He was really respected and, actually, quite beloved in his community
and he carried himself well at all times with a quick wit and finely
honed sense of humor but never an intrusive personality, which is
something pretty hard to pull off but which seemed to come naturally

to him but what nobody knew was the unbelievably painful childhood
he had as an immigrant kid who was orphaned at age thirteen and
tossed from foster home to foster home, endured the depression,
went on the bum riding the rail from one coast to the other east to

west and back again and then, years later, it all went south for him.
His health failed and his business failed and failure screamed in his
ears as fate catching up with what was only right for the orphaned
kid and what else could he expect from such a life and his son said,

“Oh, dad, where are you when I need you so much?” And his dad,
then out of pain, perhaps for the first time in his hard life, was beyond
hearing his son’s cry and his son, having faced his own hardships and
personal demons, over time understood and just felt a profound sadness.