I first want to thank everyone who’s come out this evening to remember and celebrate my father’s life.

Hemingway said, “Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”

My father was born in December of 1940, the younger son of my grandfather, Wesley, a pastor, and my grandmother, Margaret, and the younger brother of Bob and older brother of Marjorie and Joyce.  He grew up in northern California, and, from all accounts, he was a young man of exceedingly high spirits.  Okay, he was a HECK-raiser.

He would tell the story about how he and his friends would, after dark, “liberate” watermelons from a neighboring farm and stash them in the stream – the ice cold mountain stream – until the summer afternoon got good and hot, then they’d  smash those melons on a rock and enjoy a cold, refreshing treat.

My parents met when my mother, a Boston girl, was attending college in Chicago, and she went home with her friend, Marj Nelson, for Christmas break.  It must have been love at first sight, because by the end of January, they were married, thus beginning their nearly 60-year marriage.

Sixty years, and four children, through better and worse, richer and poorer, and, of course, sickness and health.  

My father was a master of figuring out a better way to do things.  My mother was hospitalized for three weeks after a car accident, right after she’d brought home bushels – BUSHELS! – of tomatoes, pears and peaches.  My father taught himself to can – his attitude was always “how hard can it be?”  He didn’t worry too much about tomato sauce splashed on the ceiling, or sugar syrup spilled all over the kitchen.  

When my husband and I moved into our current home, my father took one look at the mosquito colony that was the pond just outside of our yard, and he went to work.  He built a small fountain to keep the water moving.  But not just any fountain – oh no!  He took a sump pump, mounted it to a raft, which was kept afloat by empty soda bottles, and, just to be fancy, he attached a color changing light, and he put the whole thing on a timer, so it wouldn’t need to run constantly.  After all, how hard could it be?

As I look back on our growing-up years, I don’t think my father ever gave himself enough credit.  He watched a younger generation of dads who seemed to have all the time in the world for their kids – they’ll go to concerts and recitals in the evenings and ball games on the weekends.  My father wasn’t able to do any of that.

But I remember.  I remember him running his own business – Don’s Quality Texaco – when my sister and I were small – and all the work and all the time that entailed.  I also remember the downtime when my father would play with us in his auto shop, dropping us into the middle of stacks of tires or giving us rides on the car lift.

And I remember my father leaving the house in the wee hours of the morning to work his second job delivering newspapers, coming home several hours later, getting dressed for work, and turning around and going back out to put in a 10-hour (or more) day at his “real” job. Plus commute time.  Then he’d come home and fall asleep at the dinner table.

However, he always made sure we were in church every week, he taught a Sunday School class for years, and he and his trombone were always a big part of the church orchestra.

My father loved music, most especially the old hymns he (and we!) grew up with.  Whenever he got his trombone out (which was often back in the day!), he’d always warm up the same way – he’d play “I’ve got a home in Glory Land that outshines the sun . . . way beyond the blue” (with that great trombone slide!).  Other favorites included “Victory in Jesus” and “Count Your Blessings.”  As I sat with him the night before his first surgery, what he wanted, more than anything, was the comfort of those hymns.  

The story of my father would not be complete without mentioning his sense of humor.  My father had a collection of 8-track tapes in the car to keep us (and himself) amused for any length trip!  Bill Cosby (he really was a very funny guy!) and his Noah act (how long can you tread water?) to the Smothers Brothers (crabs walk sideways and lobsters walk straight), Harry Belafonte (oh no!  My daddy can’t be ugly so!), and history lessons with Johnny Horton (I did later learn that they didn’t ACTUALLY grab an alligator and fill his head with cannon balls during the Battle of New Orleans!).  We may have been stuck in the back seat during our road trips, but at least it was fun, if not strictly educational.

I think my father may have invented the “dad joke!”  When he was in the hospital, he told me that he’d asked his surgeon about the possibility of a brain transplant.  The surgeon said he could have a man’s brain, but it would cost $20,000.  A woman’s brain would only be $5,000.  My father, always looking for a bargain, asked why such a difference in price, and the surgeon said, why, that’s because the woman’s brain is used!

One of my father’s all time favorite jokes was when he’d unintentionally make a rhyme, and he’d say:

I’m a poet, and I don’t know it!

But my feet show it – they’re LONGFELLOWS!

So now I think it’s only fitting for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to weigh in – “When a great man dies, for years the light he leaves behind him, lies on the paths of men.”

My father’s light will continue to shine on the paths of all who had the privilege of knowing him.

Categories: family parents

Tagged as: bible dad family grief life

kristinebryant