My boss’s wife refused to pay my father for repairing their enormous backyard pool. She looked at the bill, laughed, and acted as if the $7,800 agreement meant nothing.
My father didn’t argue.
He simply looked at the water, smiled, and said four words that I didn’t understand at the time:
“Call me tomorrow morning.”
I had no idea that by the next morning, two police cars would be parked outside my boss’s house—and that an elderly woman would be waiting beside my father with a thick folder containing a piece of the property’s forgotten history.
My father, Frank Marsh, had been repairing swimming pools for almost three decades.
At 61, he had seen nearly every kind of pool problem imaginable. He had worked on small backyard pools, aging vinyl-lined pools, expensive gunite systems and elaborate installations that required weeks of careful work.
He wasn’t the kind of contractor who made promises he couldn’t keep.
He gave people a clear estimate, explained what needed to be done, and expected to be paid for the work he completed.
So when my boss, Richard Emory, asked him to repair the enormous 40-foot pool behind his $2 million home on Lakeview Drive, Dad treated him like any other customer.