Looking for something else, I ran across my birth certificate this morning. I noticed the name of the attending physician, one Adolph J. Padalik, M.D. He was our family doctor until we moved to a new town when I was six. There are a couple stories involving him that my mother would tell, and on the rare occasions when his name came up, my father would always nod his head and say, "Yeah, Old Padalik." I don't really remember him at all, but because of my father saying that, I've always had a mental picture of him as an old man.
On a whim, I Googled the name and found the guy's obituary. I was surprised to see he died only five years ago at the age of 92. That means he was only 31 when I was born and, in fact, was actually three years younger than my father. Maybe my father was thinking "Good Ol' Padalik" and truncated it.
One of my mother's stories about Dr. Padalik concerned his coming to her bedside after I was born and telling her that her husband would be in shortly to see her. "Now, no matter what he says," the doctor told her earnestly, "I know he was very concerned about you."
She didn't understand what he meant by that until later when she discovered that when the doctor had gone to the waiting room full of nervous, pacing husbands to tell my father the news, he found him slouched in a chair fast asleep.
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