My Father, Floyd, aka Pops

I decided that I'd like to write about one of the best men in the world--my father. From my earliest years, I remember my father as a loving, gentle person who was devoted to his family. He married my mother at about 36. At that time he was a Building Construction teacher at Utica Free Academy (UFA), where he was an alumnus. When he graduated in 1930 my Father;s dream was to become an architect, so go to the University of Michigan. But the Great Depression had just begun so money was very tight. Fortunately, my grandfather continued his job as a carpenter, but there was not money for my father to go to college. He had greatd drawing talent and taught himself the basics of architecture. He used his self-taught knowledge to design and build our family home on Valley View Road and some other buildings or rooms. (For example, he drew up the plans for the room Jim and I built at the house on Darmouth Street.

He became a carpenter just like his father and often they worked on jobs together. They were very similar in nature and personality. They were honorable men, some of the nest men I have every know. The saying goes, 'A girl marries her father," but in my case, I married one man who was everything my family was not. The other husband had some of my father's traits but he had a very cruel, mean streak, something I never saw in my father.

My father was also interested in airplanes and aviation. He build and flew gliders with his friends. There was an incident that made the Herkimer papers, when one of their gliders landed in a corn field and did some damage to the corn. He became the principal of the Utica School of Aviation. He held that position until World War II started and all the teachers and students were drafted into the Army Aircorps. He taught people how to put the airplanes taht had been damaged in the war back together. He was stationed in South Carolina and in Cuba during the war.

My father and my brother did not have the best of relationships. I think my father felt my brother did just enough to get by in school. Pat was so brilliant but put in the minimum work in school. He could have been at the top of his class, had he wanted to. And my father wanted my brother to do his best at everything did he, but Pat was a social butterfly and studies came easy to him, so although he did well in school, he could have done much better. But my mother loved my brother's outgoing personality. In her eye, he could do no wrong. That, I know caused friction in my home. My sister Joanne was my father's baby and he did so many things for her through his life, things my mother did not always approve of.

 I adored my father. We had similar personalities. We were both great readers, although our tastes in reading where rather distinctive, It was from my father that I developed a love of wood--any kind of wood. I remember that I even did a school project on wood. He loved the outdoors and making things. He often went hunting, fishing, and snowshoeing with my grandfather and my brother. We ate whatever they brought home; nothing was wasted. He loved deer hunting and fishing for trout on the land owned by cousins and his Uncle Howard. His hobby was making furniture for our home; he developed that skill in high school.

My father recognized that I had artistic talents and enrolled me in a children's art class at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Museum Art Achool when I was in kindergarten. I loved art class. I loved the studio and the pain splatters, the smell of the paint. My art teacher believed in letting children explore the arts to see what they liked. I loved to draw and paint and that is what I did, This did not make my mother happy. I said I could draw and paint at home. She didn't see that the teacher was guiding us. My mother's statement, "Why don't you make an astray, something useful." She was always looking toward the practical side of everything. She didn't really appreciate anything that didn't have a use. For example, when she took ceramics classes later, she made countless ashtrays. There were ashtrays everywhere in our house. 

My father made furniture and decorations for the year--Adirondack chairs, a picnic table, a slide for our jungle gym, a play fort, a play house, a shrine to the Blessed Mother, and arbors for the grapes we grew. He also planted a large garden which was the source of most of our fresh vegetables. My mother canned the vegetables for use during the winter months. He could never plant corn, however, one of his favorite vegetables, which was always eaten by the deer. They never touched the other vegetables, only the corn. So we purchased corn from the many roadside stands in the summer, as well as peaches and pears and apples to can for the winter.

My father never seemed to get angry, though he had the right to be many times. But he would never cross my mother. He placated her at every turn. She was a angry and moody person, and I remember many night lying in my bed while she screamed and cried in their bedroom below mine, threatening to leave my father and us children. She often packed a suitcase so she could "go home." My father would talk in a soothing voice to her and eventually she calmed down. But my father was constantly telling us children to do what your mother says and don't upset her. But it was a lose-lose situation, because of my mother's mood swings. There were days that we could do nothing right. But my father would try to persuade us to be more considerate to my mother.We knew that with my mother present, he would always take my mother's side. But when we were alone, he was gentler, begging us to be good to our mother so she would be happy. But my mother's unhappiness cane from inside her, not from what we di or did not do.

When grandchildren came along, my father was thrilled. He loved to read stories to the children (Sabrina, Danielle, and Greg) and he would take them for a ride around the property in a little wagon attached to the riding lawn mower. He entertained them with his hearing aid; he would cup his had over it and make it produce feedback. However, when he had had enough of the children's yelling, he would subtly reach up and turn the hearing aid off. It was really funny. Then he could read in peace.

When I bought my house and it needed some repair, my father came down to help with the repairs. He helped lay the vinyl tile on my back porch and installed new handles for the jalousie windows. If it was terribly cold in the winter, he would call to remind me to run the car to warm it up so it would survive the bitterly cold days.

My father had emphysema and a heart condition. The emphysema most probably came from working at school with the saw dust and no face masks (now required) and my mother's smoking. She was a very heavy smoker and smoked in all rooms of our house We know now that second-hand smoke is dangerous. was inherited frim his mother. His mother, my father, and both his brothers had angina. His brother Bob, who is now 90 years old, was had numerous heart bypasses. My father died of a heart attack in late September 1981, 6 1/2 years after his first heart attack. That attack forced him to retire from teaching, which was very stressful. My father died less than 48 hours after his second heart attack. He had just tuned 69 years old. His heart condition

At my father's funeral, the priest described my father in perfect terms. "He was a gentle, kind man.)

Grandpa Samson: Part 2--My father

My father was very close to his father. They both loved to hunt and fish, and even when my father was an adult and my grandfather elderly, they never missed a deer-hunting season nor at least one fishing trip for rainbow trout. When my brother Pat was old enough, he, too, always went along on these trips and learned not only to hunt and fish, but to also respect the land and animals. What they killed or caught was ALWAYS eaten--deer, squirrel, rabbit, trout, bullheads, and frogs. I was not (am still not) a great fan of venison (deer meat), not just because it came from a deer, but because I don't like the taste. I ate everything else (except the bullheads).
 
Grandpa and my father also went snowshoeing: walking on top of deep snow on snowshoes. He also taught my father to hunt with a bow and arrow, and taught my father to make his own arrows, as well. He taught me how to shoot a rifle, as well as teaching my brother and sister. And most importantly, he taught us that we are stewards of God's creature, and he taught us to respect our environment (before environmentalism was a big thing.)

Grandpa was a skilled carpenter and cabinet-maker. He built the home that my grandparents' lived in at 1925 Storrs Avenue in Utica. My father and his brothers grew up there, and my Uncle Donald lived there for a while even after my grandparents' deaths.

When my father graduated from high school in 1930, just months after the Great Stock Market Crash of October 1929 which signaled the beginning of the Great Depression, he was unable to go to college to become an architect as he had hoped to do. Instead, he went to work as a carpenter with my grandfather and his brother. They were all members of the carpenters' union, The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. (The union gave me a scholarship of $100 every year that I attended Niagara University; this scholarship paid for my books all through my undergraduate years.) They most often worked for the Alt Brothers Construction Company; even after my grandfather had retired, he would walk to one of the Alts' construction sites to see how the work was progressing, visit my father in the summer when he worked for the Alts' on summer break from teaching school, and "chew the fat" with other carpenters.