Dad’s lessons on generosity include a mysterious hunk of beef

My parents grew up poor in North Philly, in the Gesu Parish, where they met, fell in love, and married. Mom worked in the watch department at J.E. Caldwell in Center City. Dad was a steelworker at Steel Heddle Mfg. Co. in Hunting Park. They raised me and my three sisters - Cindy, Karen, and Micki - in a 16-foot-wide, three-bedroom rowhouse on Boudinot Street, just off Roosevelt Boulevard. My doting mom left work to care for her brood, and she read to us constantly. Dad was the hardworking breadwinner, gaining seniority at Steel Heddle. What our home lacked in size and amenities it more than made up for in love.

My parents taught us to help people in need. Not just those we knew, or who went to St. Ambrose Catholic School, or who looked like us. But everyone.

“It’s just what you do,” they said.

My dad was especially generous with his time. I thought I knew the full extent to which he helped people (which was significant), but at his funeral dozens of people thanked us in great detail for all he had done for them. Many swore they wouldn’t have made it without him, and yet none of us at home knew a thing about all the people he’d helped. He never said a word.

Beginning in the mid-60's, Steel Heddle was getting on board with the “rust-belt” trend and moving operations to the South, where the prevailing wages and views of unions were more favorable to management. “Good news,” the employees were told on the floor of the factory. “You still have a job…but it’s now in South Carolina.”

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For my parents, South Carolina may as well have been Guam. Almost all of our extended family lived in Philadelphia, ranging from next door, to across the street, to around the corner, to just a 15-minute drive from our front door.

My dad’s Unemployment Compensation didn’t last very long, and the job market was slim at the time. By all financial indicators, we were poor, but my sisters and I never knew how dicey our financial situation had gotten because my dad hustled, and both Mom and Dad sacrificed. I have never in my life met someone with Dad’s work ethic. He’d do odd jobs by day — usually installing windows — deliver pizza in the evening, and take on overnight wallpapering jobs in stores and offices (if you shopped in the old American Pants Company you’ve likely seen his work). He kept the bills paid and his family fed, no matter what.

One day after school, I witnessed what “no matter what” looked like, though I didn’t know it at the time. I’d just finished shooting free throws in the driveway and entered the kitchen, where I found my dad and my uncle, Mike Feeney. None of that was unusual — Uncle Mike was always around. What was unusual was that the kitchen table was covered in a plastic tarp, and on top of it was something that looked like a baby whale. The counter next to it was covered by every knife Mom had, half of Dad’s saws, a machete my grandfather had brought home from the Pacific after the war, and an encyclopedia (it’s a collection of books…like a prehistoric Google) opened to a diagram of what cuts of meat come from where on a cow.

The thing on the table was eye-level with me.

“What’s that?” I asked my dad.

His too-quick answer — “It’s a side of beef” — seemed incomplete.

“Where’d it come from?” I asked.

“It fell off a truck,” Uncle Mike said, eyeing my dad.

I was at an age where I believed it had fallen off a truck. After all, Uncle Mike was a lineman for Ma Bell, he spent a lot of time driving around — it made sense that he’d come upon this weird-looking thing.

“It’s lucky you were there to find it,” I said.

They did not reply.

That night was one of the few I remember where we were not only allowed but directed to eat dinner in the living room. We watched TV while Dad and Uncle Mike tried to figure out how to completely butcher their gigantic hunk of cow.

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That side of beef made it’s way to the freezer, and kept our family fed for longer than you might think. Admittedly, none of the cuts resembled the ones you get at Smith and Wollensky, but access to a meat grinder really helped. It wasn’t long before Dad found work at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, where his machinist and metalworking skills made him a perfect fit for his job as a die maker, making the dies which physically stamp our coins. (If you’ve seen the $1 Sacagawea coin, you’ve seen his work: He was the one who proposed that it be a different color than the U.S. quarter, given that the last dollar coin the Mint had taken on — the Susan B. Anthony — was constantly being mistaken for a 25-cent piece. I remember this clearly, because he dictated his proposal to me while I typed it up for him on a Royal portable typewriter at the dining -room table.)

Not long after Dad started at the Mint, I walked into the kitchen early one Saturday morning to a sight that struck me as oddly as had the side of beef incident. He and our neighbor George Clegg were busy. Every flat surface in our kitchen (except the floor) had been covered in paper towels, atop which sat slices of bread. Everywhere — on the radiator cover, table, counters, stovetop — there was bread.

Dad and Mr. Clegg were running a sandwich assembly line, slicing down ham and cheese, making and wrapping sandwiches, loading them into brown paper bags, adding cans of soda and packs of raisins, and boxing them up for delivery. They also had stacks of blankets, shoes, socks, and coats. Once everything was bundled up, they loaded it into the back of Dad’s ’68 Chevy Impala and headed out to the poorest sections of the city, where people slept on the street, under bridges, and in cars.

As it turns out, this mission was by no means an unusual occurrence. These trips of giving to those less fortunate continued several times per year until Dad died. He was a “helper” before we wound up temporarily poor, but I know these trips were very special to him after he had bounced back. Of all the invaluable lessons I learned from my dad, this may be the one for which I am most grateful as the Christmas season approaches: Help those in need. It’s just what you do.