My dad passed away on Wednesday, August 18, 2022. These are words I spoke about him at his funeral.
This is going to be a long one, because he deserves it.
My father was very accomplished. As a kid, he and my Uncle John sang for President Roosevelt. He’s a Korean War veteran, has a Masters degree from Loyola, became the first Mexican American principal in the city of Chicago in 1971. He worked 39 years for the Chicago Public School system. He was invited to and met with the President of Mexico. And he’s received accolades throughout his career. But I’m not going to talk much about those things. I’m going to tell some stories about the kind of person he was.
When I was a kid, I played football from 8th grade through senior year of high school. Games were often at weird times, particularly in high school when they were frequently on weekday afternoons. Dad made it to every game he could. Now, in today’s world that seems normal but back then there were only a few parents that came to all the games. Mom refused to go because she didn’t like seeing me on the bottom of the pile. But Dad always went when he wasn’t working. He somehow always made it there.
That’s Dad. As many of our extended family can attest, Dad was always there. If there was a family event Dad was there. He might not be saying too much but he was good for a comment or two when the mood struck him. And he was always there.
Dad was always one to make jokes. When I was fairly young, I made a comment about something and one of my aunts looked at me and said, “You have a dry sense of humor, like your father.” I don’t think she meant it as a compliment.
But I took it as one. When someone says I’m like my father in whatever way, I’m happy to hear that. It wasn’t always that way. When I was young and someone said I looked like my dad I thought to myself “What do you mean I look like my dad? With that size head? Really?” But, like most things, I grew into it.
Mom and Dad met at the Mary McDowell settlement house in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. When Mom and Dad were dating, when he came to pick her up, she would see him walk around the corner. She would instantly know what kind of night they were going to have. When he was walking quickly, she knew he had money and they were going out. When he walked slowly that meant they were staying in that night. But, either way, they managed to have a good time.
One night while they were dating Mom and Dad got into a fight. Mom went into her house. My uncles got up the next morning and headed to work. One of them came back in and asked Mom why Dad was sitting on the front porch. She was shocked to find Dad was out there. Dad had stayed up all night on the porch to make up with Mom.
He gave her his college ring and promised to replace it with an engagement ring when he got enough money. When he was leaving for the Army, he came to get the ring. Mom thought he was taking it because he was breaking up with her. She wouldn’t give it up. He finally convinced her to give it to him and he replaced it with an engagement ring.
They were married in December of 1952 and about every four years had one of us, stopping after they finally had a girl.
My parents did an amazing job raising us. Every part of who we are was shaped by them. As they’ve been married for nearly 70 years it’s hard to talk about Dad without talking about Mom. Cancer took two of Dad’s siblings, Uncle Cherry and Auntie Mona, way too early. Because of that and other complications, my parents had to accept the mantle of Sanchez elders early on. They did a good job with this. They’ve helped family members on all sides with anything needed. Mom has always been quick with advice, but Dad was always there to enable all conversations and supply rock solid support.
Dad was a sports fan who liked the Cubs, liked the Bulls more, but loved football. He grew up a Chicago Cardinals fan but after they left for St. Louis he turned his attention to that north side team, the Chicago Bears. Thus began a love/hate relationship with the Bears – he loved them, and they hated to win. He never missed a game, recording those he couldn’t see live and even recording ones he did see live to review that week.
When I was little, we watched the road games on TV and listened to the home games on the radio as they were blacked out locally back then. We heard Jack Brickhouse describe when Mike Pyle hiked the ball over Bobby Douglass’s head on an extra point attempt and Bobby then picking it up and throwing it to Dick Butkus in the end zone to win a game. It took us a while to understand what happened, but we finally figured it out and were happy about it. But a few years later we got to watch Walter Payton’s career. This was great because my dad only got verbally excited in one situation. Obviously, he got excited over things, but you had to look at his eyes, his smile and the tone in his voice to figure it out. But, no, the only time he got verbally excited was during a football game. It wasn’t during a long bomb, or a quarterback sack. No, it was when a running back was breaking into daylight. Then, he would say “Go! Go!” It was great watching Walter run so I could hear a lot of “Go! Go!”
And if you’re ever looking for a VHS copy of the 44-0 game against Dallas in 1985 or Super Bowl XX, we have those.
Dad was active. He jogged, rode a bike, played tennis and was an avid bowler. He was often seen riding his bike around the neighborhood. He nearly bowled a 300 game, getting a spare in the 10th frame. And his jogging came in handy one day.
Near the end of our time on Lawler the neighborhood had changed due to the housing project that had opened. One time when I was 8 years old my brother Alan and our neighbor Paul were pulling me around in a wagon. Some kids near our age stopped to give us a bit of trouble. We were in front of our house and one of them was standing on our lawn. I kept hitting the kid to get him off our lawn. We left to head into the gangway to our house. One of the kids took a handful of the gravel that was there separating the houses and threw it at us. A rock hit me in the head, and I started bleeding. I started crying and ran into the house. Now, back then, I was ALWAYS crying so no one really batted an eye when I came in until they saw the blood. My mom and our neighbor Aunt Tillie drove me to the clinic. Oddly I didn’t cry while I was getting stitches as the nurse was kind of cute and I was trying to impress her.
Meanwhile, back at the house, my dad put on his running shoes and took off jogging after the kids. He started to catch up and they started running. He was able to catch one of them and made him take him to his house. He explained to the boy’s mother what happened. She made the boys come back to our house to apologize. They also made an agreement that she would pay for the medical bills and, about one week later, she came to the house to write a check. We call that the “marathon jogger” story.
Dad loved music, especially jazz. He went to every night of jazz fest, usually by himself, for many, many years. We went through every musical media iteration possible; albums, reel-to-reel tapes, 8 tracks, cassettes and finally CDs. He stopped there, never streaming*. He listened to both traditional jazz, Latin jazz and some experimental. He was a big fan of Ramsey Lewis, Cal Tjader, Willie Bobo, Tito Puente and many others. There was always music playing in the house, switching from experimental jazz to more “acceptable” music during meal time.
(*Editor’s Note: This was wrong. Turns out Dad had a free Spotify account.)
You might be surprised to hear, Dad loved to shop. He couldn’t pass up a bargain. When he worked on the north side it used to take him one hour to get to work and two hours to get home. That was not because of traffic. We were always happy to see him come home, running to the back door when he walked in. He always had bags. We were happy to open them even though they rarely had anything we were interested in as we weren’t into odd tools or glue or paper goods back then. Mom swore that stores such as Community, Zayre and Venture put “Welcome Manny Sanchez” signs out to get him to come in the door.
Dad didn’t swear, at least not in front of us kids. One time when I was home from college on a Friday afternoon he walked in the house from work. Immediately when he walked in the door Mom told him "Your mother called. She wants you to call her back. Also, I just washed the steps so be careful where you walk.” There was a pause and he then yelled, “CAN YOU GIVE ME A SECOND? I JUST WALKED IN THE DOOR. I’LL WALK WHEREVER I WANT, GOD BLESS IT!” Mom and I were shocked. She got sheepish and said, ooh, he must have had a bad day. I should go talk to him. But we were completely stunned at his reaction.
One time we were driving back from dropping off Jesse at NIU in DeKalb. It was raining. And we got a flat tire. Mom wasn’t with us but Marie, Alan and I were in the car. Alan had the fun task of helping dad with the tire. They removed the lug nuts on the flat tire and put them in the hubcap, and a truck came by and clipped the hubcap. Like the scene in the movie “A Christmas Story” the lug nuts went flying. Unlike Ralphie however, there was no “Oh Fudge.” Instead, Dad paused and said “Son of a gun.” In Alan’s retelling of the story to mom, high school aged Al was incredulous. “That’s all he said, Mom, ‘Son of a gun! Those things flew all over the road in the rain, and all he says is, 'Son of a gun.’ I wanted to swear!”
Another time his reaction was surprising was when we first moved into the house on Normandy, and he had spent a good deal of time installing a brand new garage door opener. Before that we had opened the door manually. Dad would never be considered “handy”, but he could follow directions. On Lawler, our garage had been broken into and we had started putting screwdrivers into the wheel tracks of the door to prevent it from being opened from the outside. Dad decided to continue doing this even after installing the new opener. On our way somewhere, we walked into the garage. Dad was behind us locking up the house. The number and types of locks we had on our doors earned him the nickname “Joe Security.” Anyway, he was being Joe Security and Alan walked into the garage and said “Oh, new garage door opener” and hit the button to open the door. The door opens hesitantly, shakily, (make noises) boom! The door falls. It had gotten stuck on the screwdrivers, tried to pull the door up and then only failed when it pulled the bolts through the door. The fiberglass door now had two holes the size of bolts in it. We stood there slack jawed. Mom said, “Tell him I did it!” Dad walked in and saw the now disconnected opener and the garage door with two holes. He pounded fist against the door frame and said, “Son of a gun!”
I mentioned before that dad yelled very infrequently. As you can expect, after having 3 boys, my parents were thrilled to have my sister. She was quickly the apple of her father’s eye. She was his princess. But it was not without speed bumps. One time we were hanging out in our basement. Mom wasn’t there but the rest of us were. Dad was reading the evening paper, back when there was such a thing. Maria was about 7 years old. Maria was being unusually annoying – playing and chatting away. She had all these dolls and stuffed animals that she had made into an imaginary family. They must have been having a family reunion or something. She was nonstop with the chatter. Dad pulled the paper down and said, rather loudly, “Maria- QUIET DOWN!” Maria went silent. She picked up all her toys and, with her face about to burst into tears but without making a sound, quickly scurried upstairs in shock at the voice she heard for the first time ever. Now the funny part is, this time and the “God bless it” time are the only times I ever heard that voice.
Dad was 5 foot 9 inches tall but somehow appeared much larger. Or maybe that was only for when Maria’s suitors or potential suitors were around. One time Maria was in high school out with friends and became, let’s say, incapacitated. Two of her guy friends drove her home and argued about who would ring the doorbell. They both went to the door and rang the bell. In their view, a GIANT man came to the door and filled the doorway. They stammered out that his daughter was in the back seat of the car and couldn’t walk to the door. Dad walked out to the car, opened the back door, grabbed Maria and threw her over his shoulder like a drunken sack of potatoes. He brought her into the house, and she slept it off on the couch.
Dad always had our back. Mom was the disciplinarian in our house. Dad supported her, but sometimes not directly. Sometimes she would get tired of saying no to us and say, “Go ask your father.” The only problem with that is that Dad nearly always said “Yes” which was not the answer she was looking for. Meanwhile, if we happened to ask Dad first if we could do something his response was always, “Ask your mother.” Some of the biggest conflicts in their relationship were about us because he almost always took our side of the conflict.
Shortly after my wedding, I had dinner with Mom and Dad at their house. We were talking about the wedding and Mom said, “Now that you’re married, I want to tell you, in this family we stay married.” She was referring to her and Dad and Jess and Peg. Dad had none of it. He said, “What’re talking about, ‘stay married.’ Most of your brothers are divorced, my brother got divorced, and my sister got divorced. When we were out dancing at the reception we should have been singing, ‘We are divorced family!’” He never wanted me to be unhappy.
When I was in 8th grade, I had to give a speech at our 8th grade graduation. We had a tumultuous year in that class, and I wrote a speech reflecting that. My principal didn’t like it. He told me to have my dad look at it to see if he would approve it. Dad read it and asked me if it was true and if I believed everything I wrote. I said yes. Dad sent it back unchanged.
Not surprisingly, Dad was a wonderful grandfather. Back when my nephew Jason was around Dad was the Jason whisperer. Jason could be the fussiest but when he was in grandpa’s arms he always calmed down and quickly fell asleep. And Dad and my nephew Joel have been close for all of Joel’s years. As you heard earlier, Joel will miss my dad as much as we will.
While we were middle class, we were spoiled. Spoiled with great parents who did everything within their means to support us. Dad worked 2 jobs for 3 years and didn’t get home until 10pm at night during those years. We refer to those as the TV dinner years. But we went on family vacations on trains and airplanes and our college educations were either partially or fully paid for. But I’ll give a more subtle example. I used to play this game called “All Star Baseball.” It had cards in the shape of a circle with players names on it and you put the card in a spinner which landed on a number showing what that player did when he batted. I loved that game. I had it set up so that when you chose a team you got every player that ever played for that team. We kept the statistics of all the players, and we filled out a scorecard every time we played so the stats could be compiled. I played that game during a lot of my free time from the ages of 6 through 15. Of course, the game started to get a little ratty looking. I had taped it up where the corners had come apart. There was a LOT of tape on that game. Well, one day, Dad came home from one of his post work visits to the store with a brand new copy of All Star Baseball. It wasn’t something I asked for. He just saw there was a need and filled it. That’s who he was. He saw a need and filled it, as best he could.
After all of us bratty kids left the house and Dad retired, Mom and Dad got along better. I recently saw a birthday card on the sill that said on the cover “To the Man I love.” I asked Dad who it was from. Mom said, “That’s from me! I’ve loved your father for a long time.” But then it was decided that only in more recent years did she start liking him.
In the later years Maria and Dad hooked up to do some traveling. Mom and Dad had traveled before, but he and Maria chose much more exotic places such as: Australia, Turkey, Greece, a Rhine River cruise, a Hawaiian Island cruise and a Panama Canal cruise for his 90th birthday. He did the Sydney Bridge Climb, Viewed the 12 Apostles along the Great Ocean Road and snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef at the age of 84. He took a hot air balloon ride over the Willamette Valley. He did all of this after turning 80. Maria and Dan looked forward to these trips because my parents were such good travel partners, and they were super funny to hang around with.
Dad was great with animals. On any of those trips just mentioned, if there was an animal interaction available, Dad was first in line. On the Australia trip, there was an opportunity to hold a koala bear. Dad was first in line for that. When the handler gave the bear to Dad, the bear climbed right into Dad’s arms and held on tight. The handler had a really hard time getting the bear to let go. The bear knew.
While they were potty training Maria’s puppy Sam during the winter, Dad would carry Sam to and from his potty trips because the ground was covered with snow. Most of Dad’s passwords have the name Sam in them. Sam knew.
He befriended the neighbor’s dog Snow in the last few years. One day Mom noticed that Dad had bought a box of Cheez-its. She thought, that’s interesting. I didn’t know he liked Cheez-Its. Then she noticed little sandwich bags filled with Cheez-Its and Snausages and realized that these were snacks for Snow.
When Dad would walk from the house to the garage and Snow was out, the dog would bark when he saw Dad. Dad would say, “Not now. I’ll see you on the way back.” When he came back, he usually had some bags to bring into the house. He would do that, and Snow knew enough to wait. Dad would come back out and go to the garage to get a broom and dustpan. Then began a game of fetch over the chain link fence between the yards. Snow would drop the ball. Dad would use the broom to sweep it into the dustbin and lift the ball up. Dad would grab the ball, toss it and Snow would bring it back and start the process all over again. Once Snow got tired Dad would feed Snow the snack combo of Cheez-Its and Snausages. Dad’s arms would be bruised from leaning over the fence, but it was Snow’s energy that decided when the game would end. Snow knew.
Dad’s been retired for 32 years, over one third of his life. Mom claimed he did nothing every day. But wait, isn’t that what you’re SUPPOSED to do when you’re retired? I think he did it right.
If he had a hobby in his more recent years, it might have been collecting coupons. In retirement, we hardly ever went anywhere where he didn’t have either a gift card or a coupon. Mom said she was looking at the coupons one day and she saw one from Burger King. She said, “Why do you have a coupon from Burger King? We never eat there.” He said, “That’s a good special!”
Dad made lunch for him and Mom every day. Very recently, after he was sick, he was making lunch and chopping up the vegetables. Mom doesn’t care for veggies and Dad was chopping them into extremely small pieces so they would be less noticeable. Mom, said to Dad, “I’m sorry I’m so picky.” And Dad responded, “I like that you’re picky.”
He had a thing for nicknames, referring to Ricardo Montalban as Mickey Mendelbon for reasons I’ll never know. When I was young Uncle Leon called him Sanch, then he got nicknamed Manny and that stuck, other than forays into Joe Security, Handy Manny, and Maria liked to call him Manolo from time to time. For many years in their retirement, he would regularly talk to and meet his brother John for lunch and to run errands together. He loved a buffet, his favorite restaurant was Pepe’s, and he loved burritos. He loved spicy food, and you can ask almost any eating companion about giant food orders he made where he ate the whole thing. He read the newspaper front to back every day, did the crossword puzzle every day, and was a wiz at the game WordScapes. He never had a bad word to say about anyone. He had bad words to say about things people did, but not about their character. His last words were “forward march!” and the last act he consciously did was run his fingers through my mother’s hair. Someday I might be able to tell that story without crying. Today is not that day.
Dad loved rhymes. I have a quick one for him:
No more chile, no more beans, no more emptying the wastebasket
But I hope you’re happy to know we got a discount on the casket
He didn’t like to talk about himself. We’ve been doing it a lot this week. Because of this, Maria knows he’s calling us “Dirty Guys.” We know we were lucky. We had him for a long time, always the sharpest mind in the room. But we still wanted more. Unfortunately, this had to change, as much as we hoped it never would. But that doesn’t make it easier. For the first time in my life Dad won’t be there. Not giving us the coupon to buy fried chicken on Father’s Day. Not singing Happy Birthday with mom over the phone on our birthdays. Who’s going to cut the turkey on Thanksgiving? Unfortunately, not Dad. He won’t be there. Or will he? We love you, Dad. And I hope everyone now knows what Sam, and Snow and the Koala bear knew. Dad, thanks for being the greatest man we’ll ever know.
