Eulogy for My Father

Memories

My father passed away last Saturday. Since I'm the writer in the family, I wrote and delivered the following eulogy during the memorial service on Friday. It was well received. Someone asked me if it was difficult to write. Actually, the writing of it was not difficult -- I work as an editor, and I'm used to "assembling" essays out of diverse bits of text. The hardest part was getting other family members to contribute memories of my father at a busy and difficult time. But it all worked out, I think. I'm posting it here as both a memorial and -- who knows? -- perhaps an aid to someone out there who needs to compose a similar piece.

Thank you all for coming. Today we remember my father, Edward Gates, and I would like to share some fond memories that my family has of him with you, some of the "little things" that you may not know about.

***

My mother has many stories about meeting my father in Tacoma, Washington, and knowing him when he was a pilot stationed there in the Air Force. He used to fly low over her house in his F-86 fighter jet, which impressed her and her mother, but disturbed their neighbors. My mother was charmed enough to marry him and move all the way from a city on the West Coast to a small town in Upstate New York.

My parents built a home and my father built a business on East Main Street here in West Winfield. And in his spare time, my dad liked to work in his woodshop in the basement of our house. He made lots of furniture there, including our kitchen table. He also made kids' furniture and bookcases for me. (And you can see some photos of his handiwork on the table here in the foyer.)

Later on, when we grew up and moved away, he was still making things for us and delivering what he had made in his truck or his trailer. My sister, Nancy, recalls that whenever we asked him to make something for our new homes, he would ask for plans and then rush out to get the materials. He made a cradle out of cherry wood for Adam, for example, who was the first of his grandchildren.

***

Speaking of grandchildren: Every time another grandchild was born, my mom was hoping for a granddaughter, to join Stacie, but instead my parents ended up with six grandsons, which pleased my father. He thought he was on the way to having a complete baseball team of grandsons. Instead, he ended up with two thirds of a team, which included three hockey players, one aspiring film-maker, one future paleontologist -- and only one grandson who actually did play baseball.

***

More memories: My brother Dan, who lives the closest to West Winfield, remembers all the projects he helped my father with. He often helped him attach the snow-blower to his lawn tractor – quite an operation that often also involved Doug Evans, who helped my parents with many jobs around the house in recent years – so my dad could plow the driveway in the winter – an activity he seemed to enjoy. Other wintertime activities that Dan recalls include skiing trips that Dad took us to at the old Gunset Ski Bowl in Richfield Springs and attending Buffalo Bills games with Dad and the Whitchers in Buffalo.

Dad loved his fireplace and his wood-burning stove in the winter, which meant that we kids – and especially Dan – helped him split wood and stack it in the basement. Dad seemed proud of the enormous stack of fireplace logs he collected.

***

My father loved his home but he also liked to travel. He loved to drive, especially in a truck or camper.

When I was a kid, we did a lot of camping with a travel trailer or a motor home. When I was about 13 or 14, we took a camping trip clear across the country in a motor home, which seems kind of crazy today, when gas is approaching four dollars a gallon. I remember visiting my mother's relatives in Minnesota and the state of Washington on that trip. I remember being in the Rocky Mountains and the desert in the southwest, and the badlands of South Dakota -- and even crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in this enormous house on wheels, which seemed like a very surreal experience.

Every year after that, at least once a year, my father would ask me if I remembered that trip, which I thought was strange question and even a little annoying at times. How could I possibly forget it? "Of course I remember it, Dad," I would say. But he kept asking. Gradually, I came to understand that the trip meant even more to him than it did to us kids. It was his gift to us.

***

As a gift to him, a few years ago my brother Ted put together a scrapbook of my father's life which you can see on the table in the foyer. Over a period of days, Ted remembers my father bringing him an astonishing number of clippings and articles about things Ted never knew about, such as the time that my father, as a teenager, found a meteorological radio balloon that landed on the farm where he grew up, or the article that referred to him as a the "triple threat freshman star of the 1946 Hartwick football team."

Probably the biggest news item was an article from the Tacoma New Tribune that detailed the mid-air collision my father survived when he was a pilot in the Air Force. Typically, my father was nonchalant about all these things.

***

In recent years, the family would gather on almost every holiday at my parents' large, welcoming home on East Main Street.

Originally a farm boy, Dad was up and around in the morning before any of us. We remember him whistling old tunes in the morning, like “Those Were the Days” and “Tammy” as he was going through his morning routine. Sometimes he would sing, replacing the words he would miss with “bum bums” – always in tune and fading in and out as he passed from room to room.

Just one of my father's memorable contributions to these occasions was buying doughnuts for breakfast every morning. When my nephew Josh, who very much wanted to be here today, heard that his grandfather had passed away, he offered to buy the doughnuts in the future. And we may hold him to that.

***

Over the last few days, we've been amazed by the number of messages and cards we've received from people touched by my father's life. Over and over, they mention that they will miss seeing him at the post office. My father's daily routine always included a visit to the post office to pick up the mail – he never wanted it delivered – which we never thought too much about. Now we realize that it was his way of staying in touch with the community he was born and raised in, and never wanted to leave for too long.

In closing, we're all grateful for the years we had with my father. We wish there could have been more time, but we're also grateful that he didn't have to endure more of the ill health he encountered over the last couple of years. We'll remember him fondly, and we hope you will too, and will think of him -- perhaps when you visit the post office.

Thanks again for coming today to remember Ed Gates.