A dad is far more than bloodline ... it's heartline

By Frank "Buzz" Trexler
Unpublished, except here, only for family ...

He’s not my father, but he is my dad.

And I’m going to miss him greatly.

He’s one of those rare people who seemed to be able to grasp anything that you could get your mind and hands around. Even at 74 years old, he took on the task of assembling his own computer. (He had already mastered the art of switching out hard drives, "slaving," swapping processors and such.) Right before an early winter snow drove him and my mom off of Ripshin Lake (a feat only God could manage, I might add), Pa had a new system delivered, ready to assemble. Hardware was nothing more than something else mechanical to conquer; however, software — and related bugs — nearly drove him crazy. I suppose it’s because Pa could not see the code; if so, he would have probably figured out how to fix whatever problem he faced at the time.

The family joke for decades has been, "If you really want to know something, ask Pa — just be sure you really want to know about it."

Once the question was asked, you might as well settle back into your seat across the table from him and get ready to listen.

Want to know about a particular period in European history? Ask him.

Want to know the positive and negative effects of clear-cutting timber? Ask him.

How about a particular variety of corn, wildflower, fish … whatever, just ask him.

If you knew him well enough, you were certain that if he were born several hundred years ago in some European country, he would have been the royal scholar. In fact, Pa honestly felt that such a position should be reinstituted for the select few who qualified — and I mean "the select few."

And as for craftsmanship … well, words fail to describe what he could do with wood. You’d just have to see for yourself. He was an artist when, for instance, trying to match the foot broken off of an antique chair, or custom-building a rolltop desk or entertainment center. Still, he could be a utilitarian builder when he needed to be pragmatic.

Or, he could be sentimental and nostalgic, such as when he handcrafted cradles for grandchildren.

The reason I say he’s not my father is that because for those who are sticklers for such a thing, Bill Thompson is legally my stepfather. He married my mother when I was 16; in fact, I was a witness. He truly came into our lives about a year before, when he and my mother went on their first date — the night my sister Sheree went into labor with my mom’s first grandchild. It didn’t bother him in the least to be dragged headlong into such a wild affair. I think that probably endeared my mom to him in the long run. Of course, the only thing that mattered that night was her daughter and grandchild.

He would learn that my mom’s devotion to her children was No. 1, though over the 30-plus years of their marriage my sister and I grew to be more and more his children, too. It would take him years to accept that love. At first, we weren’t quite sure why that was, but would come to learn it was a foreign thing to him. It was a simple matter of the different parenting style of his own parents compared to that of my mom’s.

Which brings me to the reason why Pa is not my father, but most certainly my dad.

My biological father is Jimmy Trexler, who has been estranged from me and the rest of his family for more than 10 years now, despite the many times I tried to rebuild a relationship with him. The attempts were something that I am sure Pa understood, but likely pricked his heart nonetheless. (Twenty-twenty hindsight being what it is, if I had to do it over again I’d have left Jimmy alone and stuck with Pa. After all, he’s the one who stuck with me.)

I finally gave up one day sometime after the blizzard of ’93. I know this because it was in the midst of that blizzard that I learned Jimmy had been shot in the face during  a hold-up attempt. I penned a column about that night and it was picked up by the Richmond, Virginia, newspaper. Not long afterward I received a letter with Jimmy’s signature pretty much telling me to get out of his life. And so, I did.

It was heart-wrenching, to say the least, but it was the beginning of the realization of something I had known deep down in my heart: God knew my sister Sheree and I needed a dad when he sent Bill Thompson into my mother's life. You see:

• It was not Jimmy Trexler who loved my mother deeply enough to put up with a teen-age son that seemed destined for prison, or an early grave.
• It was not Jimmy Trexler who hauled my mother hundreds of miles back and forth to Richmond, and Chapel Hill, N.C., to visit her daughter and grandchildren, and other relatives.
• It was not Jimmy Trexler who suffered with my mother while I was AWOL from the Navy, and who nonetheless accepted me back home with grace when I was medically retired from the Navy.
• And it was not Jimmy Trexler who then sat across from the infamous table at Ripshin and asked the  words, "Buzzy, what are you going to do with your life?"

Pa asked me that question one summer evening in 1976 and encouraged me to go with him to East Tennessee State University that next day to talk to counselors about enrolling. Now, to really understand how ludicrous that seemed to me, you need to know that I managed to get out of high school without completing a class in algebra, taking no foreign language, nor any other college prep courses. For crying out loud, in my senior year I took a half-day of auto mechanics! While I was in high school, I had never planned to go to college — period. This despite the fact that when I was a junior, a friend of mine and I got drunk one night and decided to join the Navy. We took the tests and scored high enough to go into any field we chose. (I decided to finish high school, while my friend enlisted and became a sonar technician.) Like I said, I was the classic underachiever.

But Pa saw through all of that.

I went to the ETSU campus with him the next morning and left signed, sealed and delivered for the first semester.

I was dumbfounded.

But it made all of the difference in my life.

Throughout college, I continued to struggle with the demons that were plaguing me when Pa married my mom. Nonetheless, I graduated and have continued to work in my field since my senior year in college — thanks to a work ethic that Pa helped instill in me.

It’s the same work ethic that has been passed down to my children — his grandchildren, David and Elizabeth. In fact, David and Elizabeth seem to carry a few of his other traits. David is incredibly mechanically gifted, and Elizabeth … well, let’s just say she’s really big on knowledge.

And while I have had to struggle with defining to those in need of such definitions — "Well, legally he’s my stepfather, but he’s really my dad." — David and Elizabeth don’t even bother with such things, nor should they. They know about a guy in the distance named Jimmy Trexler, but they only know the heart of Pa.

The bloodline may be diverted some, but the heartline flows straight as an arrow.

He’s not my father, but he is my dad.

And I’m going to miss him greatly.

The Rev. Frank "Buzz" Trexler is managing editor at The Daily Times and pastor of Green Meadow United Methodist Church, Alcoa, Tennessee. You can e-mail him at PastorBuzz@nxs.net.