Thanksgiving at Aunt Sherri’s

Cat and I joined our family at my Aunt Sherri’s for an early Thanksgiving dinner.  It was really a great time.

Here is the fam sans Tyler.  He was playing outside at the time.  But I weaseled him into a picture with me!

It is our tradition that we go around the table to say what we are all thankful for.  Many of us were thanksful for Pappy and his legacy aong with Mammal and how she has handled the loss of her husband.  A few were thankful for Barack Obama but the general theme was family.

I was thankful for being able to tell pappy truly what I thought about him and his value to my life a couple weeks before he died, for being able to see a different side of mammal, and to be married to my beautiful, talented, and all around amazing wife.

Cat was similarly thankful for me, cough cough, and expressed her admiration for the in-laws obviously love and caring for one another and towards her.

Cristian spoke last and announced that Sabrina was nearly nine weeks pregnant!  What a wonderful surprise.  She goes in for her first doctor’s appointment on Tuesday.  We are all very excited and keeping her in our thoughts and prayers.

My eulogy to pappy posted 10/11

I was privileged to speak on behalf of the grandchildren at my pappy’s funeral, the text of my eulogy as spoken is below:

Today, we honor the life of my pappy.  A lifetime of hard work and unassailable integrity are a testament to why we are all here to remember him.  Perhaps his wife remembers him a young military man who looked like Elvis, his children a hard working father, but to the grandchildren he was our patient, wise, and practical pappy. What set pappy apart, like his mother before him, are the life lessons that he has left with us.

Pappy worked his whole life; as a boy he picked tobacco worms, sacks of potatoes and all other sort of employment. In his adult life he sold cars, worked outages at nuclear power plants, and was a plumber with local 520.  Because of his dedication to hard work, his children and in turn the grandchildren were given so many opportunities.

I learned about hard work from him when I spent months, or perhaps it just seemed like months as a kid, painting the fence around the barn.  We’d work all morning, eat pie and peach ice cream for lunch, and head back out again till evening.

And I’m not the only one…  Grandchildren Mike, Lisa, or Josh would tell you about the times they came over to “gram and pap’s” as they called him and ended up raking leaves.  Or the time that “pap” came over to their home and couldn’t help himself but to fix the broken steps leading out from their basement.

Pappy had thirteen grandchildren but each one of them has their own story to tell about pappy and pappy his own special relationship with each. Ashley and pappy were very close and shared a love for animals. When Ashley was a child, they trained his horse, black cloud, together… Don’t tell Ashley, but pappy had already trained him.

Ashley reminded me that pappy always dared to train the untrainable. He owned raccoons, a wild horse, Bucky, and loved his might as well have been wild dog, Taz later in life.

Animals were part of a bigger passion that pappy had for the outdoors, the mountains, and pappy loved to share this treasure with his grandchildren.  How many of us grandchildren have memories of eating red beats or pot pie with our pappy at Red’s Diner?  Once we arrived at Phantom Bear camp, there were fishing trips, swimming at the point, deer spotting, canoe trips down the Susquehanna, a drive to Benezette to see the Elk, and for something fancy, we might go to the Quehanna Motel for dinner.

One time at camp, Lindsay recalled making apple dumplings with pappy and our family. We picked apples on the tree by the swing set and had the other ingredients except flour, so we drove down the three mile dirt road to the corner store. There, were five pounds bags of flour but that was too much and too expensive for pappy so he haggled with the shopkeeper to sell him just three cups of flour!

Pappy was a frugal and practical man. He always made do with what he had. How many times has mammal or anyone else for that matter asked for something only to hear “don’t we got some of that stuff up in the attic” or aren’t there “oodles” of them somewhere.

His early years developed his practicality. Earning a living at a young age to help his mother, our dear little mammal, they lived simply out of necessity. But even after a lifetime of work at the union, he would wear thread bare flannel shirts and boast about the stitching on his jeans he got from the bargain bin of a second hand store.

Heck, if you spend much time with pappy at his home or at the cabin, you know you were lucky if he was wearing anything but his underwear…

Pappy was a very funny man. Speaking with Sabrina, she recalled her wedding day. All of Cristian’s Spanish speaking relatives were outside and pappy was among them. They told jokes in Spanish and while pappy didn’t understand a word, Sabrina saw him laughing right along with them from her window.

Kiani wrote a paragraph about her pappy and it is appropriate to quote it here.

My relationship with pappy was very good, pretty much every summer we would go fishing. That was a fun time, one of the times when I was about 8 or 9 I caught a really big bass. Another thing I will always remember that we did every summer was go to the cabin, those were great times. We would be with family, having fun and being together. I can just see that one time me my mom and him went up when we were trying to start a camp fire, me and my mom gave up after awhile but pap went out to try and dot it, and he went out in his underwear trying to start the fire. Eventually he got the fire going.

Just the other day I was looking at pictures of pappy taking Lindsay and I fishing for carp at Holtwood dam.  I remember that Lindsay got so excited when she hooked a carp that she started turning the rod the wrong way and the whole fishing rod fell apart before catching one. Twenty years later pappy and I would take two more of his grandchildren, my brothers Tyler and Joey, to do the very same thing.

Years from now, Lisa and Coty will think about her pap when their future children help rake leaves. After Cat and I have kids, we will remember pappy when we bring our children to Holtwood to catch a really big carp. Each time Ashley trains an animal she will remember pappy. When Lindsay goes around the house to make sure that all of the lights are off before leaving the house so not to waste electricity, she was will remember him. Sabrina will always remember pappy when someone tells a funny joke that makes everyone laugh.

After pappy took his last breath Gerry quoted an old Spanish proverb, “when you were born you cried and the people around you smiled. Live your live such that when you pass away the people around you will cry and you can smile.”

These little memories that each grandchild has reveal a bigger truth of pappy’s life. Pappy’s ethic of hard work, simple pleasures, and practical living were hallmarks of his life and now of his legacy. I pray that we remember them and fold the principles by which he lived his life into our own for “time flies over us but leaves its shadow behind” (Hawthorne).

Dearest pappy, one day we all will come home to little mammal and to you in heaven