Donny Osmond and my Dad

by Barbara Neal Varma

Steady, patient, studiously quiet. Ask anyone in Watertown and they’d agree – that was Mr. Tom. But spontaneous? Maybe not. Full of surprises? Certainly not. Yet compelling evidence remains, filed away in a daughter’s memories of Watertown, the farm, Donny Osmond (yes, Donny Osmond) and my dad, Tom Young Neal.

Strangely enough it was in Watertown that I’d first been introduced to Donny. (My dad I’d known all my life.) We were summering at the family farm on the outskirts of town, and at age twelve I had quickly made friends with the only other pre-teen girl within viewing distance of our wide front porch. Debbie Smith’s house could be seen through the trees on the other side of the long graveled driveway. Standing on the porch I’d call over to see if she was home, using a high-pitched yell that everyone else could hear but only twelve-year-old girls could do. If she were home, a faint but like response would be heard on the wind; if not, I’d have to try my call again later.

Not long after we’d arrived that summer Debbie had brought me into the girly inner sanctum of her bedroom and it was there that Donny had first appeared in my sights, his round glowing cheeks and warm brown eyes speaking his love for only me from about three dozen posters covering the walls. I looked in awe at the handsome faces surrounding us and was hooked.

My dad was not so thrilled about my Donny discovery. The whole thing spoke of fantasy and daydreaming and wistful wishing upon a Star –all activities in exact opposite of what he’d hoped to encourage in his youngest child and only daughter.

His own activities were purposeful and productive. At work he was a math teacher; at home he taught by example, always calm and straightforward about life’s varied lessons. He was most animated with his numbers. They held a special fascination for him by their very predictability and certainty. Growing up during the Depression when surprises—not the good kind—befell the day, it was no wonder my dad guided his life around steadfast security. Even his teaching career was the logical choice. Question: what does a steady stream of youths needing a quality education equal? Answer: an annual income.

His first teaching offer was from a young Las Vegas High School, just standing up in the dusty desert town. He readily accepted; the sure bet enticing him more than any other lure of Vegas treasures, and he and my mom, his new bride, headed west.

During his summers off, Dad would corral the family into our Volkswagen bus and make the pilgrimage back to the sacred land in Tennessee. “The farm” had been a tradition and asset since my grandparents’ time, hence the full christened name, “B.Y. Neal farm,” for my dad’s dad, Basil Young Neal. Geographically, it sat about three miles from the Watertown square, a small but ambitious business district boasting a bank, bookstore, and nickel Laundromat.

The farmhouse was a two-story wooden structure resting on a flat green field. My dad and his siblings called it “the white house” for its faded paint of the same color. A winding stone-bottomed creek separated the front acre spread from the greater expanse of land that edged out to the road. Seen with young eyes, the blue-green hills that made up our backyard seemed to go on forever. Rocky paths led back into forested dens housing all sorts of imagined and assorted creatures. The only permanent residents of the farm were the cattle, slow to graze but fast to move if a young city girl dared approach. But I just had to try. Such pets were rarely found in the desert.

Our second summer visit was when I turned twelve and it was then I transitioned from chasing cows to chasing Donny, a much needed distraction from the otherwise difficult time I was having fitting into the country scene without the right clothes, know-how, or small town protocol. I had arrived with desert-friendly shorts and T-shirt ensembles—hardly sufficient covering against leg-level chiggers and other critters lounging in the grass. My dad equipped me with hastily purchased jeans and a pair of too big, too old boots that only fit my feet when stuffed with three layers of my brother’s socks. I added a holstered can of bug spray to the outfit, feeling completely outnumbered by the state’s resident insects. The wasps scared me the most, hovering like tiny helicopters under the eaves, ready to attack any foreigners within their scopes, and with a young woman’s intuition I doubted my country camouflage was really fooling them very much.

But my dad saw my struggles and kindly coaxed me outside when I wasn’t swooning over Donny in some Teen Magazine I’d borrowed from fellow fan Debbie. He would bring me on tractor rides, hikes for hidden treasures in the forest, and at night, showed me and my brothers how to gently catch “lightening bugs” and watch them glow in the palms of our hands.

With my dad’s help I got through that summer at tender twelve, and with my mom’s help my dad survived the turbulent time of my first infatuation. Poor Dad didn’t know, however, that along with the many stories I brought back with me from Tennessee was the earnest desire to decorate my bedroom “just like Debbie’s,” and so with great fanfare I taped and positioned Donny’s many faces to my previously bare bedroom walls. Mom watched in amusement; Dad just watched and waited, I’m sure, for the certain return of sanity for his youngest girl-cub.

Two months later and well into my junior high school semester we heard the news that set my hormones racing. The Osmonds were coming to town, booked for one weekend only at the Sahara hotel. I begged my parents to take me but knew my dad’s answer would be a practical no with a predictably logical and rational explanation about the expense, my young age, and other sorts of steady reasons and reasoning.

I pouted for about a week, which in twelve-year-old terms equals about a year, until one morning I awoke to my parents’ whispered conversation in the kitchen. (An easy feat since my bedroom was built in borrowed living room space. That morning their voices were too low to provide any clues to their conversation but one sentence came through clearly: my dad’s closing comment to solve most dilemmas. “I think this is the best way,” he said, and the next sound I heard was the front door closing shut to signal his morning departure to work.

A few moments later I padded into the kitchen, sleepily greeted my mom, and gathered equipment for cereal and milk. Although I was curious about their discussion I remained quiet, not wanting to let on about my room’s secret acoustics. I was pouring a healthy dose of Captain Crunch cereal when a small sheet of paper caught my eye, prominently posed against the ever-present napkin holder. At the top were the words “To Do” followed by a list of three activities:

To Do

1.      Buy stamps.

2.      Put gas in car.

3.      Take Barbara to see Donny Osmond concert.

I snatched the note from the table. “What?!”

Mom, watching me, smiled in relief. “Oh, I’m so glad you saw it. I didn’t think you would, or that you’d be in a hurry.”

“You mean we’re going?!”

“Yes! –I wanted to just tell you but your father…”

I looked back at the note still clutched in my hand like a Wonka Golden Ticket. The handwriting was my dad’s. I looked back at my mom, still not comprehending.

“It was his idea,” she explained, “to do it this way. Writing the list and letting you find it.”

And then the words I thought I’d never hear about my practical dad: “He wanted to surprise you. He thought that would be fun.”

These days it’s the little things, the “normal” things, like writing a “To Do” list, that remind me of my extra ordinary dad. His vintage dry sense of humor delivered with just a whisper of a smile, his award-winning patience, and, as now revealed, his surprising acts of spontaneity provoked by love. I remember a darkened showroom. Donny was on stage but it was my dad by my side. Just as he was when he walked me down the aisle; just as we were when he bravely succumbed to cancer over three years ago. He passed away 2/22/99 at the age of 77. Symmetrical numbers, in a way. I think he would have liked that.

So that’s my story, or rather his. Surprised? Maybe not. I’m certain others besides me have glimpsed the unabridged version of my dad. Still, it was important that those who knew him have the chance to know him again.

Which is why I wrote my own “To Do” list this morning, skipping the fill-ins for the first two to write the reminder where it belonged:

To Do—

1.

2.

3.  Write a story about my dad.