MODERN DAD | By Jon Show

Burke Show, 83, passed away at the Rest Stop in Cornelius last month.

The Rest Stop is what I called his nursing home because I hated thinking of him in there. He lived too great a life to slowly die in an assisted care facility.

Burke deserved to go in a manner that produced a much better story, like in a fiery car crash, smoking a Benson & Hedges while evading the police.

Burke Show

In his obituary I tried to include things that told his story but it ultimately offered the most mundane details of his time on this planet. An outline. The names of chapters in a book that don’t offer any of the colorful words to fill the pages that make his story a book.

Please, if you will, allow me to share some of my dad’s favorite stories.

Burke Show never made anything up when he told a story. He was a storyteller who was blessed with a life filled with great stories. He also had a knack for being in the right place at the right time.

Burke played basketball in the largest high school fieldhouse in the world, located in New Castle, Indiana. And played in one of the most exciting high school basketball games in Indiana history—the Church Street Shootout in 1959.

He played basketball at Butler for the great Tony Hinkle, but had to leave after his first year when his parents ran out of money or he failed out. I never got a straight answer.

After leaving Butler he worked in the mail room of the FBI and once stole a cigarette from the office of J. Edgar Hoover. He auditioned for, but did not land, the role of the Marlboro Man.

He served his country in the Navy in Puerto Rico where he drank rum and played softball. While on the island he only learned two Spanish sentences: “Tú eres muy bonita,” and, “Dame una cerveza fría por favor.”

My dad taught me those phrases the night before my first Spanish class, which did not amuse my seventh-grade teacher when I repeated them after she asked if anyone could speak Spanish.

After being honorably discharged from the Navy he was briefly jailed in Michigan on a dubious charge of public littering after he put a beer can on the edge of a dock while getting off a fishing boat. When released, hours later, he crossed over the state line into Indiana, stopped, and tossed a bag of trash back into Michigan.

He returned to college on the GI Bill and graduated from Ball State, where he met Melinda Herberger while tending bar at Bea’s Lounge.

Melinda’s mother, Betty, upon meeting my mom’s much older boyfriend, informed her that he would “never amount to a hill of beans.” Later in life Betty loved to admit she was wrong about that one.

Burke and Melinda married on his birthday so he would never forget his anniversary. They honeymooned in a fishing lodge because they had no money.

His sons grew up thinking the family had embossed “S” towels, but it turned out Burke loved to steal towels from Sheraton hotels. He also curated a giant drawer of tiny hotel soaps, shampoos, conditioners, shower caps and sewing kits, but never used any of them.

A lifelong salesman who received a company car every three years, he once chose between three different models by having his eldest son figure out which trunk best fit his golf clubs.

To his sons he was the world’s greatest basketball and football coach. Because of work travel he missed countless games and practices—but he never missed any of the important ones.

In high school I got to climb the rafters of the old Boston Garden to hug my dad after winning a playoff game on the way to a state championship. He let me dream our impossible dream of someday playing in Larry Bird’s home, so it only seemed fitting to go find him when it happened.

That moment and countless others with my brother were among his proudest memories of raising two boys.

Twenty-six years ago he and Melinda retired in Cornelius and he played golf every week. His short game was terrible but he was straight off the tee. He loved his forty-year-old Ping putter, which now sits in Future Man’s bedroom.

Before his health declined many years ago, he played nine holes each week with Melinda despite earlier in his life claiming he would never play golf with a woman.

In retirement he was often asked why he always kept the sliding glass door open in the summer while the air conditioning was running, and he responded, “Because it only costs a little more to go first class.”

He bought his favorite snacks, cookies, ice cream and lottery tickets at the BP on Westmoreland.

Getting old sucks and Burke wasn’t active in his final years. His trips to the pool subsided and he quit golfing because he couldn’t walk well.

When he could manage, he still loved going to the field or the courts to watch his grandkids play sports. He would sit in the stands and tell anyone who would listen about the accomplishments of his own kids.

It was hard to write this. Beyond words. But I wasn’t going to let my hero go out with a funeral home obituary.

I’m out of space but I have a lifetime of stories to tell about my dad. Catching the dock on fire. Pissing off Howie Mandel. Making a hole-in-one on the wrong green. Belting out “My Girl.”

He could tell stories for hours and I could go on for pages. He used to tell me that I got the writing knack from him but he was wrong. He liked to tell stories. I like to write them.

He wasn’t well for a long time and I thought that would make it easier to mourn his death. But after he died I realized I stayed so sad for so long afterwards because it was finally okay to mourn the person he used to be but hadn’t been for a long time.

In my soul is a hole that I hope will someday heal but I know will never be filled.

My dad lived a great life. He was a legend and he made the world a better place. His laugh. My goodness his laugh. There will never be another equal.

And I am so sad I’ll never be able to hear it again.