Stan Austin – My Big Brother
Stan Austin. My Big Brother.
I knew Stan longer than anyone else in my life, over 70 years. I always thought of him as my “big brother” due to our just over 5-year age difference. For the last 25 years, a running gag between us was I would call him on his birthday, September 18th, and remind him that he was now 6 years older than me. The joke automatically terminated on September 26th, my birthdate.
That simple gag reflected our long-term relationship – not too serious, not too deep. We were buddies – in the current vernacular we had a “bro” relationship. I’ve often wondered whether that connection was too shallow, but I have no regrets. He wasn’t the type to share many personal emotions, and I never pushed him to do so. Maybe we both realized that the connection, the ease of access to each other was a safe zone we could both rely on over the years.
I don’t remember much of our very early years. We wrestled, he covered my baseball mitt with Vaseline and hid it (finding it years later) and hid my beloved teddy bear. However, with the 5-year age difference we had totally separate friends and activities pretty much all the way through both high school and college.
Our interaction ramped up considerably after I graduated from college when my girlfriend at the time and I moved in with him on the upper floor of a duplex he was renting on Elmwood. He was working as an insurance adjustor at the time with a company car, so he sold me his 1974 Vega. Stan taught me how to do about everything with car repair and upkeep – setting the timing with a timing gun, replacing the brakes, putting in new universal joints. Despite quarter panels flapping in the wind from being rusted out, 2 crummy engines due to an aluminum block, and the infamous Firestone 500 tires where the tread just unraveled killing many, that car made it twice across the U.S. for me. So ’74 Vega jokes were another common bond with Stan through the years.
I believe Stan was in the midst of his 3 runs for Lakewood City Council in the ‘70s. I really didn’t get too involved. But I will offer this observation. Stan adopted that ‘60s counterculture / anti-war zeitgeist and he majored in Political Science (as did I) at Muskingum College, so I think he was pretty idealistic. But he was very young, in his 20s, and lost all three races. My feeling has always been that Stan never quite recovered from those disappointments early in his life. And maybe he really didn’t have a plan B for subsequent employment and his career. Stan’s outlook always seemed to me to reflect Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” – Stan tended to live in the past. But at the same time, he was a glass-half-full type of guy, and that contrast always intrigued me.
Having said that, though, his enduring legacy is that he channeled his idealism and disappointment into local democratic politics, and, in particular, a love for his hometown, Lakewood. He had the strongest sense of place of anyone I’ve known. To him, the center of the universe was northeast Ohio and the capital was Lakewood.
Stan and I didn’t have much interaction in the ‘80s as I had moved on to grad school, my first marriage, moving to the Philly area and the birth of my son, Eric, in 1990. With Eric’s birth, he started regular visits to us, and his new permanent moniker became “Uncle Stan.” I think he very much enjoyed his new family status that was reinforced after the birth of my daughter Dawn in 2000. For a good 15 years, until his health deteriorated, he would come over for many holidays and important events for Eric and Dawn, and I know they appreciate his efforts over the years.
And for me, personally, Stan was my best man for my two first marriages, he was always there though two divorces and some tough times, he was Uncle Stan during Eric’s and Dawn’s formative years, and he was there during both of my parents’ declines and deaths. In the last few years, he would call me most Sunday mornings – always at 10:00AM sharp. I miss those calls, and all the others we might have had in the future.
Maybe this is the place for me to conclude and say what I think Stan’s greatest attribute was. When someone asks me about him, I often will get into the description that “Stan was the most non-judgmental person I’ve ever known.” Maybe it was a fine line with him between being non-judgmental and not wanting to be too emotionally tangled with others, but deep down he also did not want to be judged. To me, he never questioned other people’s personal motives, at least not in any vindictive or snarky way, but the quid-pro-quo was that he receive the same treatment in return. He was very set-in-his-ways and wanted to live his life the way he wanted to, no questions asked.
And he did. Stan Austin. My Big Brother.
Share with others
