A Tribute To My Dad

It's now been 30 years.

On Tuesday night, June 7, 1977, Vicki and I had just gone to bed. We were only about 2 weeks into a new pastorate in Colonial Heights, VA. Our first one, by the way. The phone rang at a late hour. It was my mother, calling to say that something was terribly wrong with my dad and that the rescue squad was on its way to the small duplex apartment where I had grown up. I could tell from the sound of her voice that things did not look good.

My father had suffered a heart attack years earlier, before I was even born, while he was still a very young man. I assumed now that this was what was happening, again. An empty feeling washed over me. Vicki and I hurriedly got dressed and drove away in the darkness of a late Spring night for the hour and a half trip to Suffolk. As I recall, we made most of that journey in silence. I couldn't talk. So many thoughts raced through my mind.

My mother had also called my pastor brother, Don, who was serving in his first church, in Farmville, VA, at a distance even further away. He and Audrey set out on their long trek. Our younger brother, George, still resided at home and had followed, with Mama, behind the ambulance. I can't begin to imagine what these events must have been like for them, since they were right there watching them unfold.

Vicki and I finally got to Suffolk's Obici Hospital to find Mama and George, sitting alone in that emergency room waiting area, expecting word on daddy's condition. Suddenly, a door flung open and a doctor, a long time family friend, walked out and simply said, "I'm sorry, Frances. He's gone." With that, he turned and left. That was it. A nurse came out and tried to answer some questions and be of help, but there we were, all alone, and the bottom had just dropped out of our world. Talk about a cold loneliness. Daddy was gone. Gone. Alive that morning when we had talked on the phone, but now, gone.

I can't recall now whether Don and Audrey made it just before or just after that pronouncement, but I know we were all in shock. We made our way, well into the wee hours of the morning, back to that little apartment, all 6 of us, plunged into the depths of grief and loss. Back to that tiny residence, so full of the memories of childhood.

The next few days were packed with friends and decisions and reminiscenses. Don and I conducted the funeral at the wonderful First Baptist Church of Suffolk, where we had attended all our lives. We wanted to honor our father in that way. And after all, to him, there were only 2 preachers in the whole world! We did our very best to celebrate his life with our words that Thursday afternoon as beautiful sunlight shone through those sanctuary windows.

Daddy was a simple man. An humble man. Never went to college. Worked hard to provide for his family. He was not a leader in church, could never have gotten up and said anything in front of the congregation, and never was a deacon. I don't think he ever sang in the choir or chaired any major committee. But for years he served as an usher. I'll never forget how proud he was the night he got to meet George Beverly Shea when that renowned Gospel singer came and gave a concert to a packed house at our church. Because Dad was an usher, he got to help seat people for that event! I can't read Psalm 84:10("I would rather be a doorkeeper...") without thinking of my Pop.

More often that not, when Don or I would be called on to pray or preach, even as teens, in our home church or some other congregation, if Dad was in the audience, every few minutes you'd see tears in his eyes. So many times when we would part, he'd say to us, "Preach the Word." He genuinely loved us and would have done anything in the world for us. For the life of me, I don't know how, on his small salary, he ever paid for us to go to college.

Regrettably, I can't remember now any long conversations or deep talks I ever had with my father. There weren't really any camping trips or hunting trips or even much fishing. Maybe deep inside as a small kid I yearned for that, or maybe I didn't. I do know that these days I hunger to have known him better, to have connected more, to have communicated soul-to-soul. Perhaps that's why the words of that doctor in that cold, sterile ER waiting room that June night, "He's gone", are permanently etched in my memory. I can still hear them. Maybe that's why I've spent an awful lot of time since then trying to convince other families not to miss opportunities to really bond, tightly, to their loved ones. Life is so short. It passes so quickly. It can be over in a flash of time. To have known someone, really known them, down to the heart, is a great treasure.

In my book, Dad was a great man. We always felt secure. Loved. Cared for. His gentle smile, his handshake, our lively family discussions about politics around the table in that unbelievably small kitchen, his tooting of the car horn whenever we'd drive beneath an overpass, his insistence on taking us on Saturdays out to Grandma's farm, the homemade vegetable soup he'd often make or the cheese toast on Sunday mornings, the obvious but non-ostentatious love he had for Mama...all these and a thousand other memories I shall cherish 'til my life's end.

If I have accomplished anything of value over these 30 years since he quietly slipped away that warm evening at age 56 with an abdominal aneurysm, it's due in large part to the sacrifices he was willing to make to help me prepare to answer a call that he couldn't have understood or explained theologically but was ready to support with everything he had.

I miss you, Dad. Still, after 30 years. Maybe even more now that I have sons of my own...and a grandson of whom you'd be so very proud. I can just see your eyes sparkle as you'd look at him. I'd give a great deal to be able to sit down and talk with you now, if only for 30 minutes. We've got a lot of catching-up to do.

I'll see you one day, over there. Maybe we'll first glimpse each other in a flower-filled park or beside a lofty, beautiful, flowing fountain just inside a gate in Heaven. I can assure you that I'll be the first to start the hug.