Searching for the Answer

Jonathan Greenewell/Dad

Jonathan/Dad

My father was born March 31st 1959 to Robert and Patricia Greenwelle in Perrysville Ohio.

I don't know much about my father because of his absence and him dying at the age of 53, I was 18 years old when he passed. I never developed a maturity level cable of forgetting the past and helping my father when he needed it desperately in his final years of life, which barred me from getting to know who he was as a person in the 35 years he lived before my birth. The result is I am thirty years old and I know little to nothing about my father and now that he is gone that chance to connect with the man that gave me life is gone as well.

From the stories I was told directly by my father before he passed as well as my older sister, he went through an abusive childhood that drove his addiction to alcohol. My sister told me that "when dad was a baby they used to put beer in his baby bottle to get him to stop crying." By age 12 and on, my father routinely had to drive his drunken father home from fishing trips despite being 4 years younger than the legal requirement to drive. When Calvin would take his son Jonathan fishing when Jonathan was still a child not even a teenager he would enforce that he should drink beer while they fish. He made his son drink knowingly, destroying his life before it ever began.

When my father was in high school he was a star pitcher for the baseball team and won the state championship. The school newspaper would read "Jonathan G stands for Greatness not Greenwelle." I believe my father was the atypical jock and overconfident, but he still had a good heart and cared about people to the degree he donated thousands to those in need over the course of his life.

After high school, my father went to Ohio State where he would study Business Administration and Management and graduate in May of 1981. I know his graduation year because instead of having an College ring made specifically for me after I graduated, my sister paid to have my father's remade and I wear it every day. I know his major because I studied and graduated from Arkansas State exactly 40 years after him with the same major.

Once my father graduated from Ohio state he found a job working as a manager for Retail Associate. However, rather than working as a manager in Oakridge my father agreed to relocate to Bennington Arkansas. This is how my father would meet my mother.

Jonathan was a manager at Bennington's Retail Associates while my mother was a customer service representative, so there was daily interaction between the two which I believe contributed to their relationship, and in the end, their marriage. I don't think there was much in the light of emotional expression of love, at least not in the years I knew my rents, stark evidence of their relationship and their approval by others is that in their wedding photos literally not a single person is smiling, no one. Not the groom, bride, or either sets of parents of the two

You see my father wasn't really present in my youth from ages 0-6. That's when he started to completely lose his mind. Years of alcohol abuse combined with a predisposition to mental illness completely ruined him. He was never a real father to me in the sense that he never taught me a thing about life My perception of my father in reflecting on the past is that he

as mentioned at about age 6 my father began a routine of going in and out of mental wards and rehabs for his addiction to alcohol. This man lost any semblance of a rational mind.

When I was six years old my mother came and got me from the living room and asked I follow her to check on my father because he was unconscious on the bathroom floor. When we got to the bathroom my father was in fact unconscious on the floor, but me being a child I told my mother "he wasn't passed out, he's just snoring." I don't know if this was a result of him drinking up to 20 beers a day, or if in a drunken stupor he fell and hit his head. The man was passed out drunk and his wife goes to her 6-year-old son for help. This was a similar routine where I was expected to play the role of rent as Jonathan and Melissa acted like children. My father told my brother a bit of advice "Live fast, and die young." Perhaps it's just me but when you're married with three kids your priorities and outlook should change.