SubscribeAnn Coulter’s Moving Tribute To Her Father
From AnnCoulter.com:
JOHN VINCENT COULTER
January 9, 2008
Ann Coulter
The longest baby ever born at the Albany, N.Y., hospital, at least as of May 5, 1926, who grew up to be my strapping father, passed away last Friday morning.
As Mother and I stood at Daddy’s casket Monday morning, Mother repeated his joke to him, which he said on every wedding anniversary until a few years ago when Lewy bodies dementia prevented him from saying much at all: “54 years, married to the wrong woman.” And we laughed.
John Vincent Coulter was of the old school, a man of few words, the un-Oprah, no crying or wearing your heart on your sleeve, and reacting to moments of great sentiment with a joke. Or as we used to call them: men.
When he was moping around the house once, missing my brother who had just gone back to college, he said, “Well, if you had cancer long enough, you’d miss it.”
He’d indicate his feelings about my skirt length by saying, “You look nice, Hart, but you forgot to put on your skirt.”
Of course, he did show strong emotion when The New York Post would run a photo of Teddy Kennedy saying the rosary. I can still see the look of disgust. I saw that face in “How To Read People Like a Book” and it was NOT a good chapter.
Your parents are your whole world when you are a child. You only recognize what is unique about them when you get older and see how the rest of the world diverges from your standard of normality.
So it took me awhile to realize that by telling my friends that Father was an ex-FBI agent and a union-buster whose hobbies included rebuilding Volkswagens and shooting squirrels in our backyard, I was painting the image of a rough Eliot Ness type, rather than the cheerful, funny raconteur they would meet.
Besides being very funny, Father had an absolutely straight moral compass without ever being preachy or judgmental or even telling us in words. He just was good.
He would return to a store if he was given too much change — and this was a man who was so “thrifty,” as we Scots like to say, he told us he wanted to be buried in two cardboard boxes from the A&P rather than pay for a coffin.
When I was bombarded with arguments for baby-killing as a kid, I asked Father about the old chestnut involving a poverty-stricken, unwed teenage girl who gets pregnant. (This was before they added the “impregnated by her own father” part.) Father just said, “I don’t care. If it’s a life, it’s a life.” I’m still waiting to hear an effective counterargument.
Father hated puffery, pomposity, snobbery, fake friendliness, fake anything. Like Kitty’s father in “Anna Karenina,” he could detect a substanceless suitor in a heartbeat. (They were probably the same ones who looked nervous when I told them Father was ex-FBI and liked to shoot squirrels in the backyard.)
He hated unions because of their corrupt leadership, ripping off the members for their own aggrandizement. But he had more respect for genuine working men than anyone I’ve ever known. He was, in short, the molecular opposite of John Edwards.
Father didn’t care what popular opinion was: There was right and wrong. I don’t recall his ever specifically talking about J. Edgar Hoover or Joe McCarthy, but we knew he thought the popular histories were bunk. That’s why “Treason” was dedicated to him, the last book of mine he was able to read.
When Father returned from the war, he used the G.I. Bill to complete college and law school in three years. In order to get to law school quickly, he chose the easiest college major — a major that so impressed him, he told my oldest brother that if he ever took one single course in sociology, Father would cut off his tuition payments.
As a young FBI agent fresh out of law school, one of Father’s first assignments was to investigate job applicants at a uranium enrichment plant, the only suitable land for which was apparently located on some property owned by the then-vice president, Alben Barkley, in Paducah, Ky.
One day, a group of FBI agents saw the beautiful Nell Husbands Martin at lunch with her mother. They asked the waitress for her name and flipped a coin to see who could ask her out first. Father lost the coin toss, so he paid off the other agents. And that’s how Nell became my mother.
Mother swore she’d never marry a drinker, a smoker or a Catholic, and she got all three, reforming Father on all but the Catholicism. Even in foreign countries where none of us spoke the language, Father went to Mass every Sunday until the very end.
Of course, toward the end, he probably didn’t even remember he was a Catholic. But on the bright side, he didn’t remember that Teddy Kennedy was a Catholic, either.
Father spent most of his nine-year FBI career as a Red hunter in New York City.
He never talked much about his FBI days. I learned that he worked on the Rudolf Abel case — the highest-ranking Soviet spy ever captured in U.S. history — during one of my brother’s eulogies on Monday. But when Father read a paper I wrote at Cornell defending McCarthy and came across the name William Remington, he told me that had been his case.
Father mostly had contempt for Soviet spies. In addition to damaging information, such as military plans and nuclear secrets, the spies also collected massive amounts of utterly useless information on things like U.S. agricultural production. These were people who looked at a flush toilet like it was a spaceship.
He told me Soviet spies reveled in the whole cloak-and-dagger aspect of espionage. One spy gave weirdly specific details to a contact before their first meeting: He would have the New York Herald Tribune folded three times, tucked under his left elbow at a particular angle.
When the spy walked into the hotel lobby for the rendezvous, Father nearly fell off his chair when the man with the Herald Tribune folded under his elbow just so … was also wearing a full-length fur coat. But he couldn’t have told his contact: “I’ll be the only white man in North America wearing a full-length fur coat.”
In the early 1980s, as vice president and labor lawyer for Phelps Dodge copper company, Father broke a strike against the company, which culminated in the largest union decertification ever — at that time and perhaps still. President Reagan had broken the air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981. But unions recognized that it was the breaking of the Phelps Dodge strike a few years later that landed the greater blow, as described in the book “Copper Crucible.”
There was massive violence by the strikers, including guns being fired into the homes of the mine employees who returned to work. Every day, Father walked with the strikebreakers through the picket line, (in my mind) brushing egg off his suit lapel.
By 1986 it was over; the mineworkers voted against the union and Phelps Dodge was saved. For any liberals still reading, this is what’s known as a “happy ending.”
To Mother’s lifelong consternation — until he had dementia and she could get him back by smothering him with hugs and kisses — Father wasn’t demonstrative. But all he wanted was to be with Mother (and to work on his Volkswagens). They traveled the world together, went to DAR conventions together, engaged in Republican politics together and went to the New York Philharmonic together — for three decades, their subscription seats were on the highest landing, or as we Scots call it, the “Music Lovers” level.
When Mother was in a rehabilitative facility briefly after surgery a few years ago and Father was not supposed to be driving, we were relieved that a snowstorm had knocked out the power to the garage door opener, so Daddy couldn’t get to the car. It would just be a week and then Mother would be home.
My brother came home to check on Father the first day of this arrangement to find that he had taken an ax to the side door of the garage, so he could drive to the rehab center and sit with Mother all day.
When she left him for five days last summer to go to a family reunion in Kentucky, at some point, Father, who hadn’t been able to speak much anymore, looked up and asked his nurse, “Where is she?”
And last Friday morning at 2 he passed away, in his bedroom with Mother. The police and firemen told my brother that they kept trying to distract Mother to keep her away from the bedroom with Father’s body, but she kept padding back into the bedroom to be close to him.
Now Daddy is with Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan. I hope they stop laughing about the Reds long enough to talk to God about smiting some liberals for me.
I think any man would be honored to have had that written about him.
I know I would.
36 Responses to “Ann Coulter’s Moving Tribute To Her Father”
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January 9th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Very touching! (Very personal for Coulter, as well.)
January 9th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Rest in Peace, John Vincent Coulter. You did your job - as a man, but more importantly, as a father - well. Prayers are with you and your family, Ann.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
I think I can safely speak for all the “troops” here on your site -admirers of Ms. Coulter or not- when I ask you to please pass on our condolences, Steve.
That was a fine tribute.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Mr. Coulter sounds like he was a good guy…the world is the richer for having him around, and the poorer now that he is gone.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Heaven just got a little richer.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
WOW , Ms. Coulter has my families condolences and prayers . After reading that , I can only say her best work is in front of her . Her father did very well indeed .
January 9th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Condolences to Ann, her family and friends.
Ann’s eulogy says it all.
January 9th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
The best tribute a man can have is for his children to be proud of him.
RIP Mr. Coulter, you did good.
January 9th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
What a beautiful tribute!
Thoughts and prayers to Ann Coulter, her family and friends.
January 9th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
My old man passed away 16 years ago and a day still doesn’t go by that I don’t miss him. Deepest condolences, Ann, your dad was quite a guy.
January 9th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Ann was lucky to have such a man for her father, as she makes clear in her tribute. Prayers and best wishes to you and your family, Ann.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
That was just so wonderful. My best wishes for you, and gratitude that you shared such a moving tribute with all of us.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Ann is a wonderful writer, woman, American, and daughter. I hope she finds a man one day that can live up to her dad. It’s hard for brilliant women to find men smarter than they are, though that is exactly what they (okay, we) most want and need. Thank God, I found mine.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
It’s hard for brilliant women to find men smarter than they are
Mrs 1st found one.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Wow…that’s amazing.
Praying for you, Ann, and your family.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
What DW said. RIP Mr. Coulter.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Although most if not all of us don’t know Ann Coulter or her family personally, it feels personal because most of us have or had parents like this. They taught us the difference between right and wrong and truth and BS and they are or were unwavering in living their lives according to these principles. It might be the current fasion but if it was wrong they weren’t buying it, and if we knew what was good for us we weren’t either. Thank God for people like Ann Coulter’s parents, and my parents (probably your parents too). They probably already know how you feel, but if your parents are still alive, it wouldn’t hurt to tell them how much you appreciate what they taught you about these things. Go ahead and make them feel proud of what a good job they did bringing you up, even if it does feel a little awkward!
January 9th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
What better legacy could a fine man leave than his daughter, Ann Coulter?
January 9th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I shudder to think of the vile things that will be said about her and her father on all the left-wing blogs after this.
January 9th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Great advise, take_no_prisoners.
I have a great Dad, he’s of that WWII Greatest Generation logic and life view. Even though I think about how lucky I am to have such a wonderful Dad, I had never verbalized that to him. I decided to make a point of telling him just that last Father’s Day. I think we do forget to tell the people that are important in our lives, just how much they mean to us sometimes.
Life is too short to be small!
January 10th, 2008 at 1:06 am
The quiet Dad that always provides for his family . The quiet Dad that made you feel and be safe .
The quiet Dad that helped you with major decisions and endeavours . The quiet Dad that went to war and said nothing . The quiet Dad that would tell an irreverent joke at just the wrong moment . I was blessed with the same type of quiet Dad . I hope as a society we can measure up to their sacrifices and morals .
tsp and tnp , do it before it’s to late .
January 10th, 2008 at 1:31 am
If my daughter is able to write something half this good about me someday, I will have lived a better life than most men and a hell of a lot better life than I deserved.
RIP, Mr. Coulter.
January 10th, 2008 at 2:47 am
God be with you and your family, Ann. I hope and pray that you receive the comfort and peace that you need, from your friends, family and the Angels encamped around you. It’s no wonder that you’ve wound up with this plethora of gifts, after reading this beautiful tribute to your father.
PS> I agree with stud-muffin, regarding the assault and mockery that is surely coming right now. But, well, WHO GIVES A Dahmer about truth-killers like that?
January 10th, 2008 at 3:00 am
Here are just a few of the comments that you’d see, written under a “fake” news story, in 2006, where the writer claimed that Ann Coulter Died, Sep. 21, 2006, with tons of malicious hating in the article, and some actual quotes from Ann, herself. Here is the story link…….. http://www.infoshop.org/inews/.....1100249306 ….And here are some of the comments under the fake story………..
PS> forgive the language, it’s not my job to edit their words, eh?
Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 10:17 AM PDT
Fucking good.
[ Reply to This | # ]
Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 10:17 AM PDT
When I first saw it I thougt it was true,
It was really disapionting to find out it wasnt.
Don’t Play Me Like That!
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Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Admin on Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 10:25 AM PDT
LOL. This got several hearty laughs out of me.
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Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 12:12 PM PDT
WTF.
Chuck, quit playin games with my heart.
I actually gave up reading the piece after a lil bit because I didn’t find it entertaining. Dammit, I was so happy for a second….
–Dr. Anarchist
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Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Tedster on Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 01:41 PM PDT
My thought was that there really is a God. Oh well. we can dream can’t we?
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Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 02:40 PM PDT
i felt like a total moron after reading the headline, calling my friends over to have a party, only to have to call them back 5 minutes later and tell them the news is false….lesson learned…but dont fuck with my head again!
[ Reply to This | # ]
Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 02:47 PM PDT
yes, I already have party plans for the Dick Cheney Heart attack party.
[ Reply to This | # ]
Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 03:45 PM PDT
how about, we just pretend that she’s dead and act accordingly?
[ Reply to This | # ]
Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 03:50 PM PDT
She’s the living dead. Zombie-ass mofo.
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Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 04:40 PM PDT
i think you’re onto something.
[ Reply to This | # ]
Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 21 2006 @ 06:02 PM PDT
Perhaps this would be better suited to go under “Weird” than “Right Wing Nuts”.
Hrmph!
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Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 22 2006 @ 10:35 AM PDT
Maybe if this was true…
[ Reply to This | # ]
Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 22 2006 @ 11:10 AM PDT
posting fake news undermines the legitimacy of this site
[ Reply to This | # ]
Ann Coulter, 43 or 45, Conservative Commentator, Dies
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 22 2006 @ 12:06 PM PDT
I still want to know about Abe Vigoda!
January 10th, 2008 at 3:08 am
SG, since you’ve been linked to by Ann in the past, I’m hoping you have the ability to personally convey to her the absolute deepest condolences of myself and all the rest of your readers and contributors at S&L.
January 10th, 2008 at 9:04 am
About a year ago she had a link to a funny obit, it is real too .
Everyone needs humor to stem grief
http://tinyurl.com/fk4nr
January 10th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I only got to this piece today (Thursday), but it brought tears to my eyes. A beautiful tribute by a beautiful woman who seems to have picked up a lot of beautiful traits from her father. We should all be so lucky.
January 10th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Very moving and very spot on commentary. RIP Mr. Coulter and thank you for your service to your country, in more than one way!
January 10th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
My family’s condolences to Ann Coulter, her mother Nell and brother. Please SG, pass this on to her in any way possible.
I read the book - Hero Mama and it took much longer to read, as the author lost her father as a young child - I was drawn back to the death of my father (it will be 40 years ago this August) much more than I ever expected. Reading Ann’s tribute to her father did that to me again - it was as though reading about my father (other than the Catholic, Dad was a Methodist). I must go wipe my eyes now, it must be raining here.
January 11th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Ann - If you’re reading this, my heart is with you. My Dad too is my hero & I’m with him to the end. Of course, our family line for old timers is “only the good die young.” My Dad’s 91. We always ate well the day after the Lions Club meeting because Dad always won the fifty bucks for best joke.
Don’t Ever Change. Love your books.
January 11th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Some condolences from the folks over at Free Dominion:
Thought I’d pass them on.
January 11th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
“Thought I’d pass them on.”
I’ve passed the link on to AC.
Thanks, DW.
January 12th, 2008 at 12:13 am
SG & Ann.
I tucked my folks in tonight. Gave ‘em ice cream & and a good night kiss. God IS love. Pass It On!
January 12th, 2008 at 3:08 am
R B . Your 12:13 am post is different . Are your parents infirm or have special needs ? If so , maybe I can be of some assistance . My Mother left with cancer and Dad with some form of dementia , both were cruel to them , and family . If your taking care of your parents ,,, I’m with ya ! It’s the only honorable thing too do .
January 12th, 2008 at 4:37 am
Such loss is inevitable, and not enviable. A moving tribute to a man much loved, and now missed. Prayers and condolences for Ms. Coulter, who brought me here in the first place.
January 12th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Most sincere Condolences,
40 years 4 months ago my ex-FBI Dad died suddenly @ 56 a coronary September 2nd 1968. Labor Day
His FBI spirit will always be with us ….
Being an FBI brat myself, I hope they put Ann’s very nice article in the grapevine magazine, for retired FBI agents. My dad worked on a spy case too, he was an agent in Boston and Detroit late 30’s. I have his yearly raise letters from JEdger . Dad made about 32 hundred bucks a year in the FBI. They were real men catching real commies ….
I remember his 38 Special he kept it in the third drawer.
I used to sneak in a look at it, but being very very careful, like it was going to jump up and shoot something. For a long time I wouldn’t touch it, probably thinking my dad would get my fingerprints off from it ….
I have some really neat pictures of my Dad and other agents on the firing range, I think they liked to pose with guns and cars ….Years later he’s say “ Ready on the Right …. Ready on the Left …Ready on the Firing Range …… Fire ! Of course I would have to ask him to do it again ……
He Loved to do that, in fact some of his friends got’ the FBI crouch’ with the hand and arm out like you’re firing a gun …If you could imagine a 50 something man acting like he was playing ‘guns’ with the neighborhood kids ….
He would put the brakes on in the car, so everyone would jerk forward and then tell everyone …to stop dragging their feet…He thought that was so funny..
40 years and I can still remember him like he was just here….
My dinner prayer always ends with May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen