My Father, the Spy

The other night Dr. Thompson and I watched a Jack Ryan film on Netflix. He likes that kind of thing. Me--not so much. However, I will admit that I am interested in the CIA and their goings-on. This is because I was raised by a spy. Okay, it’s true that right up until his death Papa Callan denied being a spy and so it was never completely confirmed.

But, I did grow up with rumors quietly passed between aunts and uncles, cousins and family friends that my father worked for the CIA. My father himself said that at the start of World War II he met with a mathematician in New York City and that she wanted to recruit him to decipher codes. Papa Callan was always very good with numbers. However, he claimed he did not become a code-breaker, but instead joined the Yale V-12 Naval program and then shipped out to Okinawa.

Here’s some more circumstantial evidence:

Papa Callan brought our family down to Key West where we spent the weeks leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis poolside at the Key Ambassador Hotel, while he was stationed on a Navy ship--just sixty miles from Havana “for training purposes.”

My parents lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia from 1976 to 1991 where Papa Callan worked for Aramco, helping the Saudis nationalize their electric grid.

In 1982, Papa Callan just happened to be in Kenya on a photography safari and was “caught up” in coup.

As a volunteer with The Executive Service Corps, Papa Callan arrived Kuwait in 1990, just months before the Iraqi invasion.

And finally, among Papa Callan’s papers, I found a Cold War Recognition Certificate, thanking him for his service, signed by Donald Rumsfeld.

Creative Friends--you will never fully understand your parents. This is not a tragedy. In fact, this not-knowingness is the very thing that drives you to create, to imagine different possible explanations for mysterious events. Do not feel sad that you won’t ever truly know your father (or your mother for that matter.) Be happy that you hold within you a never-ending mystery that will continue to fascinate and challenge and inspire you until the end of your days.

Happy Father’s Day.

Love,

Jamie