Eulogizing My Grandpa

When I’m asked what I do for a living and I respond “speechwriter”, I sometimes say it a bit sheepishly based on the situation. It can sound like a ridiculous job for a grown man. In DC, it’s often considered “the best dead-end job in politics.” In other circles, it can seem either more exotic than it is or like a strange way to make a living. I’m usually asked some variation on a few questions: “Who do you write for?” “Do you just…write all day?” (This is when I end up explaining that a lot of organizations say they want speechwriters, but really want graphic designers/slide jockeys.) And, yes, “what speech are you most proud of?”

For the last question, I usually come back to the rare speech I gave myself, eulogizing my grandfather. Enough time has gone by since he passed in 2018 that I can think about the experience of delivering a eulogy in a more detached way than I was able to in the middle of that sadness. It’s certainly a good experience for any speechwriter to have to get up from time to time and remember what it’s like to be called upon to speak in public, especially at an emotionally fraught time. I’ve helped many people with their share of eulogies over the years, and I try to center myself back in the memory of what it was like – in the middle of grieving and remembering his life, to be called on to say something in memory of him that would rise to the occasion. (This is one of the professional hazards that comes with being a speechwriter. You’re on deck when Grandpa dies.)

I’ll likely forget the vast majority of the projects that have helped me earn a living, but I’ll never forget what it felt like to get up that day and try to do justice to my dad’s father. I try to remember that when I’m helping someone else find just the right words for their big occasion, whatever it is. It’s easy after cranking out thousands of remarks over the years for me to approach projects casually, confident the event will turn out just fine. But for the person who’s going to actually be speaking, it’s a high wire act that isn’t just another box to check, but a major event.

I was lucky to grow up next to my grandpa. Even with that proximity, I was aware I had only known him for the last 33 years of a much longer life, and the short distance between our yards didn’t convey how different our lives and outlooks were. My dad – more prone to eulogizing the fallen on Facebook than in a formal eulogy - called him “the guy who lived simply so we’d have plenty, could fix anything and taught us that quitting was NEVER an option. Not a big fan of the beach by any means but saw to it we went every summer…… lived to be 91….thanks for all you’ve done for us.........in your own way you’ve led by example........work hard, be steadfast and enjoy the journey......thanks for the memories!!! And you can never have too many tools......”

I tried my best to do him justice. The good news is that you may in fact have few chances in life to be as funny with as little effort as at a funeral; even the slightest hint of a joke is a relief for a room that’s eager to find something to smile about. It’s of course easier to take the long view and celebrate a life long lived into one’s 90s. The other eulogy I’ve given was for my 30 year old best friend, which was a decidedly different eulogy.

Looking back on it, I overdid it a bit. This thing is way too long and my grandpa himself would have likely turned off his hearing aids halfway through as he was apt to do, around the time I started referencing The Green Mile, a movie he most certainly had never seen. I was probably overcompensating for the pressure of writing something slick based on my job title. Fortunately there weren’t other eulogists, or we would have been there all night. I had interviewed my dad and uncle and aunt for memories and anecdotes that helped illustrate who he was, the events that shaped his outlook on the world, and what he meant to those around him. It could use a significant trimming, especially in terms of some in-jokes and some of the historical references I felt the need to bring in. (William Wadsworth probably didn’t need to be quoted here.) But in the end, in its awkward way, it represented my attempt to not just recite his life’s accomplishments, but tell something of a story.

I’m including a full draft of what I wrote below, as well as the one page outline I referred to when I actually went up to the front of the room. Lots of clients ask how they should go about memorizing a set of remarks; I personally found it helpful to practice over and over again, but to largely count on following the broad outline of “beats” in the moment. I would likely create a more formal structure for a client, but when it’s actually go time, you may want to strip down your written materials to the bare essence of what you need for a roadmap. My outline would be all but undecipherable to someone else, but each beat reminds me of something he said or did.

Rather than worry about saying each carefully labored sentence word for word, keep it conversational. Rather than trying to memorize a long story about the time your grandmother took you to Florida and the bus broke down, just remind yourself to “tell the bus story.” And then look at your friends and family when you tell it. That’s where you’ll find the people rooting for you, not by looking down on the page.

Structure:

·      No fuss

·      Nicknames – Dad – Pappy Don – Christy – Billy – Poonie

·      A different time – Lindbergh – Jazz Singer – Mt Rushmore

·      A time before selfies and social media – street cars still ran through McClellandtown

·      We are who we are early on – Child is father to the man – William Wordsworth

·      Depression era – make your own Christmas lights – 42 used tires

·      Went off to War – grandpa gave him $5 at Connellsville train station – Just a seaman

·      Denison – heart wasn’t in it – loved his wife more than being in a classroom – Aaron – Penn State

·      Built his own house - $2600

·      Hard-working – couldn’t figure someone golfing or hunting

·      Tinkering in the garage

·      Didn’t need to impress anybody – couldn’t get hepped up

·      Guy without a toolbelt

·      Very practical person – you learn anything? When’s the wedding?

·      Living a long life –  thought hed be in the trailer for 5 years, not 30 - you see tragedy – Green Mile

·      Made pact with his son – take care of each other - father is child to the man

·      Deliver papers – bring food – or just visit

·      Lucky to stay in his house

·      Challenge – Red cap blue cap milk – Jeffrey sheets

·      Wasn’t a touchy-feely guy – but he softened over time – said “I Love You”

·      “The Long Goodbye” – was himself to the end – TV – “Sinfeld”

·      Had a lot of fight in him at the end – Rage Against the Dying of the Light

·      Hospital – flirting with nurses – still considered himself the most eligible bachelor in Mcclellandtown - Do you Need anything? – Beauty Parlor

·      Hard to say goodbye – live on in memory and examples he set of hard work and caring for your family and neighbors

·      Leaving the lights on

·      We love you Pappy Don

Remembering Pappy Don

We know that Pappy Don isn’t someone who liked a lot of fuss to be made over him. He was a very humble person and a very plain-spoken person. He wasn’t someone who liked to be at the center of attention. He would not like his picture in the damn paper. Just a couple of years ago, he skipped going over to the Senior Center for the Valentine’s Day party because he was convinced they were going to make him the King of Hearts.

So he would hate to think that we had all taken time away to make a fuss. If he were here, I’m sure he would twist off his hearing aid. Or he would just say “Suckwich?” (Which is his way of saying “What’s that?)

I was talking to him once about a guy who had passed away and Pappy Don described the man as “someone who never made any trouble for anybody.”  And that seemed like the highest compliment he could have for anyone. To keep your head down, to work hard, to take care of your family, and to not make trouble for anybody.

Most of us knew him as “Dad” or “Pappy Don”.  Others knew him as “Christy” or “Billy” or “Poonie.”

Whatever you called him, he came from a different time. He was born in 1927, a long time before people took selfies or had their own Facebook pages. He was born the year Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, the year of the first talkie movie, the year that work began on Mt. Rushmore. He was born 2 years before the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. And I think it’s important to remember all that when you think about what kind of world he came up in.

He was born just two doors down from this funeral home here on Main Street in McClellandtown, a time when streetcars still ran through our streets. He lived almost all of his life in this town. There was the period when his father moved the family to Masontown and they lived on Washington Street. His father had landed a new job with Penn’s Oil and they didn’t want to commute all the way to Masontown.

There’s this British poet named William Wordsworth who wrote a famous poem where he said, “The child is father to the man.” And what he’s basically saying there is that we really establish who we are going to become in childhood. All of us grow and change as the years go by. But no matter how hard we might try, I think we usually form who we are when we are young. And that was true of Pappy Don. It sounds like his parents were pretty formal people – they might not be the first people to hug you. And they didn’t believe in wasting anything. It was a time when you didn’t have the luxury to waste a nickel and there was too much work to be done to make a fuss over anything. That’s why he made his own Christmas lights – he would buy the wires, the sockets, the plug, and then build his own lights.

And he used those lights for years. He wasn’t someone who threw things out. When he sold his house, there were 42 used tires in the garage.

He left high school in Feb of 1945 with his credits completed and joined the service. He went off to the Navy in time for the very end of World War II.

When he headed off to the Navy, his grandfather gave him $5 at the Connellsville train station – and it was the last time he said he received a dollar that he didn’t earn himself.  

When he came home, he went off to Denison University in Ohio on the GI Bill. It was his parent’s idea – but he came back after just one semester. His heart told him he was more in love with his high school sweetheart Harriet than he was in love with the idea of being in a classroom for 4 years.

That’s something I think he passed on to most of us. I remember my cousin Aaron telling me about when he was at Penn State looking out the window watching guys working outside and wishing he was out there instead, doing something useful. I think we all inherited it from him and we all married people who were hard workers. I’m probably the black sheep here a little bit in terms of being lazy.

He would walk three and a half miles each way to see her in Messmore.

And they began a life together. He built his own house, piece by piece, beginning in the summer of 1952 – for the grand sum of $2,600.

And he got down to the business of starting a family and providing for them. If you had to describe him in a word, I think most of us would use a word like “hard-working”. He just couldn’t figure people who spent their time on golf. He couldn’t figure why anyone would be in the woods hunting animals. He just couldn’t get “revved up” about that. His hobby really was work – fixing telephone wires as a lineman with West Penn for 35 years, moonlighting on weekends, setting poles for trailers.

If he had a moment to spare, he liked nothing better than tinkering in his garage. He liked working on his tractor. He wasn’t somebody who needed help changing his oil.

He was somebody who had no interest in trying to impress anybody. He didn’t sweat the small stuff. He never liked to get “hepped up.”

He had no patience for “yokels on the highway.” Most of the world’s problems to him seemed to come from people just being lazy. My dad was talking about the time we were getting a new room built onto the house and he would come up everyday and just watch the contractor. And he would say, “How can that guy be a reliable contractor and not have a tool belt?”

He was a very practical person. I would come visit and he would ask me about school – no matter if I was in elementary school or in college – and he would always ask me the same thing. “You learning anything?” Because it seemed clear that if I wasn’t learning anything, there was better things I could do with my time. Once I was finally done with school, then he always had a new question for me – “When’s the wedding?”

He wasn’t a touchy, feely guy, but his wife could always count on a box of chocolates at Valentines Day.

The hard thing about living a long, full life is that you inevitably see tragedy. It’s a bit like the movie “The Green Mile” in which Tom Hanks is cursed with old age. He had a bad accident at work in 1974 in the bucket. He saw his parents pass. He lost our grandma, he lost his second wife Gran Doris to Parkinsons’, he lost a granddaughter, lost a brother, lost many close friends like Jack Woods who he traveled to Alaska and beyond with. But he always kept going.

And I think he kept going because of his family. Not many people are so lucky to stay in their own homes until the last days of their lives. (Not sure about my dad yet, for example.) And he was only able to do it because of everything his three kids did for him.

I’ve heard about the night my grandmother died, who I never had the good fortune to meet. Pappy Don and Uncle Jeff drove home from Allegheny General and they made a deal – to always take care of each other. That’s a promise they kept and that he kept with all of his kids. It was those small things – the visits, the picking up the newspapers, the dropping off the food. So when I think of that poem, “The child is father to the man,” I can’t help but think of that cycle of life in which we end up taking care of the parents who once took care of us.

Jeff said it was almost like having a 90 year old little boy sometimes. He certainly wasn’t the easiest person to look after as he aged and he wasn’t always the easiest person to get along with. He was opinionated. He was a feisty guy. You had to bring him milk with the red cap – never the blue cap. He moved into the trailer when he was in his 60s and said he expected to live there another 5 years – never expecting he would live to 90. But he definitely softened as time went on.

Every year at Christmas without fail, he would make sure to check a send to the Salvation Army.

Over the last few years, I would stop to see him for a few moments or give him a call even if it was hard for us to hear each other. And he would always stop by saying “I love you” or “I think about you.” And I know he felt the same way about all of us in this room.

Ronald Reagan’s daughter wrote a book about her dad’s struggle with Alzheimerz – it was called “The Long Goodbye”. And that’s how it goes with so many of the people we love – we witness them slowly become someone that just isn’t themselves. And that wasn’t the case with Pap at all. He was driving to the Senior Center weeks ago. Just days ago, he was watching both of his TVs, one TV always set to Fox News, one showing a rerun of “Sinfeld”. Even in the last week, he was convinced Nancy Pelosi and the crooked politicians were destroying America and he cared about what he read in the paper each day. When it was time for him to go, it happened very quickly and he was with his loved one, with all three of his kids.

And even when he would tell us that he was ready, he still had a lot of fight left in him. He told our parents I’ll be in the hospital two days. He wouldn’t let them take him without his sunglasses. Even in the hospital, he used the same line he always used on my mom. She would tell him she just got back from the beauty parlor and he would say, “What’s the matter? Couldn’t they take you?” I came up from DC expecting that I might be too late – and he was still sitting upright, determined to do what he wanted.

I know we wanted him to go peacefully – but I like that we can remember him as a fighter, as someone who did everything his way no matter what. There’s a famous Dylan Thomas poem that says “Rage against the dying of the light”, and I think he did that.

So it’s hard even after 90 years to say goodbye to someone.  For us, there will always be an empty seat at Curt’s – right where he liked to sit, by the left, by the windows.

It’s hard to say goodbye and to close a chapter. But we can be grateful for the life he lived – for the gift of time he was given and all of the lessons that he passed on to all of us through his unassuming example. So I know that today he would want all of us to have some veal parmesan, to celebrate his life, and then he would want all of us to get back to work and stop making a fuss. So as sad as today is, I know that we’ll always have our memories of him and the lessons he left with us. We love you Pappy Don.