I'm going to try to draw larger points from the loss of my father last weekend since a thousand words of me complaining about the inevitable turning of the circle of life could easily degenerate into vapid mawkishness. And now is not the time for me to change up my routine, cynical take except to point out that my Dad was utterly unironic. He said what he said and meant it. Sarcasm was not his thing; he was a genuine Middle American of the kind the regime media rarely shows, and only then as a cautionary example. A heretic in these stupid times, Dad loved America and the flag and was less angry than baffled by people who didn't.
It came out of the blue, though both of my parents had been seriously ill repeatedly over the last six months. We know the local paramedics by name. But Mom was back from her latest surgery, and things had calmed down. Still, we were ready generally, if not specifically, for something like this. My father fell ill suddenly just a day after we saw him healthy and happy and we were planning some things we would be doing together. The next day he felt sick, and the day after, very sick. He went to the hospital and kept getting worse. It was pneumonia. Within 48 hours, he was gone from heart failure due to septic shock. We got to see him a couple of times, which was good. You hear a lot of criticism of the health care system, but there are smart, caring people in it as well as TikTok docs. They did everything they could, and he fought, but it was time. A Christian and active in the Methodist Church – whose commie flirtations drove him nuts – he left us unafraid and confident in his faith.
United States Navy Lieutenant Commander Stephen L. Schlichter was born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on December 31, 1938. How odd and random that he passed away in Torrance, California, on April 2, 2022. Who would have thought that would be where the story ended? But he lived a full and happy life. His father left the family to go to WWII as a Navy officer, the family being mad at the US Army for taking the Schlichter family farm to build Letterkenny Army Depot in 1937. He was on the USS Lake Champlain when it picked up Alan Shepard after the first American manned space launch. He would later work for Proctor & Gamble's Folger's Coffee division and, as a chemical engineer, hold several patents for decaffeinated coffee. In the late 80s, before they just laid everyone off, Folger's retired most of its middle managers but paid them off and gave them medical care. Now you know where my suspicion of big companies comes from. They ended up paying for his kidney transplant (Mom donated it; he had an autoimmune disorder that attacked them). Suckers.
He loved to hunt with his golden retrievers and taught me to shoot when I was six. He produced and directed plays for the Crystal Springs Players, a church theater group, for many years, even writing a book about it. He read about history and politics and gave a lot of money to charities, mostly for animals, veterans, and wildlife.
Dad believed in America. He was the kind of guy who wrote letters to his congressman (well, he didn't bother when he moved here and it became Ted Lieu) because he thought that every citizen should be heard. Working in Congress and later getting to know a lot of pols, I saw that, in practice, this did not always work out that way, but Dad was not wrong to insist on it anyway. The America he believed in is the America we should damn well insist upon.
He was a true patriot and conservative, and he was the first of the Schlichters to turn from Democrats into Republicans. My family was big in local politics out in Central Pennsylvania back in the day, but they were the old school FDR variety who would look on the freak show the Democrats are today with incredulity.
I know my Dad did. He could not conceive of someone who hated our country. He always assumed anyone claiming to was simply confused. He was always positive, even to a fault. I never heard him use a harsh profanity, and he never reacted when I went into a tirade featuring them as an adult, which I feel bad about in retrospect. Nor did I ever hear an ounce of racial bigotry from him – it would be inconceivable. He saw such nonsense as unchristian and unamerican. He liked people, though I think he was shy, and he always thought the best of them. He did not hate anyone, except maybe communists and Nazis – he was a huge WWII history buff, and we would chat about various ships and aircraft of that great conflict.
Dad went to Penn State (Joe Paterno dated one of my mom's sorority friends) and loved watching its famous sportsball team. The scandal mortified him even as I couldn't restrain myself from joke after joke about The Lincoln Project of college sports.
Dad swore me into the Army, though he tried to talk me into going into the Navy. I, of course, did my own thing. I also wanted to thank the Army for taking the farm option off the table – I am a city guy, though Dad was anything but. I am very different than he was, but in some ways, I am the same. We both are relentlessly positive in the sense that the idea that you can't do something never really occurred to him or me. You just do it. I remember him teaching me about free enterprise – not the corporate perversion of it but the real thing. "Find a need and fill it," he said, and he did, consulting with coffee roasting companies after leaving Folgers. One day in 2016, I saw a need for conservative action novels, so I sat down and wrote the first Kelly Turnbull book. I'm working on the seventh now.
He liked these columns, and I think he got a kick out of seeing his son show up on his favorite Fox shows out of the blue when I had neglected to tell him I was going to be on.
He was the kind of American the left hates because he ignored them. Their whining and abuse meant nothing to him. He lived his way, and he was happy even as his health deteriorated and the failing transplanted kidneys meant he had to go on dialysis. I think him being happy, patriotic, and faithful was the example the left should most fear. After all, they offer only bitterness and endless misery. They look down on guys like my Dad as deplorable and inferior. The leftists should be thankful guys like my Dad, in the main, do not bother paying attention to them at all.
After Dad passed away, I posted a short bio on Twitter and was overwhelmed with the response. I had been open on Twitter about his and Mom's health crises, and the outpouring of prayers before and after was remarkable. That includes some people I have tangled with.
Of course, there were trolls. Some scoffed at the idea of prayers. Now, I'm a Christian, and I do not take my theology cues from people who think Jesus was some sort of bearded Santa Claus (or worse, a Marxist in sandals). A prayer is not a coin to be dropped in a holy vending machine to get a spiritual Snickers bar. Because what you ask for is not what happens, it is not somehow proof prayer is meaningless. God wants us to pray, and I can tell you it meant a lot to me too. While it is fashionable to trash social media, without it, no one would know about my Dad, and Irina and I would not have had the support of thousands of people during these miserable few months.
I still want to regulate it, though, unless Elon Musk buys it.
So, this is my first week without Dad ever. It sucks. I am not going to say we always saw eye-to-eye, but America would be a lot better off if guys like him were the standard instead of the weirdos, losers, and mutations who get all the attention. Yeah, it's sad that he's gone, but I'm glad I had him for as long as we did. He was an American patriot, and I'll miss him. RIP.
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