Message from Roy: "Dad"

March 12, 2010

Thirty-three years ago tomorrow, my father drove his pickup to our farm, a mile or so from the farmhouse where he had started out sixty-four years earlier.

He turned at the old country store his parents had owned. He drove past the brush pile and the woods where he'd first taken me as a 10-year-old hunting for the covey of quail that was almost always nearby.

He parked the truck, climbed the fence, then walked past the buttercups, more buttercups than one could count and so yellow that they painted the end of the field where an old house had stood. As he walked on the soft ground to the grain bin, he looked past the barn to the pear orchard that had been created before he was. Above the gnarled old pear trees was a bright blue sky. He called out and the brown and white Hereford cattle ambled across the green pasture toward him.

The earth was warming and coming alive again. The early sunlight fell gently on him as he took the bucket of yellow corn from the grain bin for the cattle. I hope he fell gently as he returned to that earth again. A heart attack took him.

He died when and where and how he wanted. He fell on his favorite farm, at his favorite time of year, on a glorious and beautiful day, in the quiet and peace of early morning, on the sacred Sabbath. And no one, most especially Mother, had to watch him die.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Scripture says. Son of the soil back to the soil. The farmer to the farm.

A World War II veteran, a respected judge, my father touched the lives of many. In turn, for his funeral, our Methodist Church sanctuary was full and then some. Several who did not come early, and all those who came late, stood outside.

Sitting in the front center pew, a first-year law student, I listened to the pastor talk of Dad's judicial passion for justice and his compassion for the weak, his strong sense of equity and fairness, his Biblical concern for the less fortunate and the hurting.

Then the preacher reminded us that his good deeds and kind ways did not have to die with him.

Theologians and preachers say a great deal about eternal life. They tell many things about heaven, streets of gold, mansions on high. I had read and heard those things all my life. But this much I realized sitting in front of that flag-draped coffin: as long as Dad's children and grandchildren and their children live, my father could live. As long as we love, Dad's life and love will not die.

Today, particularly in Washington politics, it's hard to find the love. Instead, Washington politics is plagued by partisanship and division.

My father would be disappointed. Before my devoutly Democratic father became a judge, his law partner in their two-lawyer firm was the county's leading Republican. Dad and his law partner knew they did not have to agree on every issue to work together for the benefit of those they served.

This country needs far less partisanship and much more patriotism, less hostility and more hospitality, less yelling about the other party and more listening to and learning from the other person.

Good people in both parties can have good ideas. That is part of the strength and beauty of America, of this democracy, and of God's world.

We no longer can afford the luxury of excessive partisanship. This country's challenges are too great and too many are hurting too much. We need more people like my father's generation who knew it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or Republican if you forget you're an American.

Your friend,

Roy