EULOGY FOR MY FATHER

            I will miss my father.

            Two things I will miss are his handshake and his smile, and I suspect that others will remember them as well.  Both were engaging.  His handshake was firm and engaging; his smile was friendly and engaging, with a hint of mischief.  Never a confident speaker, Dad communicated much with his handshake and smile, and both were genuine - they continued through the very last days of his life, when because of weakness and delirium, deceit would not have been possible.

            Dad smiled at us - we who loved him - to the very end.  I think his last purposeful communication with me was a smile.  I was sitting by his bedside on the Friday evening before his death, singing softly to him, and he smiled at me.  It was no longer his smile of old, but the twinkling light was still in his eyes.  I know those who were there remember his big, expansive smile when we finally had his breathing tube removed on Thursday before moving him to palliative care.  And nurses commented that they don’t usually see smiles like his in the ICU or in the final days of an illness like his.

             But his last communication may also have been a handshake.  Dad was in the hospital for pneumonia the last two-and-a-half weeks of his life.  But the pneumonia proved too much for his body to handle, and even after the course of antibiotics quelled the original infection, he was not able to breathe for long unaided.  He died on a Sunday morning of respiratory failure. 

            In the hospital, doctors and nurses ask patients to squeeze their fingers as a neurological test and sign of alertness.  Whenever he could, Dad would give them a mighty firm squeeze.  Even when his strength had ebbed such that he could not even adjust his position in bed, his grip remained firm, and  sometimes doctors had trouble extricating their fingers from his hand.  I think he was showing off a little.  When we moved him to palliative care, my mother, my sister and I took turns holding both of his hands.  He held ours in return, keeping that communion with us and keeping hold of Mom’s hand when she would try to get up for a moment. 

            In his last hours when he could no longer hold our hands, we continued to hold his.  And when he died on Sunday morning, his hand was in mine.  That was a comfort to me and I hope it was a comfort to him as well.

            I will also miss Dad’s voice and some of the little things he would say.  He had a rich and pleasant speaking voice, even though he was not confident as a speaker.  He also had a nice singing voice.  I still remember how he sounded when I was little and from my bedroom at night I would hear him singing Danny Boy at the piano.  But I don’t remember him playing or singing at all in later years.

            Whenever I was staying at the house in my adult years, we had a nightly ritual.  When he and Mom were coming upstairs for bed he would call up to me, asking “Are you coming down?”  He wanted to know whether or not he should leave a light on for me.  I would answer “yes” and he would reply, “Okay!”  I will forever remember his Okay.  In his last year, after his stroke, his voice was less vibrant than it had been, but every now and then his okay would come through as strong and rich as it ever did, and he sounded again like my dad of old.  By then time we were leaving a light on downstairs regardless – for safety at night – but our ritual remained.

            One friend of mine from my youth remembers the distinctive way Dad would answer the telephone.  And perhaps others who used to call the house remember his “mmmm yello!”

            I will miss other rituals as well.  When I see beers in the refrigerator it is a stabbing reminder that I will never share another beer with my dad.  The last beer we drank together was the English pub draft, Boddington’s.  It was his first time tasting Boddington’s and he said he loved it.  In his last year, I took to buying beers that I thought he would like to try: Warsteiner Verum and Dunkel, pub draft and regular stout Guinness, and other hearty varieties.  He said of all of them that he thought they might be his favorite.  I regret not taking more time to drink beers with him in his last months.  Often he would catch me about to leave the house, or else it would be in the evening when Mom didn’t like him drinking beer because of his incontinence problems, stemming from treatments for prostate cancer.  But now, with no opportunity to share that ritual again, I regret not taking every opportunity I had.

            Beer drinking was probably our oldest ritual together, stretching back to when I was a small boy and we were living on Coventry Road in Shaker Heights.  Back then he would often drink Genesee beer, a lower-priced brew made in upstate New York. He would pour the beer from can to mug and also pour a small amount for me into a Dixie cup.  The cup was almost entirely foam, which was fine by me since the foam was what I was interested in.  I loved the taste and the texture and it felt like a special treat (and a grown-up thing) to share with my dad.  To this day, I love the taste of Genesee.

             When I was younger, it was a family joke that strangers would offer beer to Dad wherever he went.  Two particular times stand out in my mind; they may be the only two times, or they may be the most memorable of many times – I don’t know which.  But either way, it seems that Dad would not say no if offered.

            One of these times occurred when I was very young and we were walking in what I remember as Shenandoah National Park.  It might have actually been a place in Ohio, since I would have been very young when we lived near Shenandoah to have formed such a clear memory.  But wherever or whenever it was, we passed a small group of what were - to my young mind - hippies.  They asked my dad if he wanted a beer, and of course he said yes.  I remember looking back and seeing him accept and begin to drink a can from one of the young men.

            The other memorable occasion occurred in Boston the night after Dad ran the Boston marathon.  That night we went to the No Name seafood restaurant, and I remember it to be loud and crowded, and that people from another table bought beer for Dad.  Perhaps he looked like he had probably just run the marathon – he certainly had the build of a runner.  Or maybe, as we used to say about him, he just looked like someone who needed a beer.

            Appreciating nature and running are two family traditions that have firmly taken root in me.  When I was young, as a family we spent a good amount of time visiting nature by camping and hiking.  When we lived in the DC area, we would go to Shenandoah National Park, with its beautiful Skyline Drive, and the Great Smokey Mountains.  In Ohio we would go to places like Nelson Ledges and Virginia Kendall in what is now the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.  We also took vacations every summer to my mother’s family farm in Northern Wisconsin.  I loved walking and running through the corn fields and pastures of those farm acres, often with my Uncle Jim’s dog.  Sometimes we would travel through Michigan and camp with the car camper in the beautiful forests of northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula.  And twice we went to wilderness summits put on in the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian mountains.

            Both my parents were runners as far back as I remember, but especially my father.  And me, too.  Like my sister, I began my running life by running with our parents, and the tradition started so far back that I don’t remember I time when I didn’t run.  Running was something that my parents began in the 1960s, when they were in their late 30s or early 40s.  Dad became a pretty good age group runner in local road races, taking many firsts in his age group.  He had a few nemeses who were about his age, including Jess Belle, the owner of the Bonnie Belle cosmetics company, who sponsored a serious of road races for women only.  Mom has a number of age group trophies – which were bells of various sizes – from those races.

            One highlight of my youth running career was being youngest finisher at age eight of the Cleveland Heart-a-thon half marathon.  Dad was instrumental in encouraging and helping me do that.  My whole family had initially signed up, but one by one they backed out due to injury or lack of training.  But I still wanted to run, and to test my readiness my dad took me out for a 12-mile run to be sure I was fit enough.

            The highlight of my dad’s running career was the Boston marathon, which he qualified for and ran when he was 50 years old.  It was a big deal for us driving to Boston and watching him finish the race.  It was a cool and rainy day, and I remember the Japanese drummers who set up an elaborate traditional drum arrangement, and would play their drums whenever a Japanese runner approached the finish.  Dad’s official time was about 3:05, but I have no doubt that he really ran under three hours that day.  Those were the days before chip timing.  Nowadays every runner has a magnetic chip which records when they cross the start and finish lines and so gives a true individualized time.  But Dad did not have that advantage and it surely took him at least 10 or even 20 minutes just to get to the starting line, so his true time was undoubtedly under three hours, which is very respectable for a man in his fifties.

            In 2010 we took our last trip together as a family when we traveled again to Boston for the marathon.  My dad got to see his daughter and a granddaughter run the marathon, and our family got to relive old memories from our trip to Boston so many years ago.

            As an adult, I combined these two loves instilled by my father and mother – running and nature when I began trail running while living in Northern California.  My dad had a chance to see me run a 50-mile race and also the 100-mile Western States 100.

            I loved hearing my dad tell how he got his start in running.  He and my mom read Kenneth Cooper’s first book, Aerobics.  This book heralded the start of the running and fitness boom that really took off in the early 1970s with the first New York City Marathon and the world-class exploits of Frank Shorter in the Munich Olympics, and his duels in New York and Boston with fellow legend Bill Rodgers.  Kenneth Cooper recommended running in place at home as one way to start an aerobic fitness program.  I’m not sure why he promoted running in place, but perhaps it was because it was unusual at that time to see regular people out running on the streets.  At any rate, my father began running in place in the basement.  One day after he had built up his endurance a bit, he tried running on a track and  - as he would say - he never ran in the basement again.  One day some time later, he and his running partners tried running on the streets and sidewalks, and they never went back to the track.  (That’s not strictly true, because in Cleveland during the winters we would run at the Jewish Community Center’s indoor track.  But in the summers, Dad ran almost exclusively on the streets and sidewalks, and I often ran with him.)  I later extended this evolution when I tried running on trails, and never wanted to run on roads again. 

            Lately I have begun teaching clinics about running form, and I use my father as an example.  His running style was very distinctive, with a high knee lift, upright posture and rhythmic cadence carried through his entire body.  Actually, his form was about perfect by current standards.  I have wondered if his style came in part from his months running in place before he ventured to the track.  Running in place encourages good running habits, and as a form drill is part of the curriculum of the clinics.  I always talk about my father and use him as an example for the benefits of running in place.

            I think my dad and I shared a passion a deeper than running and enjoying nature.  We both have a passion for moving through and exploring the land.  When I run, especially on trials, I take a great pleasure in moving through the land, following its contours, experiencing the life and shape and nature of its trees, grasses shrubs and animals; imbibing the rhythm and the feel of the land which is underneath me and all around me.  I love the mountains, the hills, the forests and the prairies alike, and delight in moving through them all.  My dad and I also shared a love for what he called “lonesome landscapes.” I may have developed this through some sort of osmosis from my father, for I don’t think we spent much time together in such places.  He developed this affinity in the years that he lived as a child in Oklahoma, western Kansas, and South Dakota.  In later days, we both loved a video of the stark landscapes of Iceland.  And I have loved both running and driving through the landscape in South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

            Dad was a great and prolific driver.  He loved to drive, and I inherited his passion and technique for long distance driving. Like me, he enjoyed seeing new places, even if only driving through them, a passion he perhaps developed taking long car trips with his mother when he was a young man.  Driving is another way to move through the land, and dad loved it as do I.  As a young man, he would drive from Western Kansas into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.  His sister remembers how he was always wanting to go to the mountains, and she later realized that it was so he could drive on the curvy mountain roadways.  I believe he enjoyed the technical aspects and also the joy of feeling the rhythms and the contours of the land.  In our drives to Florida and South Carolina he would speak with admiration about the highways through the Appalachian Mountains.  And I feel the same joy whether driving cross country or driving on the country roads in Eastern Ohio. 

            Driving is about the only thing that I do efficiently, and I learned this from Dad.  Get on the road early and drive steadily, taking few breaks.  Dad would always bypass as many rest stops as the gas tank would allow, often worrying my mother as the gas gauge would drop down to (and sometimes past) zero.  I do the same.

            I can remember when I was young, my father describing himself as a pessimist.  He would tell us to be pessimistic and to expect and plan for the worst.  He said that people of his generation learned this lesson during the Great Depression, because they learned that nothing is certain.  He also said to hope for the best, but I seem to remember the emphasis on the expect the worst side of the equation.

            But now I know that Dad was not really a pessimist.  He was a dreamer.        He titled his memoir  Reflections of a Life: A Memoir of Dreams and Striving.  Dreams were a central part of Dad’s life from childhood right through the end of his life.  He wrote in his memoir: “I think dreams can be with us all of our days.”  And while dreams can “torment and tantalize” us, they also give our lives hope and meaning.  Poverty is insidious if it robs a person of hope, but even wealth does not guarantee hope and meaning in one’s life.  It is dreams, be they large or small, that make life worth living.

            Dad chased his biggest dreams through writing.  At my father’s funeral mass, the priest remarked that in the roughly twenty years he was pastor at my parents’ church he could not remember ever hearing my father speak.  Dad did not consider himself an effective speaker, especially public speaking.  I suspect he was better than he believed himself to be.  He did have a nice speaking voice, and his genuineness must surely have enhanced his lectures to his business students at Cleveland State University.  Be that as it may, it was not through speaking, but through writing that he primarily and most powerfully engaged with the world.  And it was through writing that he achieved his greatest successes.

            Dad dreamed of making a lasting impact on the world, and he strove to do this through his writing.  As a young professor of business in 1972 he wrote his first book, an introductory marketing textbook titled Marketing: Management and Social Change.  He tried to introduce a strong sense of ethics, compassion, and what today would be called sustainability into business education.  He discussed respect and compassion to workers and customers, race relations, and respect and service to the environment.  Unfortunately, this first book did not sell well, and it was discontinued after its first printing. 

            But Dad continued to pursue his dream.  He went on to author many successful books and teaching manuals, with his forte being manuals employing the case study method.  And he imbued these books with his sense of ethics and fairness.  And many years after his first book, he finally had the opportunity to publish a book about business ethics.  Dad’s academic writing was his major contribution to the business world, as several of his books went through many editions and were translated into many languages.  And they provided a lucrative income for our family.  Even if he was not able to affect business to the extent that he initially dreamed, he kept his dream alive through his writing.  One professor who used Dad’s Marketing Mistakes and Successes book through many editions over fifteen years wrote:

Attesting to Bob's almost magical writing ability, it's about the only case book I've ever been able to get my students to read!  It's a unique book that allowed his creativity and subtle humor to show through.  I feel I've gotten to know him through the years from the multiple editions of this book.  While many other academic authors seem to try to impress readers and often write in an esoteric tone, I always found Bob's books to be written in a straightforward and understandable way while still being rich with insights.  Over the years, many students have commented on this.   He truly will be missed.

            Dad discusses in his memoir how as a child he dreamed of great athletic exploits.  For a skinny kid with a heart murmur (he wrote) this was not a likely dream, but as an adult he found success and satisfaction as a distance runner and local road race participant.  And he also saw modest success and much joy and satisfaction as a handicap golfer.  Dad began golfing as a young man, a pastime that I think he learned from his father.  He and my mother golfed together before they married, and his success with writing enabled him to join the Shaker Country Club, where my parents golfed for many years and my father sometimes won club championships in the category of middling-handicapped members.  Dad taught my sister and me how to golf, too.  It was an activity that I enjoyed very much – there is a satisfying feeling of ease and grace in hitting a perfect golf shot.  Unfortunately, such moments are few and far between for many golfers, including myself.  I would usually get at only one or two of them in any round of golf I played.  I have not become a prolific golfer as an adult, and I occasionally feel some regret about this, as I would like to have shared this more with my father, but I think this is outweighed by the great success he had in instilling a running tradition in to his family.

            Dad’s earliest successes (in school) came through writing, as did his greatest career achievements as an adult.  But his earliest failure also came through writing.  No matter how many dog stories he wrote for his parents he never convinced them to get a family dog.  Some of his last failures also came through writing.  After retiring from teaching, Dad sought to achieve his dream of writing a best-selling novel that would touch the hearts of many.  And while he completed three novels, he never found a publisher and so never an audience for his novels.  His crowning achievement as a writer, though, may be the memoir that he completed in his 83^rd year, shortly before the stroke that would rob him of the ability to write any more.  The memoir is, naturally, a treasure for my sister and I, and I hope for the next generations of our family.  But I think it is also a touching and entertaining literary achievement that can be enjoyed by anyone.  I have posted the memoir on-line and hope that as many as possible will read and enjoy it.

  
            Dad dreamed of things big and small to the end of his days.  Even after his stroke, Dad continued to dream.  Immediately after his stroke he was unable to drive, and he was incensed when he failed a driving competency test a few months after the stroke.  And so he dreamed of driving again.  He never did drive again, but the dream was not a failure because it motivated him to continue his rehab and to regain more of his speech and coordination than he likely would have otherwise.

            And even though he could not drive any more, he continued to have automotive dreams. He had his mind set on buying a new car, perhaps another Lexus or other luxury car.  He never succeeded in this dream either.  Mom (and me) thought it an unwise and unnecessary expense.  But it gave him something to look for, and we spent several pleasant afternoons together visiting dealers and test driving cars.  In the end, Dad felt contented with the fine care that he had bought himself at his retirement.

            And Dad continued to have other dreams.  Dreams of another trip to Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, and perhaps trips to further places that he had never visited.  Dreams of more beers with his son, and of cookies from his wife.  (Dad was an inveterate cookie monster.)  Dreams of getting off his blood pressure and blood thinner medicines.  And dreams of seeing more of the deer that increasingly populated the yards near our home. 

            After his stroke, Dad would sometimes have trouble finding the words to express himself. Often he would find a suitable synonym, but sometimes not.  Usually his family could understand what he meant, even if his words were wrong.  One winter day he was unable to find the right word for a fawn laying in the snow in the back yard.  The word that came out was carcass.  And from then on he always used the word carcass when he meant deer.  He would ask if I saw any carcasses in the yard.  We knew what he meant.  And he surely loved those carcasses.

            He wrote: “[D]reams do not have to be of heroic proportions, but only of help and compassion toward others, of guidance and inspiration for those who follow, with this perhaps done by example.” 

I believe that my father achieved these things through his books, including his memoir, and most of all by the example of how he lived his life.

            Dad may not have achieved all of his grand and small dreams in exactly the ways he first envisioned, but in pursuit of his dreams he created a rich and successful life.  Dreams of athletic exploits turned into a healthy 40-year lifestyle of healthy exercise and the creation of family memories and traditions.  Running no doubt contributed to the excellent health he enjoyed until just before his death.  Pursuing his dream of transforming the teaching of business led to a successful career with many books translated into many languages, which have impacted business education in modest ways, and also created a secure and comfortable environment for his family to grow in.

            At the end of his memoir Dad wrote about his final dream: “I can only hope that the trace I leave may be read by one who follows me, some empathic and compassionate soul.  But I’ll probably never know.”  I know that he has - at least in the person of me - and I hope in the hearts of others as well.

            My father gave so much to me through the years.  A comfortable and secure home full of love in which to grow. He was a positive role model.  And a writer of dreams.  But the greatest gift from my dad – and his greatest achievement - was also something touched upon by the priest at his funeral mass.  After remarking that he had never heard my father speak, he also said that my father never missed a Sunday mass.  My father was always there. 

            And so he was for my mother, my sister, and me.  My parents had their 50^th anniversary a month before he died, and their marriage was a true loving partnership.  They shared running, golf, religion, and a commitment to health.  They were physically together for most all of the days in their 50 years together, and shared a lifestyle of commitment to one another and their children.  And they supported each other throughout.  For his family, Dad was always there.  For me, he was always there. 

            And so Dad’s spirit will always be alive in my heart.

            Always.