ANN ARBOR, MI – It’s easy for many of us to be sentimental about Father’s Day, and remember the times when Dad taught you to play catch, took you fishing, took you to the daddy-daughter dance.
But what if your father was a larger-than-life genius, with an extremely complicated personality and an ego to match?
That’s one of the threads Detroit area media legend Harvey Ovshinsky explores in a compelling new book, Scratching the Surface, (Wayne State Press, 2021) that is part a coming-of-age story, and partly a history of some very turbulent times.
But it also is a look at a fascinating father-son relationship. There has literally never been anyone like Stan Ovshinsky, who was born to immigrant parents in Akron in 1922, barely made it through high school — and then defied the scientific establishment to become one of the greatest American scientists and inventors of his time.
Among his creations is the nickel-metal-hydride battery that powers virtually every laptop and cell phone in the world; the liquid crystal technology that made flat screen television possible – modern solar cells, hydrogen fuel cells, and much more.
He had more than a thousand patents. Famous scientists from Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, to I.I. Rabi came to consult with him; the word ovonics, a branch of electronics he created, is in most standard dictionaries. Before he died in 2012, there was a serious effort to have him awarded the Nobel Prize.
Being the son of a great and famous man has never been easy; think of the troubled lives the children of celebrities from Bobby Kennedy to Winston Churchill have lived.
But Harvey O, as he is often called, was no slouch himself. Now 73, he’s been somewhat famous since 1965, when, at 17, he founded The Fifth Estate, one of the nation’s first and most famous radical or “underground” newspapers (it still exists on the internet.)
He went on to help redefine what radio could be at WABX-FM, and then became a master storyteller, an Emmy award-winning producer of documentary films for several Detroit TV stations. Later, he turned to screenwriting and founded a successful production company, HKO Media.
But he was not his father, and perhaps the secret to his success was that he did not try to be. “He was a genius, and I am not and don’t need to be a genius. He wanted to heal the world, save the world, and he was very sincere about that. But he was also a complete narcissist,”Ovshinsky said.
“He was very generous, and always supported what I was doing. But his work and his needs came first. “There was a price to be paid for that –and I was not willing to pay the price.”
However, Harvey did pay a price. When he was seven, his father met Iris Miroy, a biologist with a Ph.D, at a party, and left Harvey’s mother Norma for her, apparently without any thought of what that might do to his children. What followed was what he called “the seven years’ war,” in which his bitter mother used Harvey as a pawn.
Harvey met the love of his life in his early 20s, and has been happily married to the former Cathie Kurek for nearly half a century. But for years, he was haunted by the fear that one day too he would run off with another woman against his will. “I was certain that would happen,” and that fear took years of therapy to overcome.
Iris was, by all accounts, the love of his father’s life. But after she died in a freak swimming accident in 2006, Stan married again, almost immediately, which shocked and upset his son.
“My father needed to be adored, to be worshiped,” Harvey said. “I loved my father, but I did not worship him. I didn’t know how.”
But he did know how to honor him. When Stan Ovshinsky was dying of complications of prostate cancer, his son helped organize a giant pre-birthday celebration in which everyone from prominent scientists to labor leaders and a U.S. senator spoke.
When Stan finally died, a month short of his 90th birthday, Harvey felt, as the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, “Death not merely ends life, it also bestows on it a silent completeness.”
He noted wryly that his father wouldn’t have felt that way. “All he really wanted to do is continue the struggle and live to fight another day,” he wrote. “Dad was a swashbuckler, a brilliant, trailblazing adventurer who loved every minute of his charmed life.”
Harvey Ovshinsky did not cry when his father died. But he did six years later, when he discovered a note in his father’s personal files that said, “I would fly anywhere to have seen and heard Harvey tonight. He not only has great talent but true depth…
“I am proud of him, not only as a son, but as a person. I am happy to have lived to have seen him with his wisdom and maturity.”
Nearly a decade later, the son reflected that the great man loved Father’s Day. “Our relationship was deep and complicated and, at times, certainly conflicted. But there was nothing complicated or conflicted about our love for each other.”
Today Harvey has an accomplished son and daughter of his own. They will honor him tomorrow, and he, no doubt, will think of the larger-than-life man who was his dad.
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