Wabash College Chapel
October 16, 2011
Vic once quoted Winston Churchill’s understatement that his life had been ‘already long, and not altogether uneventful.’ We give thanks today for Vic’s ‘long and not altogether uneventful life.’ We bring to this Chapel blessed memories, to each his or her own, no two sets identical. Legyacies too rich to plumb! Some months ago, when Vic suggested Scriptures, readings, and music for this service, I asked him what to emphasize. He responded spontaneously and joyfully: First of all, his love, joy and pride in his family; then his love for Wabash College and his work as a teacher; and finally his gratitude for his upbringing and values instilled in a Methodist parsonage in Minnesota.
First of all, family! He grew up in a close-knit, loving family, the son of an immigrant. His father had been a young street preacher in Birmingham, who was offered an education to become a Methodist preacher in America. So, the preacher immigrated from the streets of Birmingham to a small Minnesota town on the Canadian border. He married, established a home, raised a family—poor in material things, rich in spirit. I often joked with Vic that the things I loved most about him he had learned in a Minnesota parsonage.
Fortunate for us that Vic brought Marion to Wabash College and Crawfordsville, and raised their beloved family here. Some of you will remember his rose garden on John Street. This beautiful bouquet of roses in his favorite color in front of the pulpit has 64 roses, one for each year Vic and Marion were married—marking also 64 years of Vic’s association with Wabash College. Vic always smiled when recalling their honeymoon as a long train and bus trip from the East Coast to Crawfordsville so he could join the Wabash faculty. From the house on John Street and then on West Market street a sweet fragrance and a shining light of good works spread abroad. Vic expressed pleasure that the legacy continues in Carol’s social work in a low income minority school and in Karen’s work as a Legal Aid attorney. Love and pride in family, all the family, above all.
Vic learned about duty and service in his Minnesota home. In response to Pearl Harbor, he immediately enlisted in the Marines. Discovering in boot camp that one leg was a bit short, he joined the Army. As a college graduate, he was offered a commission as an officer, but refused, preferring to serve as an enlisted G.I. [Why does that not surprise us?] Vic is one of that dwindling number of those Tom Brokaw calls ‘The Greatest Generation’ who came home from war to create homes, build communities, and improve this country.
Vic’s love and service of Wabash College was so deep, strong, and lengthy that we can feel it in this chapel that he loved. Words are inadequate. Some people embody the mission and virtues of Wabash College: integrity, clear thinking, service to others, and upright humane living. Vic’s life in service to this College at every level was exemplary. He remarked, ‘There wasn’t a day that I wasn’t eager to get down here to teach.’
He was committed to the liberal arts as the skills of freedom. He said to Wabash seniors, [and we do well to overhear]: ‘I believe the peculiar business of liberal education is to teach us to distinguish between appearance and reality, between the imitation and the genuine, between manner and substance, and between the plausible and the true. I covet for [you] a healthy skepticism of all who come offering easy answers to difficult problems; a sense of humor and a sense of irony; and compassion and courage, that you may look upon the human condition and sometimes laugh and occasionally weep and never despair.’
Vic’s leadership reached deep and wide in this community: service on the Crawfordsville City Council, the School Board, police commissioner, the Parks and Recreation Board, and as President of board of the Christian Nursing Service Clinic. How happy Vic would be at the news we received Friday that a $900,000 matching grant continues and expands the work of the Christian Nursing Service! He sought abundant life for all.
He was a democrat with a little ‘d’ and a capital ‘D’ learned from the Minnesota Farm Labor Party. He first met Walter Mondale, another Methodist preacher’s son, playing in the yard as their parents were exchanging parsonages. He respected Hubert Humphrey for whom he delivered mail in his student job at the University of Minnesota. Humphrey as senator and presidential candidate was known as ‘the Happy Warrior’, and I think of Vic as the happy warrior: always with a sense of humor, patience with others’ perceived wrongheadedness, basic human decency, disagreeing without rancor, a champion of civil discourse. The times I saw Vic most agitated were when confronted with ignorant arrogance, hypocracy, deceit, and willful injustice. These were exact contraries to the virtues for which we honor him.
Vic honored his mother and father and expressed gratitude for their nurture and example in the parsonage, even though he came to disagree with his father’s conservative theology. It was part of his life-long, intmate debate with God—one must say, with more integrity, diligence, humility, and joy than many who think themselves righteous. He sang more old Methodist hymns with joy, studied more Scripture, and read more theology, including all the works of Bill Placher, his student, colleague, and favorite theologian. He was discussing Bill’s theological commentary on the Gospel of Mark chapter by chapter with Karen until his final ‘rough patch’, as he called it. A life-long engagement!
Two Biblical figures come to mind, Jacob and Job: Jacob because he wrestled with God all night at the river Jabbock. Then God blessed him, ‘Because you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed, you shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel’ (Gen 32:28). Job, not because of shared suffering—indeed, Vic thought of his life as charmed with a wonderful wife and family, good work to accomplish, good friends, colleagues, students, and length of days. Instead, because Vic, like Job, struggled incessantly—head, heart, and hand—with issues of justice and injustice, good and evil, meaning and purpose of life, and the affirmation of abundant life for all God’s children.
It involved not just an extended Scarlet Inn round table debate, from which we learned, but an investment of life, from which we learned even more: President of the Christian Nursing Service/ Well Baby Clinic board, driver for Meals on Wheels taking food to the sick and infirmed, volunteer at the Fish Clothes Closet at the Wabash Avenue Presbyterian Church. Vic would not presume to refer to his sevice in terms of Jesus’ teaching, but I will: “Then the King will say to those at his right hand [Note this is the only context I would dare locate Vic on the right; can’t you hear Vic remonstrate, ‘To stand humbly before the Almighty God, one must stand a little to the left!’]. Still, “Then the King will say to those at his right hand ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me’ (Matt 25:34ff). Vic understood Scripture, deep down, where it counts.
Let us conclude with an adaptation of wisdom from ben Sirach (44):
So let us now praise a good, just man
A wise advisor
A scholar who spoke wise words
A speaker with pointed words
Living peacefully at home
Honored by the people of his day
Left a reputation, and people still praise him today.
There are those who are not remembered,
As if they had never lived,
Who died and were forgotten,
They, and their children after them.
But we will praise a good man,
Whose righteous deeds are not forgotten
Whose reputation is passed to his descendants, and this will be their inheritance.
His descendants continue to keep the covenant
And always will, because of what their ancestors did.
And God’s people will praise him.