Playing catch is a time-honored father-son interaction. Marvin Olasky's only baseball-related encounter with his father resulted in a missed throw and his father walking away to go back inside.
Marvin uses this incident to typify his relationship with his father, who he says "never laughed and rarely spoke." His father had been a Harvard graduate with high hopes, but now was frequently chided by his wife for having IQ but no DQ ("determination quotient").
Marvin's father, Eli Olasky, died in 1984. In a quest to understand his father better, Marvin used his investigative journalism skills to research Eli's history. When Marvin, long-time editor of WORLD Magazine, wrote an article about his dysfunctional relationship with his father, letters poured in from readers with their own father difficulties. So Marvin shared his research into his father in Lament for a Father: The Journey to Understanding and Forgiveness.
Marvin interviewed family members, requested his father's service records, and pieced together what he knew of history at the time and places his father lived. He traces Eli's progression from a Jewish neighborhood and Hebrew school in addition to day school, Harvard attendance, WWII, where he assisted displaced Jews right after the war, when the Nazis hadn't had time to dispose of all the bodies before fleeing, disappointment in graduate study opportunities, his series of short-lived teaching or administrative jobs.
His father was a quiet man, probably suffering from PTSD. He avoided arguments, walking away to go to his office and read. He avoided answering questions as well, brushing the questioner off by saying "It's not important."
Eli believed in ethnic and cultural but not religious Judaism. He thought the biblical miracles didn't happen and the narratives were inspirational stories rather than history.
Marvin admits to not respecting his father in his teen and young adult years. He came to regret that later in life. His research made his father come alive in his mind and helped him understand him better. His change of heart toward his father is clear, but he doesn't say much about processing forgiveness. Obviously, understanding his father better made forgiveness easier, which is a lesson for us all.
At the end of the book, at his publisher's request, Marvin included his testimony of how he grew up Jewish, became an atheist and Communist, but was converted to Christianity.
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