Author of Father of the Man Dr. Peter Colman

I climbed the Hanover Hill (the same route my friends and I had used for winter track practice back in ’65), and turned up Calef Road pass the Manchester Country Club (my high school friend, Dick Fosburg’s Dad used to have a membership here; we used to sneak in to rake golf balls), and on up the hill pass the old farmhouse to the Veterans Administration parking lot. The ground was frozen; all of life seemed in lifeless suspension. The lights that lit the backside of the hospital entrance were a dim yellow, the reminder, perhaps, of the slow demise of a brighter day.

The first-floor corridor was warm but stale. There were vending machines inside the front entrance, and a small carousel filled with assorted used paperbacks. The person at the desk seemed occupied and unaware of my presence. I politely identified myself and inquired as to the location of my Dad’s room: “My name is Peter Colman. Robert Colman is my Dad.”

“Oh, welcome. Bob’s room is just over there, the first room on the right.”

I walked slowly toward the entrance, fully expecting to see his smiling, two hundred and twenty-five-pound frame sitting up in bed (the same kind of exuberant reception I had witnessed when Dad made his first and last visit to his grandchildren during our furlough in Ohio nearly ten years earlier). When I entered, he seemed not to be there. Looking down the length of his bed, I could see his form and the familiar girth of his upper body. Then I saw his head, turned in my direction, smaller and wizened. His hair was sparse and disheveled, his teeth a sickly brown.




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