A few days ago Corey Haines published an interview with his father about his father's programming career. Corey's dad, Terry, seems to be just a bit older than me and we started our programming careers about the same time.

This being Father's day, I hope you'll indulge me if I blog a bit about my dad, Joe DeNatale, who died just about 7 years ago.

Dad was very much a polymath. He had a Jesuit education from Fordham (both prep and University). He was strong in math. He knew Greek and Latin, and was an athlete, having played baseball at Fordham. He was a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees, although he had no love for George Steinbrenner. He got to see Babe Ruth play, even got to see him pitch (which he did a few times a year), but I think his real idol was Joltin' Joe.

He tried hard to turn his sons into baseball fans, but I never got it until much later in life, when I started following the Chicago Cubs of all teams.

The classical language thing didn't rub off on me either. I've flunked two courses in my life, both in junior high school. One was typing! I finally acquired that skill in college by using a keypunch instead of a typewriter. The other was Latin, which I took at his urgings.

Although I can type now, I still have very little Latin.

When World War 2 broke out, Dad entered the Army Air Force, and was sent to NYU to learn meteorology, after which he served in Iceland and Greenland doing Air Force weather forecasts of the North Atlantic. Some of his war stories included catching a ride to Scotland on a B-17, and being in an officer's club somewhere where Clark Gable bought everyone a round after being promoted. One of his war mementos was his "short snorter", which he carried around in his wallet. Later when I started travelling the world for IBM, I too started collecting paper currency from wherever I travelled, got other folks to sign, and taped together my own "short snorter." And after Dad died, I inherited his.

He left the Air Force after the war as a Major, and went to work for my grandfather in his jewelry business near Wall Street in lower Manhattan

Dad's Programming Career

Dad's programming career was actually quite short, although he worked for IBM from his mid-thirties until taking "early" retirement sometime in his seventies.

Sometime between the time my younger brother was born, and the arrival of my sister, Dad decided to change careers. He applied for a job with "the IBM" as my grandmother called it, and was hired. The enrolled him in programmer training, and he washed out. So instead of programming they turned him in to a technical writer.

Even though he wasn't a programmer, Dad was a very helpful resource when I took up programming in college in the 1970s. This was before the intertubes and easy access to programming documentation. I was doing a lot of programming on UConn's IBM mainframe, and playing with whatever languages and utilities I could find. Since Dad worked for IBM, he could order whatever IBM manuals I wanted, and I ended up with a more impressive collection of manuals than the one at the university computer center.

Dad the Artist

Dad always had an artistic bent, although he didn't pursue it as much as his younger brother, Alphonse Richard DeNatale, who went by the nicknames Dick or Buddy (I guess I wouldn't go by Alphonse either). I remember seeing and being impressed by sketches which Dad had drawn when he was in college. It was in the genes, I'm sure, both Grandpa and great-Grandpa DeNatale were artistic jewelers, and engravers.

And in digging up old photos to write this, I discovered this snapshot of Dad and Uncle Dick, holding the very DeNatale coat of arms I wrote about recently.

Uncle Dick did pursue art as a career, after serving in the Navy in the war, he had a corporate career including being the director of the corporate identity programs at Reynolds Aluminum, and then at Carborundum and Kennecott Copper after Kennecott acquired Carborundum.

And Dad picked up his artistic endeavors later in life when he took up watercolor as an avocation.

I think of Dad often, but today is Father's day and it seemed appropriate to "talk" about him here.

I miss you Dad!