Our father, Charles George Stephanos passed away last night just three days short of his 97th birthday. He was a great Dad to his four boys, Kyle, Dale, Braun, and Tarn. Our father’s life was dedicated to his family and demonstrating his devotion to the principles of sound mind and body. He was an All-American swimmer in the Navy and Ohio State University. He met the young woman he would marry when they were both swim pros at a New York swim club. Years later in the early 1970’s, he and my mother created the New England Masters Swimming organization in our Swampscott living room. I remember being wowed by the two of them after they took a trip to the Masters Nationals in Chicago and came home with armfuls of gold medals.
My parents later created New England Swim School, with my dad as head coach and my mother as the stroke coach. They produced several national and collegiate champions, but more importantly, they created an extended family of sorts. There was always a swimmer or two at the house, and I came to fondly think of these people as itinerant family members.
After their divorce, Dad chose to heal through activity, running road races, marathons, triathlons, keeping his body and brain as sharp as possible. I remember thinking that he was creating a version of himself that would be too strong and vital to be hurt again. There were books strewn everywhere about the house. When he wasn’t reading or writing about swimming, running and exercise physiology, Dad was playing chess against a computer, or doing crossword puzzles, writing poetry, painting in watercolor, cooking Greek food, working in his garden.
Dad would gently challenge me during runs, announcing our pace per mile, suggesting we could squeeze a little more speed out if we tried. If my brother Braun and I suggested the idea of going skiing, He had no problem dropping everything and piling his sons and their friends into his orange VW microbus and heading off to New Hampshire or Vermont for the day. Whenever we went to art galleries, he’d lean in and tell me he could paint those pictures better and so could I (we couldn’t!). On the long drive back from our modest farm in Dalton, New Hampshire, Dad would spend hours talking with my youngest brother Tarn, creating the creepy tale of Bobby MacGregor. The two of them would often take bike rides from our childhood hometown of Swampscott up the coast to Marblehead.
Dad loved climbing mountains, and Mt. Washington was his North Star. Along with my brothers and friends, I’ve climbed Mt. Washington dozens of times with my father. Once, when I was around 10, we went for a hike on Mt. Washington, and it started raining and snowing, the temperature suddenly dropping. My brother Kyle’s and my feet were so frozen that Dad peeled our wet shoes and socks off and held our feet under his sweater against the skin of his bare belly, warming them while our foot gear dried by a fire. In Springtime, we would often hike to Mt. Washington’s Tuckerman Ravine to ski. He made the hours-long trek with a 45 lb. pack fun, seeming to sense just the right moment to produce a Snickers bar out of nowhere, or dryly roasting fellow hikers as we passed.
I remember the comfort of running mile after mile with my father after my mother left. We’d talk about everything and nothing. He’d ask me about my future— a subject I found terrifying— and he’d always find a way to be encouraging and supportive. I had no idea that my father was leaning into what he did best, coaching me along a very stoney path. His wife had just left him with four angry boys and a mother-in-law, but I never heard a bad word about Mum from Dad’s mouth.
Sadly, we drifted apart in the following years. My brothers and I did not connect with his second wife. I certainly had my part in the collapse of our relationship. I cut phone conversations short. We lived south of them, but his car only seemed to point North. As he crept into old age, his knees failed, and he refused to have surgery. He still swam 2 miles every day, but I’d get reports that he was crawling out of the pool and acting strangely. Most of his days were spent sitting in a chair reading. He stopped driving. Our interactions were strained. He seemed confused, once asking me “how is our mother?” and making outlandish accusations. Dementia had taken hold. My father was disappearing.
He entered the VA Hospital in 2018 and never left. My father’s wife would not allow his sons to visit. We snuck in when we could anyway. He deteriorated bit by bit. By 2023, we had regained access to him via a sympathetic staff at the West Roxbury VA. He was non-responsive, in a persistent vegetative state. He’d had several strokes, suffered over a decade of dementia, and because he’d been lying in a bed for so long, he had horrifying wounds on his back side. Intubation turned to having a trach, which meant that he was sentenced to a ventilator permanently. A feeding tube and IV bags would be the source of nutrition for the remainder of his life.
I constantly advocated to anyone within earshot that this was not how he would have wanted to live, but no one who could do anything about it seemed to listen. He would spend the rest of his life in this tragically desperate state, plummeting in slow motion into a suspended existence that mocked everything he worked so hard to build. No matter how much the medical experts pleaded with his wife to accept that the treatment they were being forced to provide was inhumane, she steadfastly refused to allow him to meet the end of his life peacefully with dignity.
At last, his suffering is over. I loved my father, and I know he loved me and my brothers. I’ve been sad about our relationship for decades. Looking back, I try to edit out the fraught periods and concentrate on the positive, as he taught me to do on those runs together after the divorce. Today, when I’m running and the sun is just right, I see my father’s shadow, and I’m grateful he’s with me.
Godspeed, Dad.
