The purpose of this series of stories is to help me explain to myself, my family (both now and in the future), and to those who choose to read them is to explain how I have been able to come to terms with the needless and terribly tragic recklessness to which my father exposed his children and particularly, my brother and me.
Dad was not reckless because of a lack of love for us. Neither Rob nor I ever doubted that he loved us deeply. But there was something in his nature and perhaps in his upbringing and almost certainly from his experiences in The War that led him to believe that to become a real man, a boy needed to face and overcome risks and obstacles including ones that involved significant danger. Afterall, that had been his life’s experience and Dad was clearly pleased with who he was – he was comfortable in his own skin. And I think he was pleased with who Rob and I were becoming – especially Rob.
But then, on a Sunday morning in October of 1968, Dad’s risky approach to raising his sons suddenly turned into one of the greatest tragedies a man who is a parent can face. His youngest son, his understandably favorite child, was killed when an old tractor lacking a roll bar and power steering hit a rut, veered out of my 13-year-old brother’s control, hit a ditch bank and then flipped over and crushed Rob to death.
As one of my stories about Rob will explain, he and I had become pretty good friends during the last two years of his life. (He forced me to out of my fear of further retaliation from my three year younger brother.) I missed Rob then when he died; but I carried a certain sense of shame that I did not miss him more than I did. It has been over the past ten years or so that I have missed him the most. I am almost certain Rob would have stayed in Woodville and lived at Valhalla. He would have married a wonderful girl (he would have had the pick of many); and they would have almost certainly had multiple children. No doubt, his children would have been close friends with our children and I am certain that my children and grandchildren would have adored their Uncle Rob. But of course, we will never know for sure.
I love, admire and respect my father, Marshall Treppendahl. What he accomplished as an officer in the US Army from 1942-1946 is enough to make any son proud. But the man I have come to hold in such high esteem was the man that Dad became after that great tragedy in October of 1968. He fell upwards as my most important spiritual mentor, Richard Rohr, explains in his seminal book: “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life”. Dad was a good man in most ways during his first half of life. He became a great man to me in his second half – and that second half began in the fall of 1968. These stories are my best effort to explain this. I am not confident I will succeed, but I will give it my best shot.