The Old Mongoose

Greenlake, Washington, circa 1970.

Some of you know that my beloved Dad passed in his sleep on Wednesday night after a chatty afternoon surrounded by Mom, the kids, and his newest grandbaby and namesake, Will. Bill was 86, lived a good life, and fought the good fight to stay with us all for as long as possible.

Raised by vivacious, card-playing, dancing New Jersians of the 1940s who moved across the country and ran a boardinghouse near the University of Washington, Bill was the quiet one. Cerebral, even. Encouraged to take Engineering at the UW, he graduated and went to work at Hanford on projects with titles like “Steam-water Critical Flow Using the Separated Flow Model”. Yipes.

In the mid-1960s Dad went in a fresh direction, getting his master’s in computer science from Stanford - and falling in love with this new field. He worked for Boeing on the software systems used to design flight-efficient aircraft most of his life.

He married twice and had nine beautiful kids: 5 boys and 4 girls. I am both "1 of 7" and "3 of 9". Although their styles were very different, he loved my mother to the core and her active interests and care kept him on the move after he finally retired from Boeing following his 80th birthday. Yes, 80th.

Each of us loves different things about my Dad and we carry our own intersecting, overlapping ocean of stories and memories. I hear my Dad crooning us to sleep, gentle melodies like Blackbird singing in the dead of night, Sleep my child and peace be with you, You are my sunshine. I hear him practicing his classical guitar, challenging passages from his favorite flamenco pieces, and Bach. I see him reading Japanese haiku from the ancient masters, Issa and others, contemplating aloud about the visceral power of these short strings of words. I picture him pranking us with an empty carton of ice cream -- a rare treat -- returned to the freezer with a note in it: The devil made me do it. I imagine his delighted smile in the middle of the night, writing that note with the anticipation of our surprise and laughter. I see my Dad every time I look at my brothers and sisters, my niece and nephews, and deeply in my son. I feel so lucky to have come from him, and the intertwining of his line with my mother's. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Old Mongoose.

❤

William Arthur (Bill) Massena
January 28, 1934 - January 20, 2021