Writing was not my decision. It was my destiny.
As a 7-year-old, I would read the daily newspaper—The Washington Post—not even understanding much of it but drawn to it. The words, the stories, the things I could learn.
My grandfather was an avid reader, reading a novel a day in his retirement. He is one of the many of The Great War who may have gone on to do great things in life had his life not been interrupted as a teenager by being sent overseas to kill and to try and stay alive under insane circumstances.
Both my parents were English majors, having met at Hofstra University in a Shakespeare class. My father used to say that the famous writer, filmmaker, and director Francis Ford Coppola worked for him at one point. Last week, in thumbing through a 1958 Nexus college yearbook, I saw that my dad’s claim was more than a tall tale. There is is, in black and white: Editor-in-Chief -Edward Ormond, and Music-Drama Editor – Francis Ford Coppola.
Both Dad and Francis worked for the quarterly literary journal, the WORD. I loved the images in the yearbook of this studious but fun group who appear as if their jobs were the most important on the campus.
My father went on to write three full-length plays, which he later produced, directed, and even acted in. He wrote many one-act plays, and he did all this while working full-time as a planner at the Pentagon. I wonder what life would have been like for him if he had been able to write full time. He certainly had the talent.
But that’s only one side of my story. My mother, Flo Ormond, wrote, too. Starting in advertising in New York, she then moved to government work to follow my father in his early naval career. She was a brilliant publicist and found ways to let everyone in the community know about the local theater company my parents belonged to and about that theater’s productions. She ended up monetizing her writing talent by becoming a technical writer and editor for the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, better known as NASA.
It’s no wonder I chose to be an English major in college, which later expanded to an English and Mass Communications major. My father unfortunately passed before I wrote my first book, but my mother was there to support me in what became my second career as a writer. I’m not sure I could have done it without her.
Some people fight their destinies, while others embrace them. Although my first career as a naval officer was far more practical than my second as a writer, I believe the writer in me was always there. And now, in the final stretch of my life, I get to come full circle and read like my grandfather did, write like both my parents did, and learn every day from the words and people around me. And just maybe, I can be lucky enough to encourage others to share their words, too.
Life has a way of reminding us what we should be doing. There’s a reason I stumbled across that 68-year-old yearbook this week, reminding me that words are a big part of who I am. In the words of Francis Ford Coppola himself:
“You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you’ll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost.”
I couldn’t agree more with this famous icon whom I never met, but who shared a place and time with my father in the New York literary scene.
