Syndicated columnist Jamie Stiehm: My father's father: The traces he left

My father's father died when Dad was 8, just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Born in 1901, the grandfather I never knew died in 1941. It was the darkest of times for the family and country.

Dr. Reuben Stiehm left a wife and four children, including baby Elizabeth. He was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin medical school. They lived in Madison in a shingled house on Spooner Street.

My grandmother Marie was in one of the first UW nursing classes in the 1920s, when young women had more freedom than ever. There was even a story about skinny-dipping in Lake Mendota. Shocking!

Truth be told, Reuben was stern, formal and Germanic in manner. He expected his children to address him as "Father." Old school, he seemed at a distance at the head of the table. He went to picnics with a tie.

My father, as the firstborn son, went on house calls with his father, but he had to stay in the car lest he catch polio or tuberculosis. Reuben did pioneering work testing college students for TB.

Doing rounds and visiting his father's office in the hospital to get his allergy shots made a profound impression on my father as a boy. Peering at live X-rays and peeking in medical textbooks cast his fate at a young age.

Richard, too, would be a doctor, though no words passed between them on this subject.

When Dr. Stiehm died suddenly, none of his children went to the funeral. The subject was silenced. Relatives told the boy (my father) he'd have to be the man of the house, which meant shoveling snow and raking leaves.

The death also meant the maid and the car would be let go. Fortunately, they would stay on Spooner Street.

As my father wrote in his memoir, he did not cry for the loss. He went upstairs and read comic books.

Fortunately for the widow and four children, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a fine substitute for an absent father. With his booming voice and rosy optimism, the voice on the radio seemed to grasp their worries and bring comfort and cheer into the house.

As the years went on, Richard helped raise Elizabeth, standing over her piano practice and some such.

I've often thought how differently my own father would be if his father had lived longer. Reuben, from the town of Johnson Creek, was a high achiever who embodied traditional masculine molds. They were ironclad.

Reuben smoked cigars. His lightest moment might be passing a cow on the road to Johnson Creek and letting out a low "Moo."

My father Richard could not be more different. Informal and irreverent, he never plays the heavy, even if he knows best on whatever we're talking about.

He took his daughters to tennis courts, tournaments and yes, piano lessons. Sometimes people asked, does your father work? He was unusual in our time growing up, being so involved.

His work, immunology, was a pursuit that spread out on his desk at home, at all hours. My mother was the same way with her work as a professor.

But there was time for my father to help me with my trigonometry homework and take me to the symphony every other Thursday night. Yes, I was a lucky girl who loved Mozart and Beethoven, and played their pieces.

With three daughters, Richard treated us as first class, not waiting for a son to come along to play ball with.

When Elizabeth died suddenly at 59, Richard walked miles in the rain: "She was my first daughter." And I thought I was.

Growing up with a widowed mother and a younger sister gave Richard empathy and respect for the lives of females.

Reuben would have enforced strict codes of dress and conduct.

Clearly, he made the most of his 40 years on the planet. He left an inscription on his work that my father found after he was gone:

"This collection of manuscripts has been bound with the hope that someone in the generations to follow may find them of interest and perhaps ... cherish them." - April 29, 1941, 10:01 p.m.

He was speaking to his firstborn son.

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