A Father's Spirit Never Dies

More than fifty years after his murder, my father responded to my plea for help.

More than 50 years after his murder, my father’s spirit reached out to me through his hundred year old birth cup.

I grew up on the sprawling campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville. My single father was pursuing his doctorate in Gerontology, studying the aging process, as well as teaching undergraduate classes as part of his studies. He, my brother and I lived in a small sunny 2-bedroom apartment in a red brick graduate school housing project known as Corry Village. Newly constructed, the village offered playgrounds for children, laundry rooms, basketball courts and barbeque areas—everything young families living on a graduate student budget could hope for.

A sleepy Southern city with a huge, energized college student population made Gainesville in the latter 1960s a political hotbed. When students protested the Vietnam War and marched in support of Black civil rights, “red-neck” locals seethed. On Sundays, my family regularly attended the Quaker Meeting, held at a nondescript house in a modest residential neighborhood. The congregation consisted largely of UF students, faculty and their families, including children.

In 1969, we left Gainesville for Uganda, East Africa where my father had been given a grant to conduct research into the care of the elderly in African traditional societies. Two years later he was murdered while assisting American intelligence with an investigation into a brutal massacre of 300 Ugandan Army soldiers by then-President Idi Amin. My father’s body was never found.

Of all the exotic places we lived around the world, including Trinidad and Tobago, Peru, Venezuela, Panama and Uganda, my father loved Gainesville, with its ubiquitous Spanish Moss laden trees the most. Had his bodily remains ever been found, I would have buried them in Gainesville.

After a near 60-year absence, lately I have had reason to travel to the city. My son, like his grandfather, now attends UF. Whenever I return to Gainesville these days, I feel my father’s presence, his spirit.

In January, I drove to the city—this time to take my son to college for the beginning of his second year. His first year had been traumatic for all the family. Early on, he landed in the hospital—Acute Care for nearly a week—as doctors ran test-after-test to determine what was irritating his heart. Thankfully, in the end, it was a virus with no permanent damage and he was able to resume his studies.

This second year, my wife, son and I rented an Airbnb for a long weekend to ensure there would be plenty of time to get him settled in his apartment. We planned to leave Gainesville for the drive home Sunday in the late morning after joining my son at his apartment for coffee.

With Sunday morning free, my mind wandered to the Quaker Meeting my father, brother and I had attended decades ago. I wondered if the Quakers still met, where and at what time. Since their website indicated the members met at 11 a.m., there was plenty of time for me to jog, then shower and go. I told my wife I was going to the Meeting because I felt my father’s spirit would be strongest there and I wanted to ask him to watch over my son and keep him safe this new year.

“I’ve always believed my father is watching over our son in Gainesville,” I told her.

“Well then, ask him to do a better job,” she quipped as she dropped me at the Meeting House—the memory of our son’s first year medical crisis still weighing heavily upon us.

A Quaker Silent Meeting is a time of worship where people sit in silence to reflect, listen and connect with the divine. No minister, or priest presides and there is no sermon. If you feel compelled to share some truth, you just stand up and speak. After a half hour of anxiously planning my remarks and waiting until others had their chance to speak, I stood up to say my piece.

“Nearly sixty years ago, I used to attend this Meeting regularly with my father and brother. We left Gainesville for Uganda where he was murdered investigating a massacre committed by Idi Amin. His body was never found. I feel his presence in Gainesville and, most especially, here at this Meeting House. I am here today to reach out and connect with his spirit and also ask that he watch over my son as he begins his second year at UF.”

After the Meeting ended, two older members, probably in their nineties approached me and said they remembered my father. That seemed remarkable enough. My father was born 100 years ago, in July, 1925.

Early the next morning after returning home, I opened an email sent through my law office website:

“Teddy! Childhood friend here. I’d love to get in touch with you. I’m Gail from Gainesville. Our parents dated via Parents Without Partners. Turns out, somehow your brother’s silver baby cup got left behind and I’ve been trying to track down both of you. Please text me! Also, found your book about your father on Amazon and I bought it. We were sad when they quit dating, and especially when we heard he had been killed. Our ‘Almost Dad’ was what my brother and I called him. Talk soon!”

Now, I hadn’t heard from Gail over the past decades—not since 1969. Gail is not a Quaker, was not at the Quaker meeting in Gainesville the day before and knew nothing about my outreach to my father’s spirit at the Meeting.

Gail, I learned, now lives in Utah.

Her Mom, a single mother with 5 children and my father, a single Dad with 2 boys, belonged to the same community organization that, even today, helps single parents find support and resources—Parents Without Partners. In the 1960s, divorce was far less common, stigmatized and single parents with children felt isolated. My Dad and her Mom had dated and Gail, her brother and sister and I played rock music together. We even won the PWP talent contest playing and singing the song, “My Baby Does The Hanky Panky,” on our guitars and drums. She and her siblings went on to have musical careers. As I recently told her, winning the PWP talent contest was the apex of my feeble musical endeavors.

It was heartwarming to hear that she and her siblings had thought so highly of my father that they called him, “Almost Daddy.” He was well-liked by all my and my brother’s friends. And, of all his endeavors, he cherished most being a father.

When I told my brother in California over the phone about Gail having his silver baby cup, he and I quickly came to the realization that she was wrong. No one had made silver baby cups for us when we were born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. That was not the tradition then. Our father and his sisters, born to wealthy New Englanders a hundred years ago, all had silver cups, spoons and forks. When my aunt died, she left her silver cup, napkin ring and silverware to me, all inscribed with her initials. Since my brother and father have the same initials, Gail mistakenly believed the silver cup my brother left at her house was my brother’s. It was, in fact, my father’s from his birth in 1925.

Unbeknownst to Gail, she had reached out to me with my father’s birth cup from 100 years ago, the day after I had called out to my father’s spirit at the Quaker Meeting in Gainesville.

My father, I believe, had found a way—working through Gail—to let me know he had heard my plea. My father would watch over my son, as he has always—even in death—watched over his sons.

“Why does our father reach out to you?” my brother recently asked me. “He has never communicated to me since his murder.”

I didn’t have a ready answer to his question but after reflecting for a moment, I said, “Maybe because you don’t need him. Have you ever asked for his help?”

Ask and you shall receive.

Happy Father’s Day 2025!

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