Planning Dad's Funeral

Christmas was a poignant day for all of us. I tried to make sure the kids still had fun opening their presents, we had a nice Christmas dinner, but then Moe and I spent the rest of the day with mom and my brothers and sisters at the mortuary, planning dad's funeral.

I'd done this once before, a year and a half earlier when Moe's mother passed away, but it still felt strange to be looking at caskets, choosing program covers, and deciding how best to celebrate my father's life. Dad had been an amazing man, and meant a lot to many people, but since he and mom had only moved to Snowflake less than two years before, we weren't sure how many people would actually be able to come to the funeral. Most of the people he had worked with at the High School and in church still lived in the Valley, and it was a three hour drive for them to come up to Snowflake, in the middle of winter.

“I don't suppose there will be many people,” mom said when we were ordering how many programs to print. “If we were having the funeral down in Mesa, it would be a different story, but up here, well......I don't think there will be many people besides our family.”

Perhaps so, but just our family added up to well over a hundred, so I wasn't really worried about having a small funeral. Just the same, I knew what mom meant. Down in the Valley there were hundreds of people whose lives dad had touched.

I got a letter a few days later.  It was addressed to The Family of Mr. Russell, and began:

I read of the passing of Mr. Russell in the Mesa Tribune and I am writing to express my memories of Mr. Russell, and the impact on me.

In 1968-69, I was a senior at Mesa High, and Mr. Russell was assistant principle.  I had finished all my credit hours by December, and was going to stop going to school, graduate, and take the rest of the year off.  He would not let me stop coming to school, so for the rest of the year after A Cappella Choir, I would go to the office, get a pass, go to the library, read or run errands for the staff, and leave early for my job at Safeway.  Later in life, I realized that Mr. Russell, by his refusal to let me graduate, had kept me from being drafted.  I stayed and graduated with my class, and enrolled in college.

I think of this every now and then. I regret that I never had the chance to thank your father personally.

God's Peace