This is my dad . . .

This is my dad.  He was born August 28, 1921, near as I can figure.  I don't have the family archives close at hand.  He died on December 18, 1960, the day we put up the Christmas tree.  This is his High School graduation picture.  Hillhouse High School, Class of 1938, New Haven, Connecticut.  He was diabetic, from the time he was twelve.

And very poorly controlled.  And very poorly disciplined.  He used to base his insulin dose on what he thought he might eat or drink over the next few hours.  He ate what he wanted when he wanted, whether he was supposed to or not.  Mom told me once that his approach was based on the life expectancy of diabetics at the time he was diagnosed in 1933, which was ten years.  When he turned 22, he decided that everyday after that was a bonus. 

I remember one Saturday that mom baked a cake, a round, vanilla, two layer cake, chocolate frosting.  Then she went to the store.  Dad went into the kitchen, saw the cake on the table and decided to have some.  So he cut it in half, just off center.  Then he cut a cake wide slice off the larger half, pushed the two pieces back together and frosted over the break, leaving a football shape.
When she came home, she was laughing so hard that she couldn't be mad at him.  So she said.

He was an ice-skater, and a baseball player, and an upholsterer.  He worked at the New Haven Casket Company, finishing the plush interior of burial boxes that would only be seen and appreciated once in passing, and never by the user.  When the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus burned down in Hartford on July 6, 1944, he worked overtime, finishing child-sized caskets.  The first time I saw a circus in a tent, I was in it.

And he had a finger-print kit.