My dad began work on his memoir in 1992 when he mostly retired from a career in the foreign service and environmental conservation. His had been a peripatetic, eventful, sometimes death-defying life on multiple continents. And he fought in the Pacific as a Marine in World War II, which could have filled a book on its own.
Like so many people with great stories, he had entertained friends and relatives at dinner parties for years, but he struggled to make the transition from oral storytelling to writing a book. And, as he got older, his memories faded and changed.
A series of editors worked with Dad on and off for years. He took bits and pieces of advice from each but never clicked with any of them. He even tried out a ghostwriter, but he and my mom were both appalled by how arrogant Dad sounded in this writer’s voice. My dad was tough and brave but also humble, and his self-deprecating humor was one of his hallmarks.
Finally, when it became awkward (at least for my mom) to continue telling friends that the book was “coming soon,” Dad asked me to help him. I had completed a master’s degree in journalism and recently reduced my work hours so I could stay home with my first baby.
I agreed to read through his material and offer my feedback. What I found both intrigued and defeated me. His stories were thrilling, well-written, and entertaining. But the narrative was in shambles. It wasn’t a narrative at all, just random anecdotes and musings. He had written some stories multiple times, each time with different details. He had organized many stories by theme rather than chronology, which was confusing.
When someone has had twenty jobs as disparate as ambassador to Panama, president of the National Urban Coalition, and head of international programs for Sesame Street, organization is key. All the connecting parts between Dad’s jobs were missing. How did he get his first job in the foreign service? What possessed him to work in rural electrification in Iran in 1977? Why did President Johnson pick him, a young ambassador, to lead the Peace Corps after Sargent Shriver?
As I began to appreciate the scope of what needed to be done with the book—some chapters thrown out completely, others chopped up for parts, and additional information, background, and context added—I worried how I would approach my dad about it. Having worked on the manuscript for ten years already, I doubted he would be open to major changes.
Before I summoned my courage to talk to him, he became sick. At ninety-two, Dad developed cancer that moved swiftly, ending his life in a matter of weeks. In our last conversation, I told him how grateful I was to him for all that he’d done for me. We did not discuss the book.
I suggested to my family that we gracefully bow out of the memoir now that Dad was gone. What better excuse to abandon the project? They disagreed. They still felt responsible to the people who had read excerpts and given feedback, and those whom Dad had promised the book was “almost done.”
With low expectations and a touch of martyr complex, I dug in, organizing the multiple versions of Dad’s stories into a rough chronology in enormous binders. I started at the beginning of his boxing career in high school, interviewing his surviving sisters and a high school friend to flesh out what Dad had written about those years.
Dad often joked that “the best three years of my life were spent in the eleventh grade.” The joke at his own expense was classic Dad, and he told it by way of explaining that his primary occupation during high school was Golden Gloves boxing. He missed so many days of school due to tournaments that he had to repeat a grade twice.
This story had made the rounds of friends and family and even appeared in a published article about him and on his Wikipedia page, created by an old friend. Everyone assumed it was true. I pulled out his senior yearbook and saw that it was dated June 1939. That would make Dad, born in August 1920, eighteen years old. I found his picture inside among the graduates.
I called his best friend, George “Shooey” Schumacher, who was a year behind Dad in school, and asked if Dad had ever repeated a grade.
“Goodness no,” Shooey said, distressed at the thought that such a rumor would be spread about his friend. “I would have remembered that.”
As the shock of this revelation wore off, it began to make total sense to me. Dad joked around all the time, and his dry delivery meant that listeners often missed the humor. I can imagine that he told a few people this joke about the eleventh grade, and they took it seriously. Eventually, the anecdote took on a life of its own, probably to Dad’s delight, and no one ever thought to question it.
After this discovery, I doubled down on fact-checking. Lucky for me, Dad’s high-profile career meant that I had reams of newspaper articles at my disposal. I also mined his letters to my mom, photo albums, and documents from his old jobs, some of which were archived at university libraries. I tracked down several of his old colleagues and friends to verify facts. Looking at multiple versions of a story, I tried to sleuth out the oldest one—those only in hard copy form I knew were older than the Word files—because the older documents represented fresher memories.
One of Dad’s most famous stories involved his confrontation with Bobby Kennedy when Dad was assistant secretary of state and Kennedy was a New York senator. I found it written a couple of ways in Dad’s papers, and I remembered him telling me something different as a child. Thankfully, I was able to interview two people who had been there. Their versions didn’t match up either, but one common thread ran through their stories and Dad’s, and that’s what I used in the book.
As I fixed errors and eliminated anecdotes I couldn’t confirm, I imagined talking to my dad about each of my changes—and I cringed. Set in his ways and proud, I suspect Dad would not have been receptive to editing these stories. Worse, he may have been embarrassed or offended to have the inaccuracies pointed out to him.
Bringing a skeptical eye to every story, I looked dubiously at one in particular: My dad wrote about being in a small plane crash on a remote Panamanian island, then taking a boat to a town that was struck by a massive hurricane just hours after he arrived. Because he was ambassador to Panama at the time, he helped coordinate the American effort to provide relief to the affected areas. What were the chances?
Sifting through newspaper clips from those years, I came across an article with pictures from a Panamanian newspaper describing in detail my dad’s double-catastrophe day. In fact, the hurricane had been even more devastating than Dad remembered.
As I stitched together Dad’s writing with other primary sources, the narrative of his life became more vivid and complete. I connected his stories chronologically, explaining how he moved from one job to the next. In between the harrowing stories Dad had written, I inserted background and context to give readers a better understanding of the challenges he faced.
At times, I desperately wished I could ask Dad a question. How in the world did he feel qualified to lead Planned Parenthood in 1975? What did he love so much about horse racing? On balance, however, I admit that having him gone made my job easier. Using my journalism training, I could be ruthless about the facts. As an editor, I exercised my judgment about the stories that should stay or go without having to justify those choices to the author.
Kill the Gringo was published in 2017. I think Dad would be thrilled to see the book in print and to know the positive reception it received. I hope he would forgive me for correcting some things and leaving others out. I hope he would appreciate the details—probably long forgotten by him—that I added from primary sources.
Working on the biography or memoir of a relative who has died requires a delicate balancing act. I wanted to honor Dad’s memories but also respect his readers by providing the most accurate, complete account possible. Because Dad will never read it, there’s no way to be certain I got it right. I take heart in knowing that finishing the book preserved memories of a remarkable life that otherwise would have been lost. I can think of few things more worthwhile.