John Wayne the dad, by Ethan Wayne

“There’s a picture of my father that I love. It shows the real man. He’s on a horse going full speed, a herd of horses running around him. He’s maybe 66. He looks so confident and alive. You’d never know he had only one lung and a bad knee and had been falling off horses for six decades. He never stopped being John Wayne, even when he was sick (with cancer) and the work wasn’t easy for him. He did what he was expected to do because he had kids who depended on him and film crews who needed him to stay employed. He worried more about others than himself…. Life was as normal as it could be. We lived outside Hollywood. There were no bodyguards, Dad answered the door, we went to the market, that sort of thing. The only time I realized that Dad was different was when I visited a friend a few houses down. His mom asked us to get the mail. I thought, ‘Oh man, I hate getting mail.’ In my house, getting the mail meant dragging huge boxes and bags from the street. But we went out to his mailbox, and there were three envelopes in there. That was sincerely puzzling to me. I asked, ‘That’s it? That’s all the mail you get?’ We had three secretaries whose jobs were just answering all my dad’s fan mail (and) my dad treated it like part of his job. He appreciated that people continued to watch his movies even as he aged. It was never like, ‘I’m important,’ he was just eternally grateful to his fans for supporting his films…. He drove Pontiac station wagons. He never wanted anything special…. (But he had a boat) and when we took the boat up to Alaska, one of my jobs was to get ice for adults’ cocktails. So they’d drop me off with a fire ax to chop off a few chunks from the glacier ice floating nearby. (I had to be careful and it wasn’t easy) and when I brought it back I felt like a hero…. One of my chores was to sweep up the seeds that fell off the rubber tree in our yard. I hated it. I remember being nine years old and doing a terrible job, and Dad would get frustrated. He’d grab the broom and show my how to sweep properly. He has a very specific technique. My biggest memory isn’t him teaching me how to ride a horse, it's him teaching me how to sweep…. I was never okay when he left to go on location for a movie without me. I was very close to my father, so I hated not being with him. I’d ask when he was coming back and he’d say, ‘I’ll be back in September, God willing and the river don’t rise.’ That really affected me. I was like, ‘What the hell does that mean? The river don’t rise? What is that?’ It was horrible. It’s bad enough that your dad is going to be gone for months, but now you’re worried about the river rising…. Once, we were at the house in Newport Beach, which was right next to the water. It was late at night, and he heard something down by the dock. He grabbed one of his guns and his flashlight and went down, and there were these two big guys. Dad growled, ‘Who the hell are you?’ They said they were marines on shore leave. They knew he lived there, so after a couple drinks, they’d rowed out to see if he was there. But they’d lost their nerve and were sorry, they’d be on their way. And Dad was like, ‘Well, get up here and have a drink with me.’ He brought them into the house, and they talked until at least 1 a.m. That’s how my dad was. He was grateful and welcoming to everybody.”