By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
March 7, 2016
On Friday, my father Gary passed away at the age of 69 after being diagnosed with cancer in July of last year. As I posted on Facebook the morning he died, he didn’t lose any “battle” with this insidious disease as that would indicate this was some sort of fair fight.
Instead, he was basically assassinated by something called squamous cell cancer that started in his neck and then traveled to his spine, his ribs and his bones.
He was a big fan of this websight™ (Terry Foster) and a poster on the DSR Facebook page. He would print out my articles and carry them in his pocket and hand them out to various people. I guess there were a lot of folks in his life who hated Ken Holland and Drew Sharp and liked intense meanness.
His most “liked” post ever on the DSR Facebook page was “tom cruise is a putz!!!” as my dad clearly didn’t like the Scientologist or the shift key, but was an exclamation point enthusiast.
If anyone would like to make a contribution to charity in honor of my father, I would suggest the Penn Medicine Abramson Cancer Center. I picked this particular research facility because they aren’t part of the same old cancer research establishment that has failed to make progress with curing this crap for the last century.
I learned of Penn Medicine on the VICE Cancer program which HBO aired last year. With the assistance of managing editor Justin Spiro and media coordinator Brian Cavanaugh we have already raised over $1,000.00 in honor of my dad.
It was ironic that he died at 69 since his favorite possession in the world was his 1969 yellow Corvette Stingray which he had to sell when I was born three years later as a two-seater wasn’t feasible with an infant. As you can see, I have been ruining people’s lives for many years.
It also didn’t help matters over the last few months as I tried to keep my dad’s spirits up while celebrities kept dying from cancer at the age of 69. From Riley Martin to Alan Rickman to David Bowie it seemed a day didn’t go by without a story about someone dying.
And I can only imagine that the virginal manatee Scott Anderson cannot stop giggling at all of the 69 resets in this article.
(Yes, I can even insult a 97.1 host in a tribute to my late father. Would you expect anything less?)
If you are a fan of this site or hate it, you probably can thank my dad for its existence as he was a huge supporter of the Detroit teams and the Chicago Cubs and that’s where my obsession came from at a young age.
Anyway, I wrote a eulogy for my dad which was read yesterday at his funeral. I figured I would share that here in case anyone was interested.
Fuck.
Cancer.
There wasn’t much in life that my dad enjoyed more than telling stories so I would be remiss in not sharing some of his favorites even though I am guessing many of you have heard these tales once or twice ….. or thirty-five times before.
When I was young my dad would drive Keri and me to our sports activities or recitals. One of his favorite stories revolved around him taking me to my bowling league when I was about 10 years old. During a match one of the other kid’s mothers noticed that I had my bowling shoes on the wrong feet and pointed it out to my dad.
So my dad came over to me and said, “Jeff, do you know your shoes are on the wrong feet?” Without missing a beat I said, “Yeah, I know … I bowl better that way.”
A few weeks later I once again had my shoes on the wrong way and another parent pointed it out to him. He repeated what I had told him. That I was doing it purposely to improve my score.
At some point I THINK he realized he had just fathered a goofy kid who didn’t know left from right but I am not really sure. We had a lot of serious conversations over the last few months while he was dealing with his illness but I never had the heart to admit I was just being a stubborn idiot back then. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the last time I was obstinate when it came to our relationship.
Like most kids I always wanted to play catch with my dad. Unfortunately, he wasn’t always the most athletic nor did he possess the greatest endurance. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t appease my request. So whenever he got tired on his feet – and that occurred pretty quickly – he’d go in the garage and get a lawn chair and I’d end up throwing the baseball to him while he relaxed.
You can imagine this would get quite a few stares from people when they drove by while this was playing out on our front lawn. A friend once asked me why my dad sat on a lounge chair when we were tossing a ball around and I just told him that I was practicing my pitching and dad didn’t like being in that crouching position. I think Kevin Costner left this scene on the cutting room floor when they made the movie “Field of Dreams.”
Not that my friends didn’t know my dad was a character. Half the time when they came over to our house they were more interested in talking to him than me.
When I was growing up there were many instances of my dad doing things he didn’t want to do but saying yes just to make me happy. On one trip to Chicago I wanted to go to a downtown Off-Track-Betting parlor to place some wagers on horse racing and at the time I wasn’t even close to being old enough. My dad didn’t know ANYTHING about betting on thoroughbreds so I had to go up in line with him and whisper my bets along with the proper parlance so he could get me my betting slip.
At first the tellers thought he was just another degenerate who dragged his young son to an OTB on a Saturday. But my dad was the kind of guy that thought he was going to get thrown in jail at the Detroit/Windsor border for not being 100% truthful of where he was going in Canada so he wasn’t exactly the perfect candidate to play a character from The Sting.
And sure enough, his nervousness combined with him turning around to me and saying, “Did you say an exacta?” eventually got us escorted out of the joint by security.
My last story really tested his willingness to conform with my desires. My dad didn’t like dogs. At all. He got bit by one when he was a kid and he held a grudge. There was nothing in life that I wanted more when I was in middle school than a puppy so we eventually got a beagle.
After begrudgingly agreeing to allow a pet in our house – and to be quite honest I am not sure he ever agreed – we told dad that he could name our new vilda chaya. So my dad picked out the name Axel in honor of his favorite movie at the time, Beverly Hills Cop.
Axel and my dad never saw to eye and I am pretty sure Axel made it his life mission to make my dad miserable. Things got so bad that when I was spending time my grandfather on Saturday’s, Axel would drive my dad so insane that he would get in his car and drive over to the Efros Drug Store parking lot and read a book until I got home.
I am pretty sure the only joy the dog ever gave my dad was hearing my mom recite the story of Axel getting off his leash one day while she was about to leave for work and how she had to chase him down Edinborough in her high heels through the mud.
After my parents got divorced, I was living with my mom and Axel. My parents lived less than a mile apart so one day I decided to take Axel for a walk to my dads. They hadn’t seen each other in a couple of years but Axel was so excited to see him and my dad couldn’t get over it after all they had been through. It was like witnessing a Confederate soldier reminiscing with a Union fighter years after the Civil War.
But I am not going to sugarcoat the entirety of our relationship. After the divorce my dad and I had a fractured relationship for many years. Unfortunately, it took his cancer diagnosis to finally reconcile for good.
In the last seven months we cumulatively spent more time talking to each other than the previous 15 years combined and not only did we put the past behind us, I learned a lot about my dad that I never knew.
This isn’t the time to air grievances or badmouth anyone and that’s not what I am trying to do at all. But growing up my dad was told that he was a disappointment. That he wouldn’t amount to much.
Well, I hope he knew that wasn’t true. He was a great son to his dad that he loved more than anything else in the world. And even though Jack will have been gone for 25 years next month, there wasn’t a day that went by that my dad didn’t think about him. I am sure there are people in this audience who never met Jack but through my dad’s stories you might confusingly think you did.
And he was also very good to his mother Molly even when she didn’t make it exactly easy for him to be a good son.
His legacy is my sister – who is a much better person and child than I could ever imagine to be – and his two grandchildren (Drew and Evan) who he loved very much. In fact, the only thing dad really complained about when he found out that his cancer was going to murder him was how the two boys would handle it.
If there was one thing my dad took from his own upbringing it was that he always let Keri and me know that he was proud of us and that we weren’t a disappointment. I mean, word about him being proud of me got back to me when we weren’t even on speaking terms.
My dad didn’t always get dealt the best hands in life and the last one was an absolute nightmare but thankfully his pain is over now. I hope he was right and I was wrong and that he is somewhere enjoying this eulogy and bellowing that signature laugh while he and Grandpa Jack make up for lost time.
A few months ago dad said to me that he couldn’t believe how much time we were spending together because at one point he wasn’t sure I’d even attend his funeral.
Well, I am here dad. And I even have my shoes on the right feet.
And here are a few of my dad’s favorite things ….
