Ode to Daddy

This is my father’s eulogy, or as I’m calling it, Ode to Daddy.

He was the first-born child of Francis Edmonds and Kathleen Sweeney. He was the first-born grandchild of John Sweeney and Helen Manning of Ballycastle in County Mayo, Ireland. My dad would also tell you he was his grandmother’s favorite. He was an older brother to Lorraine, Lawrence, and Kevin. He was an older cousin, an uncle and godfather, a father to four, a grandfather to eight, and a friend. He was the husband to his beloved Edith.

Manning learned to read at the tender age of five and I’d guarantee that a day didn’t go by since then that he didn’t have a book in his face. He spent the idle time of his youth playing stickball, handball, basketball, and football with his neighborhood friends in the playgrounds and streets of Jackson Heights, Queens. He was a paperboy.

He went on to graduate from St. Agnes High School in Manhattan led by the Marist Brothers. When he was 17, he persuaded his grandmother to sign papers so he could enlist in the United States Army. He and his best friend Peter Lucchi were prescient. By enlisting, they got stationed in North Carolina and avoided being drafted to Vietnam. Our dad not only served as a military police officer there but learned how to drive and got his license while stationed there, too. Pretty smart for a working-class kid from Queens.

He followed that up with over 40 years of protecting and serving. That all began with the City of New York and a 31-year stint with the New York Police Department. When he graduated from the Police Academy he was selected for the prestigious Tactical Patrol Force. During the 1970s he was a plainclothes cop on the narcotics squad busting up drug rings. What a bad ass! Later in the 80s when he was a sergeant of detectives, he worked the graveyard shift. I asked him why he worked those overnight hours. He said, “because that’s when the crime happens, baby.”

All his life he was a voracious reader of books related to history, law enforcement, military, and select biographies. I’d surmise those biographies are related to his topics of interest. He enjoyed exploring his Celtic roots which tangentially connect to England but more definitively stem from the Republic of Ireland. He’s well renowned for his sardonic wit. He appreciates good food and wine. He can also cook, he says he found it necessary for his survival. He’s traveled across the globe by air and by sea. He loves to find lost treasures at estate sales.

I’d also say it was his personal quest to fill his study, floor to ceiling, with anything associated to those aforementioned areas of interest. Including, but not limited to, books, memorabilia, professional accolades, tchotchkes, and literally any other inanimate object that caught his fancy. He had an affinity for London’s red phone boxes in miniature, red poppies, and the Scottish Artist Charles Mackintosh.

Our dad was a raconteur; he held court when he told a story and expected your undivided attention. I would jokingly tell him, “I only do divided attention”.  So I’m going to channel a little of his storytelling prowess and share two stories – the first is about his birth.

Manning dramatically entered the world as a breach birth on the family kitchen table in a tenement in the Bronx on February 8, 1942. It was so precarious, his grandmother took it upon herself to baptize him; she was unsure he could hang on until the doctor arrived. Fortunately, we can thank Dr. Iacobellis for facilitating his emergency arrival with that breach birth to planet earth.

Fast forward almost 30 years later, it’s 1971 when our dad was being treated for his first bout of skin cancer, it was by a young Dr. Iacobellis. My father asks him, any chance you are related to another Dr. Iacobellis? The dermatologist answers, “yes, that’s my father”. Without skipping a beat, my dad answers, “he broke my shoulder”. That’s classic Manning, it takes you a few seconds to get it, but once you do, it’s not only funny but it’s smart.  

The second story is a memory from my childhood triggered by recent events. While my dad was in the hospital he kept asking for his sneakers. “Get me my sneakers”. He never had the opportunity to use them while he was there. And to me, they became a symbol of his independence, of the active lifestyle he had led up until early August. He was active and independent until he wasn’t.

I can see him now, at our home on 5 Lilac Lane in Port Jefferson Station. I’m only 5 years old looking out the kitchen window and I see my dad. He’s running up and down the makeshift dirt basketball half-court he created, right next to our mother’s vegetable garden in our side yard. He’s wearing denim shorts, or as we called them back then, dungaree cutoffs. Always minus a shirt and rocking his Converse sneakers. He’s got a navy-blue bandana tied around his head sopping up his auburn ringlets of hair running wild with sweat. He’s jogging up and down the court dribbling the ball and making layups.

I know he’s got his sneakers on again and he’s putting them to good use. We love you always, Daddy.