next 46 years) and practical joking. He told me
a story about putting water in the chapel organ pipes: disaster ensued at the
first chord of the processional the next morning. The headmaster put the whole
school on detention until the culprits confessed (Daddy and his friends). Daddy
was sentenced to spend the rest of the school year reading the entire Waverly
Novels in the library during all his free time. I must say, I learned much
later to take all of Daddy’s stories with pounds of salt. I wonder what really happened.
During
the summers Daddy was sent to Maine to hunt and fish. He had a French Canadian
guide named Neal Rancourt. Trout fishing was a love that stayed with Daddy for
his whole life, even after he lost a whole day’s catch to a bear who helped
himself to all the fish strung up outside the cabin one night!
After
Cheshire he went to Yale, where he fenced, drank, and read old English.
Beowolf. In the original. Which he loved, and wanted to become a professor
teaching old English. But it was the depression and he was told he needed to
make more money than professors do and so he went to law school, one year at
Columbia and the remaining two back at Yale (where his father and both his
uncles had gone, lawyers all). While at Yale Law he won money at a card game
and took a road trip to Smith, where he met Patricia. They both played piano,
maybe that’s how they got together. He got a law clerk job on Wall Street and
married Pat. The marriage went sour immediately – but they had a son, John. And
at the same time David, my grandfather, was being treated or a melanoma that
started in his eye and spread – and his reaction was to get a Mexican
mail-order divorce from Agnes and elope with Mary Montalban, whom he had been “keeping”
in a love-nest on East 54th Street. David died, leaving a mess of
unpaid bills and a will allegedly leaving everything to the bigamous second Mrs
Slade, who promptly sued. But there was no estate since David’s two brothers,
who were his law partners, swallowed whatever assets there were as part of
their partnership. This left Daddy with nothing. His uncle Ben promised to
maintain the mortgage on the house Agnes and Sophie lived in while Daddy moved
to Washington, DC to take a government job. Ben defaulted and the house was
auctioned from under Agnes’s feet. Pat left, taking John and starting a
protracted divorce drama. And Agnes and Sophie moved to DC where they lived
with daddy for the rest of their lives. My poor father – his late 20s were a
nightmare!
He
lived in Virginia and got a cat – George the Siamese. After George was “fixed”
Agnes would sit in her chair and gloat, “Oh, David, what we did to you!”
Throughout
the 1940s and ’50s Daddy worked for the government, first at Admiralty, then
Price Administration (where he knew and detested Richard Nixon!), and finally
at Justice, where he became Chief of the Appellate Division. Mastering the fine
points of appellate law was as close as he could come to the Old English he
loved. He became famed for arguing cases from memory and for dictating whole
briefs that he had fully composed in his head, ready for the printer with no
need of editing or revision.
His
family continued to plague him – when his Uncle Ben died Daddy found that Ben’s
estate was being taken by his cousin Helen, who had made him sign a will when
he was completely senile. Daddy sued for half the estate – the battle raged for
a decade. The court ruled in Daddy’s favor but by then most of the estate had been
eaten by court costs.
Daddy
was responsible for hiring new lawyers for his department. He interviewed a
young Yale Law grad named Sondra Kaplan. And married her a year later! She
moved in with Daddy and his elderly female relatives. A year later she lost her
eyesight (Multiple Sclerosis, undiagnosed: she made a partial recovery) and
went into the hospital. Agnes developed congestive heart failure and went into
the hospital as well. Sophie, who was in her late ’90s and still sharp as a
tack, knew that the hospital was where you went to die so she offered Daddy her
sympathy: “You poor dear, losing them both at once!” She was astonished when
Mother came home. Agnes did not. Daddy locked himself alone in his room and
cried all night. That is the only time I have ever known of him crying – I certainly
never saw such a thing.
Sophie
lived one more year, still cooking and doing dishes until her last 6 months.
And after she died my parents started a family. First me. And finally Daddy had
life all figured out – he loved living in DC, he was happy at his job, and most
of his dramas were quiet. Then my sister Anne was born, and it all came apart.
Anne is profoundly autistic. Daddy knew, immediately, that Anne would require
financial support far beyond his modest salary, so he accepted a partnership in
a Philadelphia law firm and we moved to Villanova, PA.
I
remember remarkably little about my first decade. I know that my sister was
feral for about 7 years until the stelazine and thorazine began to modify her
behavior. We had family therapy. Anne rocked back and forth, my parents fought,
I was ignored. Daddy spent long hours at work, joined the Racquet Club, and
played the piano. Mother joined the league of Women Voters and suffered various
attacks and long-term effects of her MS, while doctors told her at was all
psychosomatic. I went to the Episcopal Academy, where I discovered choir
singing but was otherwise an outcast.
Mother
used to spend most of her weekends in bed, suffering from MS-induced exhaustion
and depression. Daddy and I were on our own, and we had our routines. The
Saturday trip to the cheese shop for French bread, Gouda, and Tiptree Little
Scarlet. Trout fishing, in season – he fished, I sat on a rock and read. I was
no outdoorsman, which I think was a great disappointment to him. But singing –
that we shared. We would sit at night in the kitchen, him with Bourbon and me
with milk, and he would teach me folk songs and how to improvise harmony. The
first two Peter, Paul & Mary albums were our textbook. And he told me
stories about his youth, too many of which I have muddled or forgotten. And one
night in October of 1973 he told me it was time for me to make friends my own
age because he wouldn’t be around forever. And I cried and asked him not to say
such a thing. But three days later he died in his sleep. What did he die of?
All the cigarettes? All the disappointments? All the unlived passions he
suppressed to be the most dutiful son and then the burdened husband and father?
I was 15 and we had no yet fought the battle of my becoming my own person. So
much I want to ask, to know. So much I miss you. Happy 100th
birthday my honored Father. Your memory is for a blessing.
