My dad grew up in the small town of Ralls, Texas – a farming
town near Lubbock. At the age of three his parents brought home his baby
sister, Francine. Dad “celebrated” by
gathering the chicken’s eggs and smashing them against the concrete cattle
trough. At a very young age he decided to do some “work” on the family car. He
loosened the lug nuts on one of the wheels – which later came off! He liked to play with his bow and arrow,
shooting arrows straight up in the air and running to get out of the way! Once day he and Francine were playing in the
sandbox. There was a wooden shade above the sand and dad was on top of it with
his bow and arrow. He yelled down through a knothole in the wood “Francine,
watch out, I’m going to shoot an arrow through the hole”. She looked up through the hole and said
“what?” just as he let the arrow loose. She was not seriously injured.
As a child he developed polio. Though it was a
non-paralyzing form of the disease, he still lost the ability to walk for a
season and had to learn all over again, starting by crawling like a baby. I wonder, sometimes, if his childhood polio
predisposed him to another neuromuscular disease, Parkinson’s, that eventually
took his life.
In high school he raised pigs with 4H Club. His mama pig’s name was Eudora. I’m glad he got that out of his system before
he named me. He worked as a janitor at
the post office and on the farm during summers – moving 30 foot lengths of
irrigation pipe in the mud to water the cotton.
He managed to make enough money to buy a new car that he took to
college.
Dad went to Texas Tech University and took all the classes
in computers that they offered. He learned how to program with punch cards,
played coronet in the marching band, and worked in the chow hall. He graduated
in 1965 with a math degree and moved to Houston to work for Texaco as a FORTRAN
programmer. He worked his entire career
at Texaco – 38 years – in various computer-oriented roles.
I was born in 1967. Although my mom and dad divorced and
both remarried, they remained friends – living only two blocks from each
other. After my step father’s death in
2008, Dad, Loretta, and my mom would occasionally go eat Mexican food together
and enjoy each other’s company.
Memories that stand out to me from my childhood are going
camping with him and spending a lot of time playing Monopoly. Dad had an
antique Monopoly board and had played games against himself as a kid. He
memorized the rents for the various properties – he always won. He loved camping and saw the fingerprints of
God in creation. We had a pop-up camper.
Once it fell off the trailer hitch and dad instinctively hit the breaks – but
then the camper rolled into the back of the car!
He was the Cubmaster of my Cub Scout Pack, and the leader of
our Webelos group. He helped me build a large wooden fence for a Boy Scout
project. He taught me to drive a stick
shift in a Toyota Supra with louvers on the hatchback. In high school I got my
first speeding ticket in that car – though I’m not sure I ever told him about
that.
In the early 80s he bought an Apple IIe home computer. He
and I spent a lot of time with it. He taught me how to write computer programs
and we created a simple game that allowed you to drive a tank and shoot a
little cannon. I remember having a
conversation with him about binary and hexadecimal number systems. It wasn’t
until I got to college that I realized that not every kid had these types of
experiences.
Sometimes I tell my own students a story about my dad. I tell them how I made a D in 9th
grade Algebra, and that I had to sit down with him every night to do my Algebra
homework so that I could bring up my grade. He realized that one of my problems
was trying to skip too many steps and he told me not to be lazy, but to write
out every step of the equations we were solving. And of course, it worked. I coach
my own students the same way today.
[This is my favorite picture of my dad and I. It was taken around 2001.]
Dad was always open and honest with me about his faith. He
wasn’t afraid to say that he didn’t know the answer to a question, though he
usually did. He had had a faith struggle of his own as a teenager that was born
out of a doctrinal split in his family: his father attended the Church of
Christ, but his mother attended First United Methodist. He later embraced the
Baptist tradition, and he and I were both baptized by emersion on the same day
in this room, in fact.
Dad took part in Bible Study Fellowship for many years, and
because of his enthusiasm about the things he was learning, I also did BSF as a
young adult. He was also a long time
member of a Men’s Bible Study that met at 6:00 AM – some of his best friendships
were made with that group. He
participated in Evangelism Explosion training here at FBC, and then he really
seemed to find his ministerial calling in Stephen Ministries.
For about 10 years, starting in 2002, he and Loretta both
served in this way. For those of you who don’t know much about Stephen
Ministries, it’s a one-on-one ministry that pairs folks like my dad with people
who are struggling in one way or another – maybe in their health, or with
grief, or because of divorce, or a loss of a job – it can be anything. Stephen
Ministers don’t have to be an expert in all these ways that people can suffer,
because their main job is to listen. Dad
met weekly with men and just listened to them, offering encouragement without
agenda or bias. He became their true
friend and confidant.
This ministry was a great fit for his gifts and talents,
because dad was always a slow talker anyway. People with faster mouths might
actually be less well suited for this type of ministry.
I know he would want to encourage you all to find a way to
use your own gifts and talents to love your neighbor as yourself.
I would like to end with a quote from C.S. Lewis. In recent years, every time
I have read it I thought of dad and his struggle with Parkinson’s – and I usually
wept.
"But if you are a poor creature--poisoned by a wretched
up-bringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless
quarrels--saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual
perversion--nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you
snap at your best friends--do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one
of the poor whom He blessed. He
knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what
you can. One day He will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And
then you may astonish us all - not least yourself."
Thank you for being here in honor of my dad and in support
of our family.
