Dad

William Grant Klave in 1946

It’s hard to know what to say or where to begin to write about my dad. He was not my birth father, but he was the only father I ever had. He married my mother when I was five years old—I was at the wedding. It was a beautiful Michigan fall day; I helped Mom and Dad collect red and gold leaves to decorate the windows of the little country church where they were married. Following the ceremony, we lived in a tiny, gray cottage across the street from my new Grandma and Grandpa’s cottage on Portage Lake.

Soon after the wedding, my new Grandma and Grandpa sold that cottage to Mom and my new Dad, and we moved into the home where I lived for the next 15 years. It was a good life—swimming, fishing and boating in summers, and skating and sledding in winters. Dad built a barbecue pit and a picnic table, and we had glorious backyard cookouts in the summer. He’d water the back yard at dusk to make the night crawlers come up so John and I could catch them and then sell them to the fishermen for a little spending money. In the winter Dad cleared the snow from the lake ice and flooded it so we could have a perfectly smooth ice skating rink. Ah yes, we thought it was a good life.

I’m not sure when I realized that all was not The Donna Reed Show or Ozzie and Harriet at our house. Dad left a steady job to start his own small business, worked nights in piano bars and dinner clubs, produced two new babies, and had no family medical insurance. All these would contribute to stress in any marriage. But it was alcoholism that brought down my parents—our family.

“You Ain’t Much Fun Since I Quit Drinkin’.” Toby Keith

Following a drunk-driving arrest, a judge gave him the option of an alcohol recovery program over jail, and Dad began the long process of putting his life back together. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and for the rest of his life, he spent holidays and Sundays visiting and counseling other addicts in rehab centers and at AA meetings. My father was bitter that my mother couldn’t get and stay sober. Their last years together before Mom’s death were not pleasant ones. In fact, I would call their lives “hell on earth.” My cousin Charlotte called it “living in the trenches.”

Dad was sober for the last twenty years of his life, but died before he could receive his twenty-year AA sobriety challenge coin. My brothers and I asked the pastor at Dad’s memorial service to use the Serenity Prayer as a foundation for his sermon, and we led the service in the manner of an AA meeting. I began with, “My name is Donna Klave Hodgson, and I’m Bill’s daughter.” Everyone in turn introduced themselves and told the group how they knew Dad. We sat in silence while we listened to a recording of Dad playing some ragtime on the piano, realizing we’d never have him sit down and play for us again.

Dad, I hope you knew how proud we are of your success in your war on alcoholism. I hope we honored you fittingly given the magnitude of your battle. And I pray that you knew—that I made you know—how grateful I am that you chose to be my father.

Love,
Your daughter Donna