Gary Jaworski

An international expert in nonprofit organizations, Gary D. Jaworski, Ph.D. is President of Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation. Before becoming a nonprofit executive, Dr. Jaworski enjoyed a rewarding 20-year career as an academic sociologist, college professor, and author. He received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and recognition in Who’s Who in the East and Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers.

Articles:

Dear Dad Letters: From a Bereaved Son

Panic Attack Dear Dad, Tonight I went to a play at the Shakespeare Theater with my wife and a friend. We sat in the middle of the theater. I have a severe panic attack and insist on leaving the theater. “Can’t you stay?” “The play hasn’t even started yet!” Disappointment and anger. I remember earlier episodes in movie theaters where I felt intense anxiety just sitting in the theater. They don’t understand, and neither do I … for a while. Then it occurs to me: we’re in a theater and death is right behind us! Dear Dad, A work colleague took me to the emergency room […]

Dear Dad Letters: Nights After Death

Dreams Dear Dad, I’ve been having this recurring dream. I am sitting alone in a movie theater, about halfway down the theater. A movie is playing on the screen, but I can’t make out which one. I turn around and see lots of people standing and talking to each other along the side and back aisles. They are not seated; that privilege is reserved for the living. It is the dead who crowd the standing-room-only aisles, looking on at the movie and on those of us who sit. Among the standing are those in our family who have died. I see Uncle Andy, Grandma and Grandpa, […]

Dear Dad Letters: Father Figures

Dear Dad, It is hard living without a father to show the ways of becoming a man. Mom eventually dated some men, but they either frightened or bored me. One, a swarthy ex-boxer, bought me boxing gloves and a punching bag; but I was too scared to follow his instruction. Mom said I had an “inferiority complex, ” a new phrase out at the time. Another was nice. He took me fishing, but lost his way in a morning fog, destroying my trust in him and manifesting my intense fear of death. Mom eventually married him, as I’m sure you know from her laments to you. He […]

Dear Dad Letters: Catastrophism

Dear Dad, Here is a neologism. “Catastrophism, noun. The unfounded fear that one’s life is about to meet a sudden and catastrophic end.” I have lived all my life with this underlying fear. When the phone rings, I immediately assume we are getting news that someone has died, even though I have never been told of someone’s death that way. But in a way the imagined phone call does duplicate the unexpected news of your death. For me death is imagined to be sudden and unexpected. I sometimes fear that someone – a spouse, a stranger – might kill me in […]

Dear Dad Letters: #5 and #6

Introduction Dear Dad is the story of my life told in the form of letters to my father, Walter Michael Jaworski, who died of a heart attack when I was five and whom, therefore, I never got to know. It is not a maudlin story of regret, but the tale of how one’s entire life — conscious and unconscious — can be shaped by the defining moment of a parent’s death, and how my own fatherhood lifted me from a lifetime of pain. These are letters five and six. Dear Dad, Death terrifies me. Thinking about the inevitability of my death leaves […]

Dear Dad: Letters to a Man I Never Knew

Introduction Dear Dad is the story of my life told in the form of letters to my father, Walter Michael Jaworski, who died of a heart attack when I was five and whom, therefore, I never got to know. It is not a maudlin story of regret, but the tale of how one’s entire life — conscious and unconscious — can be shaped by the defining moment of a parent’s death, and how my own fatherhood lifted me from a lifetime of pain. Letters 2-4 Dear Dad, I don’t know who you are, and so, I don’t know who I am. They tell […]

Dear Dad: A Letter to the Long Deceased

Introduction Dear Dad is the story of my life told in the form of letters to my father, Walter Michael Jaworski, who died of a heart attack when I was five and whom, therefore, I never got to know. It is not a maudlin story of regret, but the tale of how one’s entire life — conscious and unconscious — can be shaped by the defining moment of a parent’s death, and how my own fatherhood lifted me from a lifetime of pain. The idea of a letter to my father was suggested by a kindly psychotherapist who, during my mental breakdown […]

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