My Dad, the Guy Who Pissed Off a Major Arctic Explorer

 B efore my father crossed the Gulf into the Great Beyond, one day, in pure passing, which was his ONLY style (you needed titanium crowbars to pry any of his life history out of him most of the time) he casually remarked that he had dated the daughter of Dickey Byrd (my nickname), the famed arctic wanderer. To this day, I have no idea what Richard Byrd actually did, but the navy must have thought enough of it to make him an admiral.

Anyway, when good ol' Dad mentioned that I immediately put on my skeptic's hat and demanded to know the name of the daughter of good ol' Dickey Byrd. Luckily, this was in the days of the Internet, so I didn't exactly have to hire a private investigator.

But sure enough, he named her correctly: Evelyn Bolling Byrd was her name, and he'd dated her on several occasions. Now even in those days, which I'm assuming were just pre-war, when he was attending Harvard and was a tender 19 or 20 years old, Dickey Byrd was a household name. He had allegedly been the first human being to fly over the North Pole. Yeah, buddy, you and whose army?

Considering there was just he, himself and him to corroborate his story, I highly doubt it, But hey, he was a famous Arctic explorer and my dad dated his daughter. Dad never actually mentioned anything about marriage, but he did say they were "more than good friends."

Dad . . . the cad? at age 22 in Rackheath, England.

And my Dad, Thor rest his soul, was a bit of a ladies' man. You can see how that couldn't have been hard, from this picture of good ol' handsome Dad in uniform.

I know for a fact that during or just before the war, he dated an English woman. And he had a daughter with her. I've seen a picture of the woman who was the mother of my long-lost half-sister, who would be in her late 60s now (why he left her and his daughter is a mystery, at least to me, to this day. But there must have been a damned good reason for it). The woman was beyond gorgeous, and I'm not just saying that. She was a goddess in human form, and there was also a picture of the baby -- a beautiful one-year old girl. These pictures were discovered by me in a wallet that was in a dusty trunk at my mother's house in California. My mother began to tell me what it was all about but at the time, I didn't want to know I had a half-sister floating around in England somewhere and I cut her off.

Why do I bring that up? Because in those days, my friendly followers, birth control was, err, hit or miss. I never did know why my father didn't pursue the relationship with the daughter of the famed aviator, but she did have a couple of kids . . . probably Daddy didn't like my dad and his roguish charms and put an end to the affair.

But there you go. My dad, dater of a daughter of a dauntless daredevil.