The Chief

1. A Father-Son Ballet of Intimacy and Distance.

At best, father and son, we behave like colleagues of long mutual experience: intimates and strangers at the same time.

Formal interactions. The author, Lance Morrow, describes his relationship with his father, Hugh Morrow, as a "wary ballet" characterized by formality, evasions, and long silences. Their conversations often revolved around a "third object," like politics or journalism, allowing for a "sidelong" warmth without direct emotional expression. This "emotional triangulation and distancing" was a deeply ingrained family style, where love was handled "covertly, surreptitiously."

Unspoken longing. Despite the emotional distance, Lance felt a profound, almost physical longing for his father, a "Telemachus" urge for heroic protection. He observed this same longing in his own sons and glimpsed it in his father's feelings for his grandfather. This unrequited passion sometimes led to anger and bewilderment, highlighting the complex, often painful, nature of their bond.

Generational shifts. Lance notes his father's physical diminishment with age, seeing him as "smaller now" compared to the mythic proportions of memory. This observation underscores a generational shift, where the child grows to meet the father, altering their perceived dynamic. Their shared rituals, like arranging flatware or discussing family, became subtle expressions of their unique, guarded connection.

2. Embracing the Father's Journalistic Calling.

I went into my father's trade. It did not occur to me to enter any other, to be anything else.

Following footsteps. Lance felt a compelling, almost fated, drive to enter journalism, his father's profession, seeing it as a "strategy of identity" and a basic longing. His first apprenticeship was at sixteen, working as a reporter-photographer for the Danville News, a small-town paper in rural Pennsylvania, mirroring his father's early career. This experience allowed him to "apprentice myself to the idea of my father."

Small-town journalism. In Danville, Lance learned the ropes of provincial journalism, from calling state police substations for accident reports to writing headlines. He found the task of fitting words into limited space "maddening, trivial and curiously interesting," a game that trained his mind to "get at essences." This early exposure to the craft, though rudimentary, laid the foundation for his future career.

Shared experiences. Weekends were spent returning to Washington to recount his journalistic learnings to his father, who would share his own memories of similar experiences in middle Pennsylvania. This ritual created a unique bond, as Lance felt he was "attempting to appropriate, to reconstruct almost, his earlier life, to lay my own upon the grid of his." This shared professional territory became a crucial avenue for connection.

3. Unearthing a Family History of Hidden Shadows.

The family past had always seemed to me a vaguely disreputable prehistory . . . something hidden, something that needed to be hidden: there seemed to be secrets there—humiliations, failures, shadows.

A guarded past. Lance's parents rarely discussed their past, treating it as a "door they did not open," which instilled in him a "vague, chronic sense of shame." His mother's "unhappy childhood" and "dark rages" about her father, Tom Vickers, hinted at a "dark, palpable force" that could "contaminate her vitality and sanity." This silence made the past feel like an "obscure midnight riot in a graveyard."

Paternal lineage. His father, however, presented his own childhood in Centre Hall, Pennsylvania, as an "American idyll," filled with stories of his father, Dr. Morrow, and his grandfather, Colonel Albert Morrow.

• Dr. Morrow: A country doctor, superb athlete, "unbelievable shot," and "a little remote" but with a "quizzical sweetness."
• Colonel Albert Morrow: A Civil War veteran and Indian fighter, known as "Old Iron Ass" for his endurance, who commanded black cavalry troops.

Contrasting narratives. The family history revealed both heroic figures and underlying struggles. Colonel Albert, despite his military prowess, faced humiliation and a "sidelong lucklessness." The Vickers family, once prosperous, experienced financial ruin and mental health crises, shaping Lance's mother's "unhappy childhood." These contrasting narratives of triumph and failure, often intertwined with silence and unspoken pain, deeply influenced Lance's understanding of his heritage.

4. The Allure and Cost of Power: Life with Rockefeller.

Nelson Rockefeller did have a second-rate intellect. But he also had a faulty intuition about people, I thought.

A powerful patron. Hugh Morrow's career shifted from journalism to politics, eventually leading him to work for Nelson Rockefeller for twenty-one years. Lance observed his father's progression from "speech writer" to "long-time Rockefeller intimate and adviser," marked by increasingly valuable Christmas gifts. Rockefeller's generosity, including significant loans that were later forgiven, highlighted his feudal approach to relationships.

Lance's ambivalence. Lance developed a complex, often negative, view of Rockefeller, seeing him as a "solipsist on a grand scale" and an "essentially feudal man" playing a democratic game. He resented Rockefeller's "high-handed seigneur" attitude and the way it positioned his father as a "servant." This dynamic fueled Lance's "hatred" for Rockefeller, despite acknowledging his "large gestures of decency."

Immunity and detachment. Rockefeller's life was characterized by an "effortless" existence, shielded from the "mess and struggle of the world" by wealth and power. Lance witnessed this firsthand, noting the constant limousines and private jets. This immunity, combined with Rockefeller's "hard American capacity in his eye," contributed to Lance's perception of him as an "ominous character" whose ambition and will could be "dangerous, obliterating."

5. Childhood's Crucible: Violence, Loss, and Belonging.

It was a peculiarity of our childhood, that almost unnatural longing. It was a secret of ours. The family was centrifugal, compulsively fleeing, incoherent, in a literal sense: it would not cohere.

A fractured home. Lance's childhood was marked by a "covertly violent" and "oddly formal" family environment where emotions were "nervously hidden." He and his brother Hughie were "borderline savages," expressing themselves through destructive acts, which their parents seemed to largely ignore. However, verbal transgressions, like using the word "fuck" or "nigger," provoked swift and violent physical reactions from his parents, leaving Lance confused about what was truly forbidden.

Charles Creek summer. A summer spent at a dilapidated cottage in southern Maryland, without electricity or running water, became a period of "banishment" for Lance and Hughie. Their mother, struggling, sent them away, leaving them to rely on their father's weekly visits and the kindness of the tenant farmer's family, Henry and Leona. This isolation fostered a sense of being "forsaken" and acutely aware of the "passage of time."

Lessons in survival. The Charles Creek experience exposed Lance to different social dynamics and harsh realities. He witnessed racial tensions, poverty, and the raw, unvarnished lives of the local community. Leona's protective matriarchy and her violent confrontation with "Captain Tom" over the boys' language taught Lance about the complex interplay of race, class, and authority, shaping his understanding of survival and justice.

6. A Convert's Zeal: Seeking Structure in the Church.

If my own father had seemed to me elusive—the admirable and vanishing man for whom I felt all through my childhood, intermittently, an almost orphan yearning—then here, abruptly in my life was a procession of Fathers: God the Father, Jesuit fathers, all of them insistently present and demanding, monitoring my behavior, inspecting my sins...

Mother's conversion. Lance's mother, seeking structure and meaning, converted to Catholicism, drawing him into the Church. This was a "magnificent novelty" for Lance, offering a "systematic totality" and a "daunting structure of authority" that contrasted sharply with his family's "devout worldliness" and his father's "Menckenesque disdain" for religious intoxication.

Jesuit discipline. Attending Gonzaga College High School, run by the Jesuits, was a "culture shock." The school's "hard, black puritanical energy" and "militarist discipline" were a stark contrast to public schools. The Jesuits, with their "spiritual core that was as hard as a stone," taught "aggressive humility" and transmitted a "black and alert kind of anger," shaping Lance's understanding of manhood and authority.

A search for the father. Lance's embrace of Catholicism was, in part, a "roundabout ritual way" of "looking for my father there, in larger and more reverberant form." The "procession of Fathers" in the Church provided a demanding, ever-present authority that his own "elusive" father often seemed to lack. This intense engagement with faith, however, eventually led to his "falling away," as his father's agnostic influence gradually reasserted itself.

7. The Treachery of Independence: Forging One's Own Path.

Independence seemed to demand an exercise of treachery: an odd logic, but one deeply embedded in the family.

Breaking free. Lance's departure from Gonzaga and his decision to attend Harvard, rather than a Catholic college, marked his "emancipation" from the Jesuits and the Church. This act of defiance, a "bridge-burning stunt," gave him "energetic nerve" and a sense of liberation from the "baleful arithmetic of venial and mortal sins." He felt "saved" and "invulnerable," though this freedom also brought a sense of being "foreign" to his former classmates.

European interlude. A summer in Europe, funded by his father, was a deliberate attempt to "break away" from his father's world and journalism. He sought out Eric O'Gowan, a friend of his mother's, a retired British general living in Ireland. Eric, a complex figure who had repudiated his Anglo-Irish heritage for a fervent Irish Catholic identity, became a temporary mentor, introducing Lance to a world of literature, history, and a different kind of "soldiering of the soul."

Artistic expression. Upon returning to his father's house in Yonkers, Lance channeled his experiences into a play, Foucheval, a "mock-metaphysical verse" about a megalomaniac sculptor. The play, a "highly elaborate and clumsily imagined fantasy of my father," was an "aggrandizement" and "assassination" of him, reflecting Lance's complex feelings and his struggle to define his own creative identity apart from his father's influence.

8. Confronting Mortality: Sickness, Death, and Survival.

Mike's death was such an outrage against nature that nothing of the kind would happen again, not for a long time.

Brother's demise. The death of Lance's younger brother, Mike, from cancer at seventeen, was a profound trauma. Mike's stoicism in the face of his "inevitable end" brought a "sad stillness and clarity" to the family's "awful business." Lance's recurring dreams of Mike, and his ritualistic, rage-filled visits to Mike's unmarked grave, reveal an enduring grief and a struggle to comprehend the "outrage against nature."

Personal brush with death. Years later, Lance experienced a heart attack in Kansas City, a "crushing pain" that left a piece of his heart dead. This event, which he initially regarded as a "dangerous prank," quickly turned into "deep terror." He felt his body betray him, becoming a "psychopathic stranger," and developed a "superstitious" fear of death, carrying nitroglycerine as a "rabbit's foot."

A father's immunity. Lance observed his father's "immunity from sickness" with a mix of childish wonder and perverse speculation, questioning if his father's good health came at the cost of his sons' illnesses. The "Dorian Gray effect" and the "crime against nature" of a father outliving his sons highlighted Lance's complex feelings about mortality, vulnerability, and the burdens of survival within the family.

9. The Paradox of Deference: A Son's Shame and Understanding.

What at last appalled me, profoundly, was my father's hireling deference in Rockefeller's presence.

Rockefeller's transformation. Over the years, Nelson Rockefeller, once seen as a "fresh and full of energy" liberal aristocrat, seemed to Lance to change, developing a "grim and punitive side." His immense appetite for power, thwarted presidential ambitions, and increasingly "hard, vindictive and even irrational" behavior, earned him the private nickname "Fang" among his staff. Lance witnessed Rockefeller's "peculiarity" firsthand, including his paranoid accusations of Communists on Capitol Hill.

Father's deference. Lance found his father's "hireling deference" in Rockefeller's presence deeply "appalling" and "humiliating." He saw an "anxiousness, a watchfulness" in his father's eyes that he "hated to associate with my idealized father." This dynamic led Lance to believe that Rockefeller "cost my father something of his manhood," transforming him into a "pageboy or, more closely, his Polonius."

A son's judgment. This perceived subservience, coupled with his father's "too quick, too loud" laugh at Rockefeller's jokes and his "press agent's deference" to Time's managing editor, caused Lance "shame" in the presence of his peers. He felt a "strange configuration" where Rockefeller became his father's father, demanding and beneficent, while Lance, in turn, judged his own father harshly, reflecting the complex and often painful interplay of filial piety and professional observation.

10. Legacies Intertwined: The Enduring Cycle of Generations.

I wondered how my heart attack, Mike's illness, may have reverberated in my father—the children falling by the wayside while the father goes on.

Generational echoes. Lance reflects on the cyclical nature of family relationships and the enduring impact of the past. His own heart attack and Mike's death made him ponder how these events "reverberated" in his father, creating a sense of "Oedipus thwarted by Darwin." He questions if his father's survival felt like a "crime against nature" while his sons faced mortality.

The search for connection. Despite the emotional distance and past grievances, Lance and his siblings shared a "strange longing" for their father, a mix of "longing and grievance all entangled." This complex love manifested in shared rituals, like his father's "idiot delight in cars" passed to Mike, or the "primitive, Scots-Irish tribal quality" of family gatherings where they "all became one another" in a "communion of memory."

Acceptance and continuity. Lance's eventual return to the Church, albeit a "sweeter and softer place," was partly for his son, Jamie, signifying a shift from seeking authority to embracing a "medium through which the soul might aspire." He observes his father's "remote and faintly amused irony" at Jamie's first communion, recognizing the enduring patterns of their relationship and the continuous, evolving legacy passed through generations.