Sydney and Daddy, 1938

Father’s Day. It was never a big deal in our family. Not like Mother’s Day. We always ‘celebrated’ (if you can call it that) by having chocolate cake for dessert – double layer, chocolate filling, chocolate fudge frosting. Made from scratch by Mom. And, no, I didn’t get to lick the bowl on those occasions. On Father’s Day that treat was reserved for Dad.

William Woodworth Little, 1909-1991

My dad, William Woodworth Little, loved chocolate. I’m not sure when he began his chocolate-bar-a-day habit but one of my clearest memories of traveling anyplace with him was the quest for a “candy bar” – perhaps at a wayside gas station or along the cobbled streets of some tiny European town. Of course, “candy” meant chocolate. Period.

My mother used to tell about the time they were driving home from dinner at a friend’s house. “Wasn’t that a lovely meal?” she remarked.
“Yes, but it’s too bad they didn’t serve dessert,” was Dad’s reply.
“Why Bill,” she said, “there was that lovely upside-down-cake.”
“But it wasn’t chocolate,” said Dad. And he wasn’t being facetious. Not chocolate: not dessert.

Besides chocolate, one of his favorite things was his garden. And “garden” to Dad meant flowers, not vegetables. Roses and dahlias were his favorites and they always proliferated under his loving ministrations. The only vegetables I remember coming from our backyard were from the Victory Garden we had during World War II. It was exactly where the dahlia garden had been until the summer of 1942 and I’m sure it was in the spring of 1946 that he began replacing radishes and carrots with rose bushes.

Dad, Mom, Sydney – 1978

Too, he always had a cat. Sometimes he had two. Not one of them ever scratched the furniture or needed a litter box. Patiently, from the time they were kittens, Dad would ‘train’ them. “Keep your claws in,” he would admonish as he held a new little kitty. And he would tap the offending paw until the claws were retracted. He always said he thought he had an affinity for cats – he and felines understood one another. I think that was true.

But, according to Mom, Dad’s sun rose and set with me. She would tell how he would insist that I sit up next to him in the front of the car (way before all the car seat requirements of nowadays) and she would have to sit in the back. I don’t really have a great perspective on that – just that the world was always as it should be when I was with Dad. Chocolate, flowers, cats and a doting father! What girl could ask for a better bringing up?