CHAPTER 1 - EARLY YEARS

Reflecting back on my boyhood, its difficult to have happy memories when they were interspersed with such brutality from my father. To this day, its hard to fathom the rhyme or reason for such verbal and physical abuse. My wife Suzanne would listen in fascination and horror when I discussed my early years. She decided to put my life in writing in hopes it might ease the pain and resentment I still feel for my father. Perhaps it can!

My arrival into the world was a difficult one for both mother and me. I was too large a baby for her 5 foot 2 inch frame, so my legs, being confined in her small womb, were bowed at birth. The affected area was halfway down my calves to the ankles, and when I was seven months old, mother took me to see a bone specialist. The doctors method to correct my bowed legs was breaking each leg in places from halfway down the calf to my ankle, and then resetting the bones straight. The result was I wore metal braces for eight years to make sure the legs remained straight.

That painful birth might have been a reason for mothers coolness toward my father. It might also have been why mother kept her distance from him for fear of pregnancy. She was quite a beautiful woman, and the lack of love from her might have caused my father to dislike and blame me.

I was named after my grandfather, Frank Smith, on my fathers side. I called him Papa, and as time went by, I definitely resembled him in physique and looks, even though he was 5'9" and I ended up 6'2". My love of sports was inherited from Papa who at one time was middleweight boxing champion of Chicago. That was when Chicago was a rough town! He held the position of Chief Engineer at one of the daily newspapers in Chicago before becoming Vice President of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia. He had lost his beloved wife several years before I was born, so I never knew my grandmother on my fathers side. Papa would visit us in Germantown, a suburb of Philadelphia, but his home was in Ventnor, New Jersey, where my parents, sister, and I enjoyed spending our summers.

Grandmother on my mothers side was known as Nana. She and Grandpa Lewis, formerly a Bishop from England, had nine children, which gave me lots of aunts and uncles. Nana was rather thin, petite, and very aristocratic-looking. She always held her head high and walked with a certain grace. Their three-story Gothic style home was located in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, not far from Germantown.

Grandpa Lewis was a Bishop of a high Episcopalian Church in Philadelphia, which our family attended twice on Sundays. He would have to make periodic trips back to his former church in England. Upon his return, my grandparents homecoming greetings to each other were always very dramatic. One time, that great bear of a man hugged my grandmother so hard that he broke three of her ribs!

Even though my legs were confined with the braces, I managed to maneuver fairly well. When I became bored during a long day at church, I remember having fun hiding in the elevator shaft from my Sunday school teacher. I would climb into the 5-foot clearance space that remained when the elevator returned to the ground floor. It was exciting to watch the elevator coming down towards me, stopping just in time! It never occurred to me it would crush me if it didnt stop. Mother always asked on those Sundays returning from church, How did you get that grease in your hair while at church? I was fairly good at feigning innocence, so I never had to give away my secret.

Mother and her brothers and sisters were brought up in a very strict religious environment. My sister Alice (two years older) and I were also brought up with strict emphasis on religion and proper manners. I can still remember the phrase drilled into me constantly, Respect your elders, ask no questions, and obey on command! At times another phrase was added, Men are never to show weakness, and women are always placed on a pedestal of perfection! Might it have been this reasoning that presented a challenge for my father to see how much punishment I could endure.

In good weather, mother left me on the front porch where I sat for much of the time, impeded by my braces. Having nothing to do, I would start to yell at the neighborhood children passing by, hoping they would acknowledge I was there. But I knew they thought I was crazy, and would run away instead of getting to know me. Seeing anyone with steel braces on their legs was a rarity. They put me in a world of loneliness, which denied me companionship with youngsters my own age.

However, I had a Boston Bulldog named Ginny Boy who sat on the porch with me. Father didnt like the neighborhood dogs messing in our yard, so if one came by, I taught Ginny Boy that when I yelled, it meant attack, and regardless of size, he would attack. Fighting was second nature for a bulldog. If it was a large dog, Ginny Boys plan of attack was to hit the dog going full tilt, knocking it over. That would absolutely terrify the dog, and before he could recover, Ginny Boy had scampered under the nearest parked car, out of reach. He was smart!