As of now (July 2013) I am 80 years old.
至今为止（2013年7月）我已经80岁了。
I have written in another Quora post about growing up without a father. That one was all about me, me, me.
我在另一个问题中回答了我在没有父亲的情况下是如何长大的。那个故事是关于我的故事。
Now I will speak of him.
现在我要谈谈他了。
By triangulating remembered circumstances, I must have been 7 or 8 years old, and my brother, some 18 months younger. We were walking with our parents on a Saturday morning, along a normally busy city street.
根据记忆那时我大概有7、8岁那么大，我的弟弟比我小一岁半。我们和父母在周末清晨走在一条平时很吵闹的街道上。
My father and I were holding hands; my mother and brother were a few steps somewhere behind us.
我和父亲牵着手，我妈妈和弟弟走在我们的后方。
As we turned a corner, we came upon four or five people outside a scruffy bar, facing inward as a circle. They were shouting at the two men at the center. Each had an open straight razor held high and waving it with menace. The small crowd was egging them on. I remember a shout of, "Cut him." and a burst of laughter.
当我们走过街角时，遇到了4 5个酒徒 他们在破旧的酒吧门口围成一圈，在圈里的有两个男人他们各自拿着一把剃刀挥舞着威胁对方。周围的酒徒不断怂恿着他们争斗。我记得那个叫声“砍他”，还有阵阵哄笑。
My father picked me up at the biceps, turned me around and kind of pushed me back towards my mother. As she pulled me in I heard her scream, "No. Stop. You have babies."
我父亲把我护在他手臂后并将我转过身去推向妈妈身边。当她抱住我时我听见她的呼喊“不，快停下。你有两个孩子。”
She was trying to stop my father. By the time I squirmed my way free enough to see what he was doing, he was standing between the two men. Each man was waving his open razor.
她尝试着阻止父亲，在这个时候我扭过了头看到了他在做什么，他正站在那两个男人之间。他们都在挥舞着自己的剃刀。
My father had extended an open hand towards each razor. He was inviting each man to give up his blade. Somehow he had assumed or realized that neither man really wanted to be there at that moment, ready to kill or be killed.
我的父亲将两只手伸向那两把剃刀，他正在邀请他们放下自己的剃刀。不知为何他好像知道或者说相信那两个男人在那个情况下不是真正的想要杀了对方或是被对方杀了。
I also recall that the only sound was my mother. The blood-thirsty spectators had gone silent. I do not recall that my father said a word at all. I just have it burned in my brain, the scene of him standing there with his hands extended to each man and my mother's angry and frightened screams.
我唯一能回忆起的声音来自我的母亲。那些渴望争斗的旁观者们静了下来。关于我父亲说了什么我却一点也不记得了。我只是将这一幕烙在了回忆中，他站在两个男人中间时的背影，我母亲的愤怒以及争执。
Dad actually touched the hand of each man and with one motion, simultaneously slid each weapon away from each man. They must not have resisted. Had either of them done so, things probably would have gone really bad in an instant.
父亲用同样的手势碰到了两个男人，他们手上的剃刀随之滑落。他们并没有反抗。如果他们其中一个人有这心思，事情可能会变得很糟糕。
But they did not.
但是他们没有。
As Dad turned back towards his family, with a razor in each hand, I could see his face was drained white. He stepped past us, my mother still screaming at him. He said not a word but took two or three steps to the curb and dropped both razors through the sewer grate.
当父亲双手各拿着一把剃刀转身走向他的家人，我可以看见他的脸已经变得惨白。他走过了我们身边，我母亲仍在指责他。他没有说什么只是走到了马路边把两把剃刀丢到了下水道中。
He took my hand and we continued on our walk. My mother was angry but he never said a word about this in my presence.
他抓起了我的手，我们继续着散步。妈妈非常生气但她从不在我面前谈起这件事。
Whenever I've told the story to others, especially to women, many have criticized him as reckless and foolish.
每当我将这个故事告诉其他人时，尤其是女人们，她们都认为父亲太过鲁莽与愚蠢。
One was blunt. "He had a family. Why did he put it a risk for two drunk two niggers?"
她们毫不避讳的说：“他有一个家庭。为什么还要将自己置于被两个酒徒捅伤的风险之中？”
Over the years, as I grew older, I understood the courage of that moment. And it helped me appreciate the courage he displayed through the rest of his life.
再过几年，我已长大 渐渐明白了父亲在那时的勇气。这也让我对他余生所表现出的勇气感到更钦佩。
Within a year after that incident, he was in a tuberculosis sanitarium, at the start of a ten-year long fight for his life. In those days, TB was incurable. Those who had it were shunned with the same fear and loathing as AIDS sufferers in modern times. They usually suffered a similar painful wasting death.
在那年里家中出了变故，他得了肺结核住进了疗养院并在长达十年的时间里与病魔做着斗争。在那段时间里，肺结核是无法治愈的。那段时间里肺结核病人就像现在艾滋病人一样被人们回避、害怕、讨厌。他们还遭受着被死亡步步逼近的痛苦。
I have since learned the common causes of a TB patient's death. They either die of pneumonia (drowning when you lungs filled up with fluids) or, most horrific of all, when your lesion (the diseased, unhealing hole in your lung) eats away a vein and you drown in your own blood from a hemorrhage.
我已经知道肺结核病人死亡的常见原因。他们或者死于肺炎，或者，最可怕的是，当病变损坏血管，你会由于大出血溺死在自己的血液中。
I learned many years later he had such hemorrhages, but somehow the doctors and nurses stopped them in time. I still shudder at what terror he must have felt at those moments.
我在许多年后知道他曾经有过大出血，幸好医生与护士们及时抢救了。一想到他那时遇到怎样的痛苦我就会浑身打颤。
He spent most of those years away from us. Five years after he went into the sanitarium, WWII ended. The surgical skills that were developed on the battlefields came back to America as life-saving procedures. Antibiotics made them possible, too.
他远离了我们许多年。在他搬进疗养院5年之后，二战结束了。战场上的外科技术在回到美国之后被用于拯救生命上。抗生素让痊愈有了可能。
The final desperate step to save a victim was surgical removal of the diseased portion of the lung. They removed two of my father's five lobes. He was the fifth man in the world to survive that operation.
拯救肺结核患者们的最后办法就是把病变的肺部切除。他们移除了我父亲5根肋骨中的两根。他是世界上完成这种手术还活下来的5个人之1。
Then it was discovered that the plural wall, two thin membranes in the chest, one (the visceral pleura) lining the lungs, and the other (the parietal pleura) covering the inside of the chest wall, was also infected.
接着他们发现胸膜——胸腔里的两层薄膜，分别是盖于肺部表面的肺胸膜和贴附于胸壁内面的胸膜壁层——也感染了。
He was the first man to have that removed and survive.
他是第一个接受这样的手术还存活下来的人。
After he had enough strength to continue, another proceedure removed two diseased ribs. He returned to the operating table a number of times to deal with issues that were never explained to me.
当他恢复了身体后，又是两根肋骨被移除。他时刻会回到手术台上处理这样的时间，而这些他从不在我面前吐诉。
By the time he was healed and back home for the first time, almost ten years had passed. This once tall handsome man, a former state-wide gold-medal-winning high-school athlete, was bent one side. His heart had become enlarged in order serve the remaining three lobes of his remaining lung.
当他痊愈后第一次回到家的时候已经是十年之后。那个又高又英俊的男人，那个前高中金牌运动员，现在由于肺叶只剩三片所造成的心脏增大 身体不得不弯向一边。
I never heard him complain, although my mother told me of the horrific traumas of the hemorrhages and the onstant emotional and physical pain he suffered.
我从未听到他抱怨，尽管我的母亲告诉在大出血时那种恐怖体会，他所遭受的那种心灵与身体上的双重摧残。
Instead of choosing the life of a cripple, he went back to work. I later learned that through the years of confinement he had been taking correspondence courses in all aspects of engineering and business.
相比在余生做一个残疾人，他选择回去工作。之后我知道了他在住院的那些年学完了工程学、商务学的所有课程。
Before he retired some 20 years later, this high-school dropout had risen to Chief Plant Engineer for the home factory of Colgate Soap Company. He was, for many years, responsible for the entire production lines and all the property of what was then the largest factory of its kind in the world. He was elected president of the employee's Federal Credit Union and eventually was elected as president of the organization of credit unions for the entire state.
在他退休20年前，这位高中辍学生已经成为了高露洁国内工厂的首席工程师。他在许多年中负责整个产品的生产线以及这个同类最大工厂中的所有财务。他被选为员工的联合信贷联盟的会长，最后被选为整个州的信贷联盟组织的会长。
Only three years after he retired a wealthy man, his overtaxed heart stopped during his afternoon nap, at 66 years old.
在他退休成为一个富有人之后仅过了三年，他的心脏由于过度负荷在他一次下午小睡中永远停止了，那时他66岁。
Courage is revealed in at least two forms.
他所展示出的勇气有两种。
One shows itself in sudden acts of pure instinct on behalf of other human beings. I saw that act of caring for strangers at the risk of his own life, that Saturday morning.
一种在他遇到突发事件时本能的为他人而站出来。我见到这种维护他人的行为给他自己带来了巨大的风险，在那个周末的早上。
Another is long, slow, deliberate, unyielding, daily confrontation of forces over which we have little control. I saw that courage during almost every day of his life therafter.
另一种是漫长、慎重、不屈，在每天面对我们所不能控制的事物时所展现出的勇气。自从他得病后我几乎每天都能见到这种勇气。
My father had both types of courage. I will never forget how he lived them.
我的父亲同时拥有这两种勇气。我永远不会忘记它们是如何伴随他的一生。