When Smoking Hits Home: What My Father’s Story Taught Me About Public Health and Healthy Housing

by Amanda Reddy

This blog was published in support of the Great American Smokeout, an event held annually on the third Thursday of November to encourage and support smokers who want to take the first step toward a smoke-free life. Learn more at cancer.org/smokeout.

Growing up, I used to hide my dad’s cigarettes, hoping I could keep him safe. Now, as executive director of the National Center for Healthy Housing, I spend my days shining a light on the environmental hazards we can’t afford to hide.

My dad was so much more than the illness that eventually took his life. He was one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever known, a man who took extra shifts so his girls could have experiences he never dreamed of. He was endlessly enthusiastic and completely at ease striking up conversations with strangers, who rarely stayed strangers for long. He was present—so much so that it’s sometimes hard for me to relate to the rampant jokes in our culture about clueless dads. He knew our teachers, our friends, our fears, our hopes. He showed up to everything.

He and my mom created a home and a family that felt unshakeable. If life has foundations, he was an essential part of mine.

And he smoked.

For most of my childhood, that fact lived in the background like the hum of a refrigerator—constant, obvious, and somehow treated as inevitable. What wasn’t inevitable was the worry. I remember pleading with him to stop, hiding his packs of cigarettes in increasingly creative locations (or, when I felt braver, destroying them outright), hoping I could strong-arm fate. I was too young to understand addiction but old enough to fear its consequences.

The Club Nobody Wants to Join (Twice)

When COPD claimed my father’s life 17 years ago, a colleague, someone I respected but didn’t know well, pulled me aside and said gently, “Welcome to the club nobody wants to be a part of.”

He meant the club of people who have lost a parent. And in some ways, that welcome meant even more than the condolences from people closer to me. It cracked open a new layer of honesty and connection. It acknowledged that loss reshapes us.

But in the years that followed, I discovered another club—quieter, more painful, more common than most people realize: the club of people who have lost a parent to smoking.

Early in my time at NCHH, I was at lunch with two colleagues, including Chris Bloom, whose 2016 blog was a powerful reflection on growing up with a smoker. I don’t remember who shared first, but within minutes, we realized the three of us had all lost our fathers to smoking-related illness. Our stories overlapped in ways that were validating and devastating: kids hiding cigarettes, families living under the shadow of COPD or cancer, the complicated grief of loving someone whose addiction was killing them.

It was the kind of club you don’t apply to join, and one you can never leave.

The Diagnosis That Changed Everything

When my dad was diagnosed with COPD, I was working at Mass General Hospital in Boston, surrounded by scientists and clinicians who understood the disease better than I did. A supervisor and mentor took me aside. He told me something that would shape the rest of my relationship with my dad: “I’ve seen people hold cigarettes to their trach holes. You can’t make someone quit. But you can decide to stop being angry.”

It felt like permission to lay down a burden I had carried for decades: the belief that if I just begged harder, cried harder, hid better, cared more—I could save him.

I had one final conversation with my dad about his smoking. I told him that I wanted him to quit, I wanted him to choose a future with us over cigarettes, but I was done pleading, and I was done feeling angry and hurt. And I asked only one thing in return: never lie to me about it again.

It changed everything.

I got to spend the last years of his life loving him, not fighting him. Because underneath the anger was fear—and underneath the fear was love.

How He Lived with COPD

My dad didn’t surrender to the diagnosis. He adapted. Today, a lot of my healthy housing colleagues work with COPD patients and their families to modify home environments and improve quality of life. But back then, there was no program or playbook.

He and my mom (who is extraordinary in every way and who remains the world’s most devoted grandmother) became inventive, figuring out how to build a life around breath:

• They replaced the heavy gas mower with a lightweight, battery-operated electric one so he could keep contributing without collapsing.
• They removed scented products from the house because fragrances triggered his symptoms.
• On hikes, he’d sling his oxygen tank in a backpack over one shoulder and walk the first flat mile with us. Then he’d settle on a rock and birdwatch until we returned—turning limitation into presence.
• He joined (and later spoke to) support groups to help others imagine a life beyond their diagnosis.

People would stop us on trails just to say, “My mother is on oxygen and never leaves home. It gives me hope to see your dad out here.” I held onto those small moments. They felt like defiance… not of death, but of despair.

Grief Doesn’t End—It Evolves

Every year since my dad died, I’ve marked the anniversary with a photo. But the year after my son Ethan was born (11 years after losing my dad). I found myself searching for a picture that didn’t exist: my dad holding my son.

My son was born with two extraordinary grandmothers but without either grandfather. Both men, mine and my husband’s, died from smoking-related illness long before he took his first breath. And for all five of my nephews, my mom is the only living grandparent. All the others are gone.

Smoking didn’t just take my dad; it took a generation of grandfathers from my family. And it took something from my mom, too—the chance to share grandparenthood with the person she built a life with.

What I Learned (and Why It Matters for Our Work)

People often ask me how I got into healthy housing, and I usually give the professional answer. But the truth is that my father’s story shaped my understanding of public health long before my career did, in ways that I am still working to understand. From him, I learned:

Illness does not erase a person’s worth.
My dad wasn’t a “smoker.” He was Gordon—a father, a husband, a friend, a human.

People living with chronic illness or addiction are not cautionary tales. They are not lost causes. They are people deserving of dignity, care, and evidence-based support.

Behaviors don’t happen in isolation; they happen in context.
It’s easy to tell someone to quit. It’s harder to ask: What role does smoking play in their life? What pain does it soothe? What patterns does it interrupt or continue?

Public health fails when we ignore the why.

Harm reduction is healthy housing.
Not everyone will quit. Not every hazard can be eliminated. But small changes—smoking outside, minimizing secondhand smoke, improving ventilation—can protect families today while opening doors to bigger change tomorrow.

Emotion and science are not enemies.
Years ago, when I challenged colleagues who dismissed COPD patients as “not worth helping,” I was told there was no room for emotion in science. The implication was that since I’d lost a father to COPD, any expertise I might contribute was tainted.

That is both wrong and dangerous.

Emotion acknowledged transparently doesn’t distort evidence. Invited in and leveraged appropriately, emotion and lived experience can even help us interpret it, apply it, find more durable solutions, and remember why it matters. Without empathy, healthy housing becomes architecture without people.

Sharing This Story on the Great American Smokeout

I’ve put off writing this blog for years. I didn’t want it to feel exploitative or sentimental or prescriptive. I still don’t want that. But 17 years to the day since my dad’s death, the calendar reminder for Great American Smokeout preparations popped up… and it felt like the right moment to finally write this down. My hope isn’t to convince anyone of anything. It isn’t to offer advice or judgment or a moral. It’s simply this:

If you smoke:
I hope you feel seen, not shamed.
I hope you find support that meets you where you are.
I hope you know your story doesn’t end here.
I hope you join the Great American Smokeout today and understand that even attempting to go 24 hours without smoking is meaningful. Every quit attempt counts, and almost everyone needs more than one.

If you love someone who smokes:
I hope you know your worry is love in disguise.
I hope you find your own boundary between hope and acceptance.
There is no right way to carry this.

If you work in public health or healthy housing:
I hope you remember that real people live in the systems we build.
And that every life is worth improving—even when a cure isn’t possible.

If you’ve lost someone to smoking:
You’re not alone. You are part of a club none of us wanted to join but where, somehow, we recognize each other anyway.

My life today would be unrecognizable to my dad—new state, new career, new family. He never knew me as a mother, never visited the home I live in, never saw me become executive director of the National Center for Healthy Housing, a place that has helped me make meaning out of loss.

But I still have a relationship with him. I think of him every day. And if shining a light on his story helps even one family breathe easier (literally or figuratively) or helps one public health or healthy housing practitioner lead with empathy instead of judgment, then maybe this is one more contribution he gets to make.

Just like that electric lawn mower.

Just like the hikes and the extra shifts and the encouraging words he offered support groups.

Just like every stranger who became a friend.

Just like all the ways he taught me to see the world—and all the ways he still does.

Read Christopher Bloom’s 2016 reflection, “The Family That Smokes Together,” and explore resources from the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout to help someone you love take the next step. If you’re a landlord, a property manager, or a decision-maker at the state or local level, learn more about best practices for implementing smoke-free housing policies here.

 

 

Amanda Reddy, MS, Executive Director of the National Center for Healthy Housing, leads a national effort to advance housing as a platform for health and equity, drawing on more than two decades of experience in environmental health, indoor air quality, and systems-level policy change. Ms. Reddy works with communities across the country to prevent housing-related illness and injury through evidence-based and equitable solutions. A nationally recognized voice at the intersection of housing and health, she has served as a strategic and technical advisor to federal, state, and local agencies and organizations. Under her leadership, NCHH has strengthened its impact, visibility, and partnerships, helping advance lasting systems change. Prior to NCHH, Ms. Reddy was a research scientist with the New York State Department of Health, where she provided program evaluation, management, and technical support for the Asthma Control, Healthy Homes and Lead Poisoning Primary Prevention, Healthy Neighborhoods, and Healthy Home Environments for New Yorkers with Asthma programs. Ms. Reddy holds degrees in environmental health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and in neuroscience from Mount Holyoke College.