Roll Call Tribute

Published in Dallas Morning News on July 15, 2018

Andy Konradi(1940 - 2018)
KONRADI, Andy October 14, 1940 - July 5, 2018 Our father often described himself as a Russian, a Yankee, an Aggie and a Lawyer. What he actually was, was a fighter. Not a brawler, though he did claim he once got in a fight with Jay of Jay and the Americans (This Magic Moment guy). He really fought his whole life. He lost his father when he was a few months old, having been dragged off to a Siberian concentration camp after the Soviets took over our dad's native Latvia, where he was born. He was forced to flee Latvia to Nazi Germany during WW II. During the war, he picked up machine guns off fallen soldiers, and he was only 5. He learned to smoke before he was 9. American GIs would toss kids cigarettes. Those days were spent in the Kleinkötz Latvian displaced persons camp that he grew up in with his mother and extended family until emigrating his way to the U.S. in 1949. By then, English was at least his fourth language, after Russian, Latvian and German. Yet somehow he integrated into his small-town New Jersey high school. He played football and basketball, two sports he had never seen five years before making the varsity. Played against NBA hall-of-famer Rick Barry in high school and earned basketball scholarship offers to Lehigh and Lafayette. But his real love was football, where he was a classic fullback-linebacker type for Roxbury Township's Gaels, where he was also voted best dancer. He ended up playing football at Pasadena City College in California before going on to Texas A&M, where a knee injury wrecked his career. Hey, it got him out of the Corps of Cadets. He never really did like authority. But he loved his Aggies. God, did he love the Aggies. And he devoured Aggie jokes. Did you hear the one about the Aggie who spent $100 to stay the night in a Warehouse? That was his go-to staple. He was an unlikely accounting major at A&M. If you knew him, that might be the most astounding feature on his life resume. Went to SMU law school. Met our mom, the former Becky Meyer, in a very unlikely pairing. She was a Highland Park-reared, Northwestern educated, football adverse woman, who could not be more different than he. But she was a romantic and loved the Russian language in a Cold War era when very few native Dallasites did. That was enough to bring them together. It wasn't enough to keep them together. She was intrigued by the notion of the hard-smoking, hard-drinking, Russian, football-playing tough guy, who also was really smart. Divorced by the mid 1970s, he remarried a couple years later to a former opera-singing Catholic nun, Lucy Martin. They stayed married for more than 30 years, until she succumbed to cancer a few years back. All the while, he practiced law as a criminal defense attorney. He fought for the little guys. Problem was those guys never seemed to pay him. Always a better attorney than a businessman. Settling into work life didn't settle him down. He was a recovering alcoholic, and proud to tell anyone about it, even when it embarrassed his teenage kids, something in which he took great joy. Like the time he showed up in a client's tricked-out El Camino to pick up his kids from McCulloch Middle School. His dating advice to his teenage sons was comical and sometimes curious. But that was Dad. Always a jokester. Somehow, he kicked most of his addictions, quitting the bottle and kicking tobacco after decades of smoking with the windows closed in the Griswold family truckster. Yet those vacations driving to America's national parks reflected his love of nature. Those trips were some of the defining moments of our childhood. He was always much happier outdoors than in the courtroom. His greatest sense of peace was aboard his 1956 Ford tractor mowing the pastures at the farm. He left wide swaths of wild flowers untouched. He could name every species. Dad never really conquered his weight problems. He tried every diet but finally decided on gastric bypass more than a decade ago. It went horribly awry. Sepsis set in leaving him hospitalized for nearly a year and blind. It was then he really became a fighter. For the last many years of his life he practiced law, without eyesight. He led this last decade by example. We had it easy growing up. He didn't. And he didn't die easily. Dad married again. This time to Jacqueline Pham, a beautiful woman who didn't bargain for the myriad of health problems he would suffer. They had plans of traveling together that really never matured. He could be one tough codger in later life. But she always stood by his side. And he was devoted to her in the ways he could. He adored her kids and grandkids as much as his own. His eight grandkids by his first marriage called him Popka. That was as simple as putting the Russian diminutive "ka" on the end of Pop. A fun nickname. But depending on how it's pronounced, it means someone's rear end in Russian. Hardly a grandfatherly name. But he reveled in it. He was a great son to his mom, our Babushka, whom he called every day of her life and shared that indescribable bond of fleeing war-torn Europe with only what they could carry. Our generation can't really imagine. Rachmaninov was a relative. So was a minister to Czar Nicholas II and multiple generations of decorated military men. But there was nothing pretentious about him. He was a common man, a diehard Rangers fan and more knowledgeable about Aggie football recruiting than any blind guy, ever. If it seems like this paints a picture of a deeply complex man, then you're correct. Beyond the Russian, Yankee, Aggie, Lawyer, he was a friend to so many, in countless circles of immigrants, accused criminals, judges, lawyers and poker players. He was a country boy at heart. He was our dad. And we will miss him dearly. Bog ctaboy (God bless!). Sons Mark, Brian and Michael and other family members will gather near Nacogdoches to celebrate our dad's life later this month. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Andy's honor to . Or, please pass along your best Aggie joke.