First person: Pete Van Wieren

In his new memoir “Of Mikes and Men: A Lifetime of Braves Baseball,” veteran broadcaster Pete Van Wieren describes growing up without a father. His dad died in World War II, he was told.

At age 16, Van Wieren learned his father had abandoned his mom before his birth in 1944. He pieced together some of Howard Van Wieren’s life, but son and dad never met.

Recently Pete Van Wieren provided more details of finding closure with his dad, and a photo, that is not in his book.

By Pete Van Wieren

For the AJC

The only thing I ever saw that made me know my dad existed was that picture. Whenever I saw it, the first thing that crossed my mind would be, “What caused him to do what he did? To just abandon everything?”

When I first found out he hadn’t died in the war, that he did something probably that shamed the whole family, there was a natural curiosity. I had a great desire to find him.

As a broadcaster, every time I was in a new city for football, basketball or baseball games, I picked up the telephone book. Van Wieren is an unusual last name. Every once in a while there would be one, but never an “H” or “Howard.”

There were stories of Latin American baseball players who all of a sudden found their fathers in New York or Los Angeles and they’d have a reunion. I envisioned something like that.

I wondered if he would see me on TV or hear my name mentioned and try to get in touch. Besides one phone call just after I was born, nobody heard from him, including his own parents, who I only met once, in 1963. Even they were ashamed of him.

My desire to find him changed after we had our kids (Jon in 1967 and Steven in 1970). I began to see what he ran away from, all the joy and respect of being a father. My curiosity turned more to anger. Why would anyone walk away from this kind of life?

I was motivated to succeed anyway, but part of me felt, “I’m not going to turn out like him. I will prove that I can be somebody other than what he is.”

If I had found him, I knew there would never have been any reconciliation. I already knew that ending before I knew his whole story.

Finally in 1996 we got the documents that showed that he had died in Manhattan in 1971, all but homeless. He was picked up on the streets right before he died.

I tried unsuccessfully to visit his grave. He was buried in Potter’s Field on Hart Island, a few miles from Manhattan. The graves are unmarked, and the island is inaccessible to the public.

The closest thing was the public housing where he last lived, on Madison Avenue. The team bus passed it going to Yankee Stadium, and I always sat where I could see it. I would shake my head in dismay and think about the man who my mother, aunts and uncles had described as handsome and personable, with all this potential. He just let it go.

Like my mother said the other day: Isn’t it amazing how such an insignificant little man could have caused so much pain and anger to so many people?

His absence shaped me as a father. I was determined my sons would not experience the same thing I had.

On Father’s Day, I was usually doing a game, and that was a bit of a strange day. The business I was in was particularly centered on fathers and sons.

There was Ernie Johnson Sr., who would call his dad “the old Swede,” and Ernie Johnson Jr. Then there was Skip, Chip and Harry Caray. Don Sutton talked about his father in Alabama and Joe Simpson about his dad in Oklahoma.

I was never able to participate in those conversations. That was a little awkward.

I tried to stay as close to my kids as I can, and I still do. Not a week goes by where I don’t see one or both of my sons and my grandkids, who live in the Atlanta area. We go to soccer games, dinner, on trips.

I think now more about how my dad’s absence affected my mother, Ruth, who at 92 is still going strong. She had to carry his child and raise me without any support from him. She has been a strong person who overcame that and went on to live a very happy life. She was an inspiration for me to work hard.

I don’t know what my dad would have thought about me. I was fortunate to do what I wanted to do as a kid, and do it a long time at a high level -- 33 seasons with the Braves. Maybe it was just as well that he wasn’t around. He might have been a bad influence. There’s just no telling.

My uncles helped raise me, along with my grandfather, Wilbur Jardine, who was a mechanic at a lumber supply in Rochester, N.Y. Everyone in our house worked, and it was just an assumption that if you are going to get ahead, you have to work at it.

As a broadcaster, I’ve gotten to know the players and their families. There are so many with strong fathers, like Chipper Jones, Brian McCann and Jeff Francoeur.

But there are also so many people out there who don’t have fathers. Maybe one of them will read this, and I want them to know this: You can still be successful without that. I never had a strong father, or any father, but it didn’t hold me back.