Yesterday was Father’s Day.  I thought a lot about my father and how much he is missed. 

He was my inspiration for my lifelong unquenchable thirst for knowledge.  He was so smart.  I mean really brilliant.  He was an internationally respected surgeon who brought the “retropubic prostatectomy” to the United States.  He taught me to love to read, to research and to find out the answers for myself, not just to rely on others or just because other people said so. 

He was my inspiration in economics.  Everything I ever needed to know about balancing a budget I learned from my dad.  He put me to work in his medical office and taught me how to post the income and expenses in the long pale green ledger book.  With a pencil.  “Never use a pen,”  he said, “so you can correct it if you need to.”  That was before computers and spell check.   The adding machine was the bane of my existence back then.   It all had to add up exactly right and when I had to run the numbers more than twice, my patience ran thin.  But his simple philosophy reminds me of Dave Ramsey when my father told me years ago, “Don’t spend more than you earn. If you have to go into debt, get out quickly.  Pay cash.  Save 10% and give 10% to the church.” 

He made things so simple.  If only Congress would follow my father’s advice today.

Speaking of which, my father was also my inspiration in political philosophy.  He was involved and vocal.  As a surgeon, he spoke of the dangers of government intrusion back in the day – in the 1950s to be precise.   Samuel Kenneth Bacon, MD was chief of staff at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, adjunct professor of urological surgery at USC and a member of the California State Board of Medical Examiners.  He was president of Hollywood Rotary and the Junior Chamber of Commerce.  Politically, both of my parents were active members of the California Republican Assembly (the group that endorsed Ronald Reagan and launched his presidential bid) and the Los Feliz Republican Club.   Many fundraisers were held at our home.  The likes of Jimmy Stewart and Charlton Heston and others were in attendance.  The Bacon’s were among  the movers and shapers of Hollywood business and conservative politics. 

While sitting in the den watching the TV, he would comment on the stars.  “You know, Judy Garland is a drug addict.  See how she is holding her arm there?  Needle tracks.”  He could see them?  What a dad.  He got the inside information from the closely-knit medical community that she was out of control, and sure enough not long after she was found dead as the result of an overdose. 

When the news was on, I got my dad’s side commentary throughout, a habit that I inherited to the chagrin of those sitting around me.  (Thank goodness for TVO and the pause button.)  “Jack Paar – he’s on the Left – horrible!”  “Steve Allen- good guy – very conservative!”  He would comment on the McCarthy hearings and how he actually personally knew some of the Hollywood folks being investigated for un-American activities because they were part of the same Hollywood business scene where he mingled. 

He talked about Ronald Reagan and how as president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan was getting ready to resign and enter politics because of the radical Leftist infiltration in the media.  He and my mother helped Reagan get started in politics with a now-famous speech to the California Medical Association on the dangers of socialized medicine.  The year was 1961.  In July 1965, my father walked through the door, pale-white and distraught. 

“What’s wrong, Dad?” I asked. 

 “Today is the first day of the end of quality medicine in America,”  he said.

Medicare had passed. 

I’ve never forgotten those prophetic words.  He knew the delivery of medicine would decline, and it did.  And nearly 45 years later, we see how incrementally we have crept toward universal health care until we finally got the end result of what my father dreaded:  Obamacare.

My dad inspired me to be a high achiever and to pursue my talents.  He was my biggest cheerleader.  I loved to sing and did it professionally for a while.   He never missed a performance.  While a student at Brigham Young University, I performed with the Young Ambassadors.  He would sit in the audience and cheer me on with his loud whistle, so embarrassing, you know.  But really, deep-down it made me feel special to know my dad approved.  He loved to sit for hours and listen to our music and hear all about the diplomatic meetings we had with the Department of Defense tour during the Viet Nam conflict. 

One night, he decided to go from the office to the new Holiday Inn hotel that had a revolving restaurant at the top.  He stood with one leg up on the stage listening to a singer that reminded him of me.  Suddenly his leg was caught between the outer revolving part of the restaurant and the stationary railing he was leaning on around the center stage where the band was performing.  When he called for help, no one knew how to stop the restaurant from revolving, and the muscles of my father’s upper thigh were severely damaged.  Finally they cut the power and reversed it, and my dad laid in shock on the floor.  They asked if he wanted some whiskey for the pain.  He said, “No thanks, I don’t drink,” and he gave them emergency instructions for how to handle his shock and trauma. 

In 1975, not only had Medicare complicated our office procedures and started increasing the cost of medicine, ambulance chasers got in the mix to have their hey day with making a buck off doctors.  Doctor’s had to start carrying enormously high malpractice insurance policies, again creating a new form of defensive medicine with the consequence of added increased costs and bureaucracy.  For doctors nearing their retirement such as my father, the changes were more than challenging and stressful.  They threatened their very livelihoods.  My father’s blood pressure shot up.  A computer glitch with his insurance company bumped him out of the computer, and he could not perform any surgery, the source of his income, for several months.  His health dramatically declined while waiting. 

Only five days before I opened in a musical theatre production in Utah called Saturday’s Warrior, I got the phone call from my mother .  “It’s about your father,” she started.

 It wasn’t good.  He was in the hospital ,and she asked me to pray for him.  “Should I come there?”  I asked.  “No,” mom said in her typically understated way, “They’re just doing some tests.”  My aunt confirmed it.  “Can I talk to him then?”  “No, honey,” she assured me, “He’s in intensive care and can’t talk to anyone anyway.  Maybe tomorrow.”

What they didn’t tell me is that my all-knowing father lay in the hospital bed reading his own charts and EKG’s knowing he was in big trouble.  He asked my mother to bring the will and other important documents.  Not a good sign. 

I was doing this show for my dad.   It eventually developed a cult following, completely sold out for months.  (I played Julie, for those who know this show.) We had seen it together in L.A. that previous summer, and he loved it.  We had a real father-daughter connection at that performance, and I promised myself that one day he’d see me performing in that show.  The next morning mom called again.  “I think you should get on a plane and come down here,” she said.  I knew something was terribly wrong and within an hour we were on our way, with my 18 month-old son on my lap and my brother Carl sitting next to me.  My life became a blur and I prayed the entire way.

The air was crisp and clear on that 1975 May afternoon in L.A.  The clouds were white and puffy and the sky blue, the calm after the storm had just blown through.  We parked in the hospital lot and entered the double glass doors that automatically opened for us.   Memories of my Candy Striper days and the familiar medicinal smell flooded, this place my dad had called his professional home for several decades.  We walked the long corridor toward the elevator.  I noticed a gathering of familiar faces in the distance – my Uncle DeWitt Paul and his wife Donna, who were serving as the L.A. California mission president for our church, my aunt and other close friends, Lynn Russon and her husband John. 

I remembered the time a few years previous when I was on “my dad’s floor,” 2^nd West, and working beside the other nurses.  I overheard the nurse in charge saying, “Dr. Bacon just called in.  He’s on his way.  Hurry up!  Better get this place in order.  Now!”  I chuckled to realize that my dad had such a formidable presence.  He was known for his perfectionism, especially in surgery.  I understand he once threw a pair of surgical utensils across the operating room during a particularly time-sensitive and stressful procedure when the nurse mistakenly handed him the wrong instrument.  People don’t understand the terrible kind of pressure surgeons are under when operating on vital organs.  I recall my father preparing for his surgeries.  His forehead would be cold and would break out in beads of sweat before he would leave the house to go to the hospital.  He took it seriously-the kind of doctor you want when your life is in his hands.

One time I went to the hospital for a blood test and the nurse couldn’t find my vein.  After about six jabs, I asked if my dad could come down and do it.  Now I was breaking out in the sweat and ready to heave my shoes, nearly passing out.  He walked in, and in one try he found the vein and we were done.  Then he firmly reprimanded the nurses for having put me through the trauma without simply calling him first. 

One morning I was fixing my school lunch and cut my finger slicing an apple.  I grabbed a towel to stop the bleeding and ran up the stairs frantically calling “Dad!  I need help!  I cut my finger!!!  It’s bleeeeeeding!!!!”  He calmly took a look, put my hand under the faucet in the sink to wash off the excess blood, sat me on the edge of the bathtub and began prying open the wound.  I can see white.  That must be my bone.  Oh my gosh, I’m going to faint.  “Dad, I feel sick.  I think I’m going to throw up.”  He smiled and laughed assuring me I would survive. 

With my mother being a registered nurse and my dad’s logical attitude in the face of emergency, I learned in my home not to panic when I saw blood.  I learned to stay calm through the crisis.  That has been helpful with my own children and all their accidents, large and small.  With the “never let a good crisis go to waste” mentality in Washington politics, we need elected officials who have the stamina to stay calm and steady in the fabricated and intentional crises as well as those that just happen to arise at the right moment to further the Left’s goal of more government and centralization of power and control over private enterprise. 

My father was a stern and stoic man with a deep and commanding “Everett Dirkson” style voice that said, “Don’t mess with Sam Bacon.” He balanced that with his kind and generous heart.  He teared up easily and expressed his passionate feelings openly.  With rare exception, he exercised restraint under fire and was the diplomat.  After I got my driving permit he took me out to practice.  I was so excited to be with my dad.  But when I negotiated my first “y” turn and backed up into the brick wall behind us, his foot nearly went through the passenger side floor.  He said in controlled panic mode, “Oopsie!  Stop!!!!!  Now.“  Then a big pause and our eyes met.   “Oh, you’re alright, my dear girl.”  Followed by a hug.  I cannot remember a single time in my life that my father raised his voice at me.  He didn’t need to.  He would express his greatest joy with “Hot damn!” and sometimes he said it in Dutch, which tickled me.  “Hatfa damma!”  My guess is that he learned this from his Dutch friends.  My parents had traveled through post-World War II Europe and had made many friends internationally who came to stay at our home.  The Bescansons from Amsterdam (President of KLM), Albert and Tita Plesman from Italy, and the Dr. Rogers from Sydney, Australia. 

As Carl and I neared this familiar gathering standing in front of the hospital elevators , my aunt approached me.  “He’s gone, Cherilyn, but they kept him in the room upstairs until you arrived.”  What?  Wait.  I thought they were doing routine tests. He’s gone?  

My young life with my dad whizzed by and had come to an abrupt end.  I didn’t even get to say good bye to him.  Why didn’t I fly in yesterday? 

Carl and I were ushered to his room and there he lay.  Gone all right, but he was still slightly warm.  The deep worry lines on his face had relaxed and were gone.  I leaned down, hugged him, cried and said, “Daddy, I love you.“

I didn’t know my last “daddy-daughter date” with him would be to see Saturday’s Warrior.  Six days later I was back in Utah standing in the wings of the theatre waiting for the show to begin on opening night.  The cast had joined with me in the green room to dedicate the show to his memory.  I had wanted my dad to be there that night, but my mom and my family were all there.  The orchestration started and the chorus sang, “Who are these children coming down, coming down…” Then I felt this sudden warmth around me and my dad’s presence strongly there with me in the wings.  I realized he was going to be there with me after all, not just for that opening night as we had planned for weeks, but for whenever he could be there throughout my life.  He would always be in my heart and I was comforted.  As the words to the song continued to soar, I resolved to be that Saturday’s Warrior and to carry on my father’s legacy:

Who are these children coming down, coming down.
Like gentle rain though darken skies.
With glory trailing from their feet as they go.
And endless promise in their eyes!
Who are these young ones growing tall, growing strong.
Like silver trees against the storm.
Who will not bend with the wind or the change, but stand to fight the world alone!

These are the few, the warriors saved for Saturday, to come the last day of the world
These are they, on Saturday.

These are the strong, the warriors rising in their might to win
The battle raging in the hearts of men, on Saturday.

Strangers from a realm of light who have forgotten all.
The memory of their former life. The purpose of their call.
And so they must learn why they’re here and who they really are.
They must learn why they’re here and who they are!

These are the few, the warriors saved for Saturday, to come the last day of the world
These are they, on Saturday.
These are the strong, the warriors rising in the might to win
The battle raging in the hearts of men, on Saturday.

In their sunlight armor they march forth to conquer all
And with their swords ablaze with fire watch the darkness fall
And so they must learn why they’re here and who they really are.
They must learn why they’re here and who they are!

These are the few, the warriors saved for Saturday, to come the last day of the world
These are they, on Saturday.
These are the strong, the warriors rising in the might to win
The battle raging in the hearts of men, on Saturday.
These are they who come forth on Saturday, Saturday, Saturday, Saturday!

(Lyrics: Doug Stewart; Music: Lex DeAzevedo)

Yes, I wish my dad could have been there with me that night and that he could have been with my children as they were growing up.  I wish he could see them now.  But I have faith that he has and I know he’s there.

Fourteen years later, when I was pregnant with my youngest son, we learned he might have polycystic kidney disease, a terminal condition when found before birth, and he might not survive the first year of life.  I lay there on the examination table post-sonogram.  Everyone had left the room and I started to pray out loud.  “Dear God, where is my father when I need him?  Please. I need him now.  Let him see what is happening here and let him heal this baby boy inside my body.  Dad, are you there?  Please help me now!” 

I went home and called my mother, sobbing the story to her.  For the next few weeks I waited anxiously until the doctors felt it was safe to induce the delivery.  I continued to pray for help and healing.  I do believe in miracles.  And this one did come.  I felt my father’s presence on that delivery table.  The baby was rushed to NICU and the reports came in: It was not polycystic kidney disease.  It was hydro-nephrosis and mega-ureters.  If the baby could make it through the next two years without complications, it might self-correct and he might not need surgery at all.  Today that boy is about 6 foot 2, is 21 years old and is completing his two-year mission for our church in Calgary Canada.  He’s never had a problem since.

Many years have passed since my father passed on.  On May 8, 2010 I stood on stage for my dad.  This time it was before the “unruly mob” at the Republican State convention in Utah as a candidate for U.S. Senate.  My passion was to fulfill the dream my dad had left this world unfulfilled:  Get the government out of health care!  With all my heart and soul, I invited the crowd to join me in a Second Reagan Revolution.  “Let’s start by defunding and repealing this onerous Obamacare that has been forced down our throats!”  The audience cheered. 

I knew my father was whistling down from heaven that day.  Thanks, Dad.  You are missed, but you are still in my heart and I am doing my best to carry on your great legacy.