A Memory of DAD

I hear the phone ring and my Mom answer. “Oh dear!” I heard her make a call to my Aunt. I was home from grade school and in bed with the flu. She came to my bed side and said, “I am going on a trip. Your father has been in an accident and I am going to go away to help him. “

Listening to the radio next to my bed, WHA in Madison, Wisconsin, I heard more details on the local news. “Professor Dvorak, director of the University of Wisconsin Bands has been seriously injured in a train wreck in Oklahoma. He has lost an arm and is in critical condition.” I was nine years old.

Looking back at this incident, I understand that it had a profound effect on me. I didn’t know whether my Dad would live or die. I was told that “critical” meant that he might not make it.

The Rock Island Line was traveling through Enid, Oklahoma. My Dad had been invited to judge a musical competition. He was sitting on that train when the driver of a sand truck drove across the tracks in front of the train. The train plowed into the sand truck and derailed. The driver of the sand truck was killed. Four people on that train died. Many were seriously injured.

One day a year latter, my father, still recuperating in bed at home in Madison told me the story. “I was knocked unconscious. When I came to, the train coach where I had been sitting was in flames, my arm was badly damaged and bleeding fast. My left leg was broken. I knew that my life was in serious danger unless I did something. I took my handkerchief and tied a tourniquet around the top of my arm to slow the bleeding.

I knew that I had to get out of that burning train coach. I tried to break the window with my good hand, but no mater how hard I tried, I couldn’t break it. The accident had ripped a hole in the floor of the train coach. I could see the ground under the car so I decided to try and crawl through that hole to get out of the burning car. I dragged my self with my one good arm and one good leg to the burning floor and went through the gap in the floor to the ground below. I was lying on the tracks and I noticed right next to my train on the next track were oil tank cars. I knew that these could catch fire at any time. I dragged myself under those oil tank cars and to the other side of the tracks, as far as I could to get away from those oil tanker cars. I was discovered and put on a gurney and taken in an ambulance to the hospital.

The doctors in Enid decided that my arm could not be saved and amputated. But the surgeon decided to try and save my leg.”

It took two years for my Dad to recover well enough to go back to teaching and leading the Wisconsin Marching and Concert Bands. His ears were severely burnt when he went through the burning floor of the train.. He had 14 surgeries to save his leg.

He eventually learned to walk again, but his leg was two and a half inches shorter now. He had a profound limp. He was fitted with an artificial (wooden) arm. He only had a small stump under his shoulder. He had two artificial hands–a plastic one he wore for show. It looked like a real hand with hair. The other was a hook that he could operate with some straps that crossed his back. He wore the hook when he was at home and wanted to fix things in the house.

We had many visitors during those two years–former band members, friends, relatives, some famous people. They came to our house to visit my Dad and he always greeted them with enthusiasm and friendship. And my Mom would always play the gracious hostess, serving meals and refreshments to our guests.

My Dad had the ability to make a person feel that they were important. He would talk to anyone, anywhere. He would make strangers like him instantly. I remember on one occasion I was traveling with my Mom and Dad in Italy and we stopped for gas at a petrol station in Naples. While I was getting gas, he began talking to the guys at the station. They thought it was great fun. They couldn’t understand what he was saying, but they liked him. He also had a great sense of humor. He could remember jokes and tell them with great skill. He could mimic accents, Irish, Scottish, Jewish, Southern, German, French. He loved to make people laugh and they loved him for this.

Looking back on the whole ordeal I have to say I never heard my father complain. Not once. He always had an upbeat attitude and would do his best to make other people feel good.

My Mom, was a saint. She dutifully cared for my father. Cooked the family meals, did the laundry, cleaned the house, and changed his surgical dressings. My father depended on her. He could not have achieved all the things he did if she had not been there to take care of the daily chores. She always gave him credit for his accomplishments.

After his accident, my father continued to be very busy. Along with teaching classes and directing the U of W Band, he was president of the American Bandmasters Association. He was the chairman of the United States President’s committee for the physically handicapped. He was president of the Madison Chapter of Rotary International. And after he retired he was instrumental getting John Phillip Sousa installed in the Hall Of Fame. But because of his disability, we never threw a ball together. I never went ice skating, skiing, or hiking with my father. I did these things with my own sons, but never with my father.

He was very independent. He taught himself to tie his shoes with one hand. If you don’t think that is an accomplishment, try it. He taught himself to touch type on a typewriter with one hand. He taught himself to play difficult piano compositions with his left hand. I remember his first band concert the year he returned to his job at the University. He played a piano solo for one hand and ended with an encore of Ave Maria on the piano. He liked to show off in that way. He inspired others to do what they aspired to do. He frequently would say to me, “The difficult is done immediately, the impossible just takes a little longer.” He lived by this motto.