Thank you, friends and
family, for being here today to remember my father, Frederick Eschler. Thanks
to those of you who came from just up the road and to those who have travelled
thousands of miles to be here today. Thank you for your comments, for your
cards, for the flowers and the food—thanks for opening up your homes and your
hearts.
While reading some of
the aforementioned comments, I saw a theme, “We’ll miss your Dad. You know,
under his gruff exterior, he was a teddy bear.” Eh, I actually lived with the
guy. Some of that gruffness was interior as well, and I had that in mind while
co-writing this eulogy. When giving a eulogy, it’s hard not to remember Marc
Antony’s eulogy for Julius Caesar from Shakespeare’s play of the same name.
“I have come to bury
Caesar, not to praise him. The evil men do lives after them, the good is oft
interred with their bones.” These are strong, poetic words, but they couldn’t
be more wrong. My father was not perfect, and death does not retroactively made
him so. But he loves us, and he wants what’s best for us. That gruffness may
have extended into his interior, but deep at his core is love for those dear to
him.
The great irony, and I
guess this is inappropriate to admit in a eulogy, is that while I spent a good
portion of my life avoiding being around my father, now that he’s gone I only
wish I had more time with him.
Dad’s death wasn’t
really a surprise: it was its suddenness. He almost died the year he and Mom
took Carl, Albert, and I to Disney World. Mom and my brothers went to the park
and had a great time playing all day while Dad stayed in the hotel room. When
we got back to Oregon, Mom was working, so my Uncle Roy took him to the
hospital to get a stent put in his heart. It wasn’t until the doctor commented
that usually one’s wife accompanies them to that sort of procedure that we
realized how serious it was: Mom was there the next day.
Since that time, he
has survived triple bypass surgery, fought off cellulitis, had his carotid
arteries cleaned out, and had bouts of rhabdomyolitis and sepsis. This combined
with many smaller things like falls had Mom convinced he was invincible: for
me, it made me think that when he finally did die, we’d have some lead time to
say goodbye.
Dad always jokes that
he spent his summers in Preston, Idaho with his Uncle Dan’s family instead of
in California with Grandma, Grandpa, Kathleen, and Sandra, was that Grandma
thought he would become a hippie. Dad learned to love the Roberts as much as
his own parents and sisters, and his cousin Steve became the brother he had
always longed for.
In fact, Dad almost
got in a fight with the presiding bishop of the church over his Uncle Dan. The
bishop was in attendance at Uncle Dan’s funeral, at which Dad made some
remarks. Afterwards the bishop came up to him and said, “I think those nice
things you were saying were really about Ellen.” In a rare instance of
self-control Dad let it go: he knew it wasn’t proper to clock someone at a
funeral.
Summers in Idaho were
a blessing in his life, and in fact the only time Uncle Dan ever scared Dad was
when, after an argument, Dan told him that if he wasn’t happy in Idaho, he
could send him back to California.
Not long after
graduating high school, Dad enlisted in the Air Force during the Vietnam War.
He spent nearly 4 years in Thailand, where he assembled bombs during working
hours and studied Tae Kwan Do in his free time. He also drank a lot and tipped
over bus stops, but for some reason Mom didn’t include that in my notes to read
from. He had earned a black belt by the time he returned to the US, and he
taught Karate part-time at a school in San Francisco until he moved to Oregon.
Dad got out of the
service the same year that Mom graduated from BYU. They both wound up working
at the post office in Daly City, a suburb of San Francisco, and they met and
started dating. Mom said she was attracted to his hot shirts and leisure suits.
Dad proposed to Mom,
and Mom refused. She said she wanted to go to the temple, and for those of you
who don’t know, there are certain requirements to go to the temple that Dad
didn’t meet. But he made the necessary changes and Mom and Dad were married in
the Oakland Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in
October of 1974. Dad would forever after refer to this as the happiest day of
his life, so much so that at each of my siblings’ weddings he went out of his
way to ensure that their special days were as perfect as his was.
Kathleen, Becky,
Esther, and Jennifer joined the family over the next few years, and Dad
continued to work at the post office while pursuing his teaching certification.
For a short time he and Uncle Roy both attended the same school. One day, Dad
had brought lunch from home: a burrito my mother had made. Unfortunately, the
wrapping of the burrito was not microwave safe, and Dad blew out the glass of
the microwave. When he found a maintenance person and explained the door was
broken on the microwave, the man replied, “Oh, I already fixed that.” Turns
out, Mom had made Roy’s lunch too, and he had cooked it in the same microwave
just a few minutes before dad.
Dad student-taught at
Colma K-6 Elementary School—a school he had attended while growing up. He graduated
from San Francisco State University in 1980, and the family relocated to
Coquille so that they could live next to Grandma and Grandpa Taylor. Dad was
excited to come to Coquille where he would have plenty of opportunities to
fish, but he didn’t fish nearly as often as he initially thought he would.
Again, this isn’t in Mom’s notes, but I would add that at least when I was with
him he spent lots of time fishing, just not much catching. The Dubays were some
of the first people they met when they moved to the area-they sold them the
paint for the house on Second Street.
Dad’s first teaching
assignment was at Sumner School, where he stayed until they closed the school.
He also taught at Charleston, Sunset, and Millicoma (the school he retired
from). During his time as a teacher he coached football, basketball, and
wrestling. Dad was a bit of an urban legend in the Coos Bay school district.
There was one time I was telling a group of friends a story Dad had told us: a
student had picked up a chair and threatened to throw it at Dad. Dad responded,
“Go ahead and throw it. Then you’ll be a danger to the students around you and
I’ll feel justified picking you up and throwing you out that window.” The
student put the chair down, and Dad sent him to the principals office. At this
point in the story, a friend who had been in Dad’s class (though not that year)
said,
“No man, I heard your
dad threw the chair at the kid!”
I had to respond,
“Nick, do you really think my Dad would still be working their if he’d thrown a
chair at a kid?”
“I guess not.” Dad was
larger than life, but when I talked to friends who had moved to Coquille after
being in his class, they all talked about what a fun and inventive teacher he
was.
By 1989, Liz, Carl,
Albert, and I had all joined the family. Dad always knew how important family
was. When Kathleen was a baby, Mom and Dad weren’t in the best financial shape,
and Mom decided that since Kathleen wouldn’t remember anyway, they could save
some money by not having a birthday party. Dad insisted that they have a party
because he knew how important those sorts of traditions are.
Dad like that teaching
gave him summers to spend with his family. He love taking family vacations, and
every summer we would travel to California, Utah, or Idaho to visit friends or
family. We also made trips to see famous landmarks like Yellowstone and the
Grand Canyon. Later, the Jelly Belly factory was a big hit with the grand kids,
and he’d always make sure to buy a couple bags of belly flops. One winter we
went to Island Park, just outside Yellowstone, with Steve Roberts and his
family: this trip was the first and last time I drove a snow mobile, as Dad let
me drive his and I almost drove us straight into a fencepost at top speed. I
never realized how special these trips were until I was an adult and met so
many people who had never done this sort of thing.
One benefit Dad found
in having such a big family was a free labor force. As a family we spent quite
a bit of time fixing up rental properties around town or working in the family
video store. Even when the video store wasn’t making money, Dad kept it open so
that we kids could have a job, but still make sure we would never have an
excuse to miss important family trips and events. However, once Truman was born
Mom told that that, now that she had 3 grandchildren, she was through helping
on construction projects; she was an old lady and wanted to be a grandma.
Dad was quite proud of
all his children and grandchildren. He did not miss an opportunity to brag to
coworkers, friends, and even strangers, though this may come as a surprise to
those he bragged on. A letter of recommendation from Carl’s BYU economics
professor is still in the China hutch in our kitchen, where he kept it handy so
he could brag about how smart Carl is. He started bragging about his 22
grandchildren a bit prematurely at Christmas time, about a month before little
Barlow was actually born. No parent or grandparent was ever prouder of children
or grandchildren.
Dad has always enjoyed
visit from family, often giving a few hundred dollars here and there for gas
and food and helping with car trouble. We would spend all day in the kitchen
playing board and card games: he liked playing cribbage with the adults and
various other games with the grandchildren. After the stroke—oh, add that to
the list from earlier—that left him blind in his left eye, he bought eye
patches for others to wear while playing any fast-paced game, saying that we
all had an unfair advantage because he only had one eye.
We are fortunate that
Dad got to see so much of the family this last year. We had a fun Taylor Family
Reunion this summer at Laverne Park, with about 80 of Grandma Taylor’s
descendants. Dad was able to visit with much of the family at that time. In
fact, the only thing that we had planned for the next reunion was for Dad to
grill again like he did at this one since we all enjoyed it so much, but he had
to go and mess that up. At Thanksgiving, he and Mom went to Utah and got to see
all of my Utah siblings as well as Uncle Roy’s family. We spent Christmas in
Keizer, Albany, and Newburg, so Dad go to see all of the Oregon family. Even
Taylor, the eldest grandson, had some rare time off from work and school to
spend around Grandpa over the holidays. Whites came to Coquille for New Year’s
Eve, and Albert’s family came to Coquille just a week and a half before Dad
died, so he had seen and enjoyed all of us quite recently. He left at a time
when he was at peace with pretty much all of us. Mom didn’t have to find him,
one of her biggest fears, and he didn’t experience the slow decline and loss of
independence he feared so much, working right up until the day he died. So even
though no time is a good time to say good bye to someone you love, it was a
pretty good time to pass.
Dad will be remembered
for his silliness, the way he embroidered every story, and for saying what he
thought, no matter how much others didn’t want him to say it.
When Mom asked Helen
what she remembered about Grandpa, she said, “His crabbing, and that he always
said ‘See you in the funny papers.’”
I’d like to read from
Nicholas Wolterstoff’s Lament for a Son.
Elements of the gospel which I had always thought
would console did not. They did something else, something important, but not
that. It did not console me to be reminded of the hope of resurrection. If I
had forgotten that hope, then it would indeed have brought light into my life
to be reminded of it. But I did not think of death as a bottomless pit. I did
not grieve as one who has no hope. Yet [he] is gone, here and now he is gone;
now I cannot talk with him, now I cannot see him, now I cannot hug him, now I
cannot hear of his plans for the future. That is my sorrow. A friend said,
“Remember, he’s in good hands.” I was deeply moved. But that reality does not
put [him] back in my hands now. That’s my grief. For that grief, what
consolation can there be other than having him back?
I read this passage both for its application to us,
but mostly for its application to Dad. Our grief has begun, but now that he has
reunited with his loved ones that have gone before, especially Liz, who he
missed so much, his grief has ended.
See you in the funny
papers.
