He was one of the gentlest souls I have ever known. It saddens me to say I don’t think I ever had a real conversation with him – one where we talked about meaningful things. But in retrospect what I think is that to him – it all had meaning. He entered into the “ordinary moments” in such a way that he recognized before the rest of us that looking back, we would name some of these as among the truly extraordinary experiences that would shape and define us for the rest of our lives.

I was lucky enough to be friends with his son. And when you were friends with one member of the family, you sort of became friends with the whole family. I liked the noisiness of their house; the chaos of lots of people and the constant party that seemed to always be in progress and the fact that when I arrived at dinner time they just pulled up another chair and seemed genuinely delighted that there was one more to crowd around their already crowded table. And when they all bowed their heads (a cue I picked up on pretty quickly) he would lead us in a prayer of thanksgiving – and I never in all the years I knew him found him to be anything other than grateful and thankful for all that God had given to him – even in the hard times.

Pretty quickly, I became one of their tribe and would spend the night in the girls’ dormitory – a big room which had been created by closing in the carport and finishing it off as a bedroom for the five girls. In the morning the boys would rise early to deliver their paper routes and then we would all gather around the kitchen table for the breakfast that he had prepared – usually bacon and eggs and cinnamon toast. Lots of cinnamon toast (how that toast got divided is a whole story in and of itself) and while everyone was being seated he would go to their room and wake his wife and she would come to the table in her red robe (probably one he had given her the previous Christmas) and they would kiss and then he would pull her chair out for her and she would take her seat at the table. I asked my friends about it once and they just shrugged and said, “I don’t know. That’s just the way it’s always been.”

They were busy eyeing the cinnamon toast, but I was captivated by this ritual and though I witnessed it many, many times over the years, it never lost its effect. That ritual said it all. He adored her. There is no other word for it. He put her first. Always. It spoke of his genuine, pure, and unabashed love for her and every time I saw it there was something in my heart that ached and I hoped to God that someday I would find somebody who would love me like this man loved his wife.

On his son’s 16^th birthday, a group of friends decided to show up at the house and take the birthday boy out to pizza. We all piled into somebody’s car and the bunch of us headed over. When we got there, the birthday boy was out collecting from his paper route customers and no, nobody knew when he would be back. “Well, tell him we stopped by,” we said and being the good friends that we were, we headed out to celebrate his birthday without him. When he got home his dad told him that we had been there and immediately noted the acute disappointment in his son’s face. “Where do you suppose they have gone?” his dad asked. “Oh, I don’t know. It could be one of half a dozen places.” And then his dad, who was tired and probably just returning from work himself said to his son, “Well, let’s go see if we can find them.” So he drove him around until he found us and left him there with us to celebrate. I don’t know why I remember this moment so clearly all these years later except that it spoke to me so profoundly of this father’s sensitivity to the feelings and longings of his son. And having celebrated my own children’s 16^th birthdays, I look in the rear view mirror and wonder if maybe he had hoped that they might have a family celebration when he got home from work or he would at least be able to have some cake and ice-cream with this boy-growing-into-a-man. But if he did, he never said as much. To spend his evening driving around town looking for a bunch of kids wasn’t a big thing – except to his son.

When I married into the family, I came to understand that though Paul’s mom was the life of the party and the one who seemed to take care of us all, it was his dad who was the foundation of the tribe. He cared for her like a queen and she reigned over the kingdom well. She was his beloved and in that she had everything she needed. Theirs was a love story for the ages and it changed them both. It changed me. This is the man who baptized me into the faith and then officiated at our wedding. Over the years, many of them before I knew him, he pastored and cared for God’s people. He loved them the only way he knew how – like Christ loved the church.

He died in an accident in February of 2001. His last words were to his wife: I love you. It could have been no other way. A few short months later, his wife was hospitalized and died the next day – on their 56th wedding anniversary. She simply did not know how to be here without him.

The other thing that must be said about this gentle man is that I never saw a baby who did not love him. He was like a magnet and I watched him quiet many a fussy baby who would not be comforted even by their mother (my own included). It was not unusual for him to slip into the bedroom where we were sleeping on our visits home and take the baby downstairs with him to play and cuddle and love – giving us some much welcomed rest. His grandchildren loved him fiercely. When our youngest, Fletcher, was little and figuring out the language and the family relationships, he christened Paul’s parents “Gee-paw and Gee-paw” and it’s what they stayed for a long time. When he grew older, Gee-paw would call most Sunday afternoons to talk football with him after a Redskins or a Broncos game. And Fletcher loved it. I loved him for doing it.

Today is his birthday; he would be 92 years old. And if he were here I would call him to wish him a Happy Birthday and to tell him, “Dad, you done good! Your boy turned out okay. Actually he’s a lot like you. He loves me oh-so-well and the only thing you could have done better was to teach him to cook. Thank you.”