I didn’t have grandparents or aunts, uncles or even cousins present in my life growing up. Many of them made that choice to not be present despite living in the same town.
Do I wish I had a relationship with them? Maybe, yet I can’t miss something I’ve never had. My family has always been my parents, siblings and their partners, as well as my niece.
For my dad, family is the most important thing to him. Cutting off contact with one of his sisters over a comment she made about me was the hardest thing for him to do.
“Yeah, I wish she would have been different,” he said in a tone of disappointment
“But she’s not so and she doesn’t resent what she did. So there’s nothing I could do about that.”
My dad, Joseph G. DoPadre Jr. was born November 29, 1959, in Forth Monmouth, New Jersey. He was a military kid, his father Joseph DoPadre Sr. was in the Army, having served in World War 2, Korea and Vietnam.
My dad lived in Georgia and Florida before eventually calling Flagstaff home in the 6th grade. His dad retired from the Army and started working at the US Geological Survey, while his mom worked as a dental hygienist.
Moving for my dad wasn’t as difficult as I originally thought. He mentioned going to the local YMCA to play sports and joining Little League allowed him to make new friends.
“Almost every weekend we’d get together just to go hit the baseball,” my dad said. “Baseball was probably the main thing out there in my neighborhood.” My dad played a variety of sports, but baseball was his favorite. He mentioned that his mom would often take the “dad role” since his dad couldn’t always be there, mentioning she never missed one of his games.
Growing up, my dad never missed any of my games. I remember him being at every basketball and volleyball game in middle school. In high school, he was at every football game and marching band competition I had, and never missed a winter performance.
Even in college, my parents got ASU football season tickets just to watch me perform with the color guard. They even made the trip to Las Vegas just to watch me perform in the Las Vegas Bowl.
My dad graduated from Coconino High School in 1978. He then attended NAU for the next two years. My dad was an undecided major. He thought of becoming a P.E. teacher, but those plans didn’t pan out.
One memory from college he is proud of was when he tried out for the NAU baseball team as a walk-on. My dad mentioned he had a friend on the team who convinced him to try out. My dad was expecting to get cut much earlier than he did, making it through four out of the six rounds of cuts.
“It got me to grow up and, you know, appreciate sports and appreciate the competition out there,” he said.
My dad didn’t graduate from NAU as he got accepted into the academy where he became an Arizona State Trooper in the latter part of 1980. The inspiration to become a State Trooper came from his experience as a member of the explorer group, which was a mix of Flagstaff Police and State Troopers.
“Academy was rough,” he said. “This Academy was very rough from the very beginning to, you know, to the end.”
My dad described that the academy was very military-style. Mentioning they were yelling and screaming at you from the moment you woke up, till the moment you went to bed. At first, it was overwhelming for my dad and he started to have doubts. His dad referred him to a friend who told him to stay up on academics and P.T., then they’ll lay off yelling at him. My dad did just that and went on to graduate from the academy.
During his 40-year-long career as a State Trooper, he experienced almost everything. When my dad first started he was around 21. He was excited to grow outside of Flagstaff and was stationed in Sierra Vista. His very first assignment was to go to the Morenci Copper Mine Strikes. His job was to make sure nothing happened between those striking, the scabs, and the mining companies.
My dad then spent time working in the gang units. Where he spent five years investigating the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle group and was eventually put on the FBI task force for narcotics. He wasn’t dealing with the street-level drug dealers, but rather multimillion-dollar narcotic activity. He investigated the Naco Drug Tunnel when it was discovered and even camped out on the side of a mountain to see where the drugs were being brought across the border.
This led to an offer of working intel in counterterrorism. My dad agreed to work the intel unit because it would mean he got to spend more time with his kids. Working intel is how he became part of the Governor’s team. Driving them around wherever they needed to go. He was one of the first responders when congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head. That would be the last case he’d work before he retired in June 2011.
Since then, he has worked as a Lieutenant at the Mariposa port of entry for ADOT, which he is still doing today. He checks semi trucks and makes sure they have the proper permits.
By the end of the year, he is planning on retiring from this position. My dad’s parents had separated in the early 2000s, which made it a challenge for my siblings to see their grandparents. His mom moved back to Florida before moving back to Sierra Vista. His dad moved to Lubbock and remarried.
On June 4, 2003, my dad’s mom lost her battle to cancer. “She ran the household. She took care of us,” my dad said.
I never got the chance to meet my grandmother. From the stories I’ve been told, I was the medicine she needed during her cancer treatments. Doctors had told my family she wasn’t going to make it to my birth in November of 2002, but she did make it to my birth and then a couple extra months. She was always there for her kids growing up and was there for her grandkids the best she could.
Fourteen years later, on January 15, 2017, his father passed away from cancer he got from Agent Orange.
“I always remember calling him up just after his medical treatment. They’d give him shots in the stomach, and he said it was always painful,” he said. “So I’d always talk to him, and you know, kind of get his mind off those shots.”
My dad now spends his free time with the dogs that replaced my siblings and me. A simple phrase my dad said to my siblings and me is “Always reach for the moon, and if you can’t ever get to the moon, grab a star.”
Learning more about my dad’s life and his experiences gave the phrase a new meaning to me.
