Dad's Eulogy

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 9^th 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.