The world is rich with the things he left behind.
In Atkinson, Neb., a town I’ve never visited, flags fly at schools because of my father. I’ve never seen these flags, and until last month, I’d never heard of Atkinson. But it comforts me to know they are there, a little part of the big legacy of Francis Xavier McArdle, who died in May at age 82.
My sister and I learned about them after we started going through the mountains of papers in Dad’s home office near Boston and came across a folder labeled “Atkinson, Nebraska.” I opened it, and out fell bunches of letters written by children at the West Holt elementary school., he had been handed a care package that the children of Atkinson had assembled for the rescue workers.
You see, the supreme irony of my life as a libertarian columnist is that Dad was a lobbyist. He spent a decade working for the New York City government at various levels,commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection. After that, he spent most of the next three decades runningfor the heavy contractors who built most of the infrastructure in the tri-state area.
When people reached out to commiserate on his passing, they all said the same thing: “He was a brilliant man. I learned so much from him.” As a young child, I got into the habit of using him as a kind of walking encyclopedia, and I still recall my shock the first time my father didn’t know the answer to something I asked. I don’t remember my question. I do remember that I was in my 20s.
Luckily, he had endless patience with my questions, because he liked questions, and answers, above all things. And also because he was a girl dad before girl dads were spoken of, a shameless booster of anything and everything my sister and I did.
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