Imagine your life beginning in a time when you traveled from
state to state in a covered wagon—my dad’s folks moved from Oklahoma to Colorado that way when he was two--and
ending when man was shuttling to the stars on a regular basis. That was my dad’s life. Unfortunately, they never invited him along
for that kind of trip, but I have a feeling he would have liked the experience
if they had.
He was born on a homestead in Oklahoma that his family chose during the Oklahoma land rush
because the wheel fell off their wagon.
By the time he was two they packed up and moved in that covered wagon I
was talking about, to Colorado. He didn’t remember the trip, of course, since
he told me his earliest memory was of watching snakes crawl through the walls
of the “dug out” house they lived in, or maybe it was of the team of horses,
lowering his mother’s coffin into the ground.
He wasn’t sure which was the earliest since his mother died before he
was three.
In another couple of years, around the time he was five, his
father had also died, so Daddy would have been an orphan-- if it weren’t for
his oldest brother, Walter, the man we all knew as Grandpa because he adopted
Mom when her folks died when she was 11.
Grandpa was Dad’s mentor, his hero, the kind of man Dad
wanted to be. Grandpa was the kind of
quiet Christian we’ve all known and admired.
The kind of man who lived his faith more than talked about it, the kind
of man who showed you how to be kind and honest and trustworthy rather than
telling you about it. And that was the
kind of man Daddy became.
I don’t ever remember catching my father in a lie—not even
the little white kind it’s easy to excuse because it might spare someone’s
feelings or the kind where you just don’t correct someone’s mistaken impression. You know the kind. I’m sure my kids can’t say the same. Though he rarely spoke about it, Dad lived
his testimony through his honesty and integrity.
He had a quiet wisdom that belied his eight grade education. (He went the Big Rock, the same country
school where Maxine and Wanda and I started to school. A big one room school with all eight grades
combined. He rode a horse to
school—uphill both ways, barefoot in the snow.)
When I was old enough to understand how little that really
was, he constantly amazed me with what he
knew. Facts, figures, dates, historical
details, presidents—and the years they were in office and what they did—or
didn’t do—he could remember them all.
Though I suspect occasionally he felt a bit inferior about his
education—or lack thereof--especially living in a town like Haviland with so
many people so focused on higher education, he didn’t let it stop him from
“doing his share,”—whether it was serving as Justice of the Peace—which we all
got a kick out of, especially the couple of times some young couple would come
in the middle of the night, asking him to “marry them” or serving on the Board of the
Academy/college. In fact, he was on the
board my Junior year when they voted to close the academy. I remember waiting up for him to come home
that night and asking what they decided, then asking how he voted. He said he voted to close it because that was
what was best for the school. I was so
mad at him, I vowed not to speak to him again.
I think I made it almost a year without saying any more than I
absolutely HAD to. It really galled me
that if he ever noticed, he never said anything. (Maybe that was because up until then, I’d
always been way too noisy.)
His reverence for a higher education--especially a Christian
education--was reflected in his life decisions.
I never doubted that he loved farming and his farm in Colorado.
He got excited every year about going out there to help with
harvest. (And as we were driving out the
other night and I could see the harvest going on in farms all around, it felt
appropriate that he died this time of year.
After all, if he couldn’t go help with harvest, it probably seemed like
a good time to go. And though he never
actually told me he loved farming, Mom told me once that late at night when he
was working in the fields, she could often hear him singing at the top of his
lungs, even over the noise of the tractor.
To me, that little thing said he loved it, ) Anyway, he was willing to give up—to
sacrifice that farm and doing something he loved--if it meant a better chance
for all of us to get a Christian education.
He was even willing to deal with chickens.
At the time, all of us HATED the chickens. I’m not sure how he felt about them—if he
also hated them as much as we did, which I suspect he may have, you could never
tell. He went quietly about his work and
was always busy, rarely complaining. Even
in that work, he was a great example. He
knew the value of working hard but he
managed to have time for us…when he was making us gather eggs, or making us help
keep a new batch of baby chicks from piling up on each other and smothering or
whatever he had us doing. Dean remembers
him and Earl going out with baskets to gather eggs when Earl’s hands were
barely big enough to pick them up. Dad
was there, but busy, checking on them occasionally but letting them work,
showing he trusted them, giving them a sense of responsibility. (Looking back, it was more fun than I thought
at the time, and I’m sure Dad doubted how responsible he was making us when we
got into egg fights or were playing house in the cooler instead of doing what
we were supposed to be doing.) But,
over the years, I’ve had confirmation that Dad taught us well and had another
one just yesterday when the staff where Dean works in Hutchinson were telling me what a great
worker he is and how much they appreciate his willingness to do whatever needs
to be done, whenever they need it. Dad
would have liked that. I wish he was
here so I could tell him.
When things went bad and the price of eggs dropped and we
lost the chicken farm, Dad went quietly on, doing what he had to do to take
care of us. By then, of course, we were
starting to leave the nest—sorry for the bad pun, but it goes with the
chickens—and going to college. You all
know how expensive that is…Mom and Dad always managed to find some way to help
when we came home with our hands out.
And that’s another thing he quietly showed us. Not only did Mom and Dad always seem to take
good care of us—both physically and financially—they always managed to find the
resources to tithe and give even more than the prerequisite 10%, to the things
they believed in, like the college. And
that was a testament to me that God does take care of His children. I know he does. I saw it on a daily basis. No matter how good or bad things were. God took good care of us because Mom and Dad
were faithful to him. That meant that
Earl could fall from the high rafters of this church to the basement without
even breaking a bone, and Dean could get run over by a truck—a big heavy
truck—without even shedding a drop of blood or even getting a good
scratch.
I’m sure you all know what a great sense of humor Dad had. If you’ve spent more than an hour with him,
you’ve probably experienced it. It was
dry. It was often subtle. But he could land a zinger. I think Dad loved music, loved to sing, but
to tell you the truth, he was lousy. He
rarely sang in church. But Sheila
remembers him singing loud and off key one Sunday morning and she was looking
at him kinda strangely. He told her,
“the Bible says ‘make a Joyful noise,’ it doesn’t say it has to be good.”
When Dan and I came home to tell the folks we were getting
married, it was kind of tense, for lots of reasons—none of which had anything
to do with race and everything to do with concern for the kind of life they
were afraid we might have—Dad broke the tension by telling Dan, “Well, we’ve
had her for 19 years. Good luck.” (I’m lucky Dan didn’t run the other direction.)
He also had an onry streak.
He got a kick out of shocking people by telling them he married his
niece. (And then explaining what the
deal was. I must have got something from
him because I got a kick out of telling people my Grandpa was my uncle.)
I think Dad loved his cars, too, since I remember him speaking
with pride about various cars he had when he was younger and the road trips he
would take in his youth before he was married.
I didn’t care enough to pay attention to the details back then. But knowing he took some pride in his cars, I
suspect his onry streak was the only thing that could explain him buying that
ugly, ugly orange station wagon about the time us kids were getting to the age
to learn to drive. I think he thought it
would embarrass us too much to want to drive it. (We fooled him, didn’t we?)
I wish I had paid a lot more attention to a lot more of the
details of his life. In fact, fifteen or
so years ago, I got a tape recorder and asked him to tape his memories for
me. He never got around to it. When I would ask him about it, he’d say he
didn’t know what to say. So I got him a
book a couple of years later that had questions in it. I figured that would get him started and once
he started, he’d have some wonderful stories.
He never got around to it even after that. When I’d bug him about it, he always had an
excuse. Now, I’m going to have to bug my
family about writing down the stories and things they remember. I suspect I’ll have just about as much luck
with it as I had with Dad. And that makes
me very sad.
I’m going to miss his sense of humor. And his orneriness, and the quiet wisdom—so
like Grandpa’s—that he worked so hard at acquiring over so many years.
I’m sorry if I’ve gone on too long but it’s awfully difficult
to tell you much about my Dad’s 89 years in so few words. So I’ll end by saying that I know he’s in a
much better place, enjoying some hard earned rewards—and hopefully he’s even
getting to know his mother and dad, and I know he’s thanking Grandpa for
everything he did for him and Mom and telling him what a wonder example he
was. And I’m glad for him, but I’m sure
sorry for us. We’re going to miss him.
Dad’s deepest desire was for all of us to be prepared to meet
him in Heaven. It’s comforting to know
that’s where he is, waiting for us now.
