Eulogy for Dad

This page contains the eulogy I gave for my Dad, William James Moore (June 7, 1929-Sept 8, 2012), at his memorial service on Saturday September 22, 2012 at Dekalb Wesleyan Church, Dekalb IL. It also contains the video my daughter made for the service.

On behalf of my Mom, sisters, and family, I would like to thank you for attending this memorial service, a celebration of the life of my Dad, William James Moore.

Dad was born June 7, 1929 in Chicago. Dad was the youngest of eight children, two brothers and five sisters. He grew up in Chicago during the great depression, and lived on the 2400 block of N. Artesian Ave. It was the kind of neighborhood where most people sat out on their porch at night and where everyone knew everyone else’s business. Dad said that when you got into trouble as a kid, everyone knew about it. While growing up there, Dad developed a lifelong friendship with another boy in his neighborhood, Leroy Gullen.

There was a large age difference between Dad and the rest of his siblings. Dad’s siblings called him “Billy”, and they used this nickname long into his adulthood. I admit it was amusing when I would hear my aunts call Dad “Billy’ at some family gathering, and see my Dad’s irritated reaction.

By the age of 12, both of Dad’s parents had passed away. Dad then went to live with his older sister and brother-in-law, Thelma & George Kinney and daughter Carol, on their farm in Lake Village Indiana. During this time World War 2 had just started for America. It was during the war years there on the farm that Dad developed a lifelong interest in farming. He had plenty of opportunities to learn, as he milked cows in the morning before going to school, and worked in the fields when he came home. The stories you hear from parents saying how when they were young they had to walk miles to school in the cold and snow and didn’t have indoor plumbing…in Dad’s case, those stories were true. After Dad graduated from the 8th grade, he worked full time as a paid farm hand, in order to pay his way. During the war years, most of the men were in the military service, and rural farms needed help.

Dad’s siblings were all married with their own families, while one of Dad’s brothers was a soldier fighting in the Pacific. Later in his teen years, Dad lived with different siblings and held a variety of jobs. Dad worked as an iceman, making deliveries in the Round Lake area. He also had a job in an iron forge. Dad would describe having to periodically go outside to stand in the snow when his feet got too hot from working inside the forge.

In 1947, Dad was hired by the Ace Frame & Axle Service in Chicago, where he learned the trade of frame and axle mechanic. Dad’s brother-in-law, Maurice Fredrick, or Uncle Morris as we called him, taught Dad the trade. Dad soon became an accomplished mechanic.

4 years later, the Korean War had started and Dad was drafted into the US Army, and completed basic training with the 101st Airborne Division. Dad gave the Army a copy of a letter of recommendation from his boss at Ace Frame, which detailed his talents as a mechanic. This letter was probably the reason that the Army recognized Dad’s abilities as a mechanic, and he was sent to Europe instead of going to the war in Korea, where he might have had to jump out of a perfectly good airplane into combat, or live in a foxhole while getting shot at.

In Europe, Dad served as an instructor of automotive mechanics at the European Command Ordinance School in Eschwege, Germany. The US Army was a completely mechanized army, utilizing thousands of motor vehicles even in the infantry divisions. Dad taught recruits how to service the new trucks that were being delivered to the Army. It was during this time as an instructor that Dad met a fellow instructor, Max Welz from Wheaton Illinois, and they became lifelong friends.

After his honorable discharge from the Army, Dad returned to civilian life, to Ace Frame and Axle Service, and to the vocation that he would have for his entire life, a frame and axle mechanic. Soon after discharge, Dad had get togethers with Max Welz in Wheaton. It was at one of these gatherings that Dad was introduced to Marion Lederer, Max’s cousin. Dad and Marion began dating, fell in love, and were married in 1954.

Dad spent his life working as a frame mechanic. In 1968 he was hired locally at Eddie Ruch Pontiac in Wheaton, where he worked for many years. Dad also had a part-time job as a caretaker. Dad’s last job was at Montgomery Auto Rebuilders in Aurora. For a couple of years after retirement, Dad and Mom had a Christmas job at the Glen Ellyn Post Office sorting Christmas mail. Mom & Dad were never able to live down the fact that they failed their pre-hiring drug test because they had just eaten Poppy Seed cake. I remember dad saying that the Postal Doctor asked them if they used street drugs.

My Dad was the kind of person who was able to find solutions to difficult problems, and fix them. Dad did this daily in his job as a frame mechanic, where he had to figure out the best and most efficient way to fix a car that had been wrecked beyond recognition in an accident. This carried over into Dad’s life away from the shop. Dad often gave me and my brothers-in-law advice and sometimes assistance when it came to repairing mechanical things, and thought of ways to fix things that I never would have. Dad was a hard worker, who worked 6 days a week, and was the strongest person I knew. I particularly remember when I was young, the septic field of our home proved inadequate because of the number of people living in our house, mostly women who used a lot of water, and needed a larger field of tile. My Dad couldn’t afford to hire a contractor, so he dug the trenches by hand with a shovel and laid the tile by himself.

Dad had a very close relationship with my Mom’s Uncle, Karl Hoss. Dad and Karl had a lot of things in common, including their childhood without parents, and their love of things mechanical. Mom, Dad, Karl, & Hedwig would take vacation trips together, which Dad enjoyed very much.

One of the obvious things you knew about Dad was that he loved my Mom. This was evident to anyone who knew him. The most important thing in my Dad’s mind while going through his cancer battle was that Mom would be taken care of when he was gone, something I promised Dad would be done.

My Dad was devoted to our family. When my Grandfather Lederer died, my Dad asked my grandmother and Aunt Karola to live with us. My grandmother lived with Mom & Dad for over 45 years. My Mom & Dad also sponsored 2 girls from Germany, who also lived with us in our crowded house. Dad spent his only day off with his family every Sunday. After church, Dad would usually take us on a car ride in the country, often stopping for picnics at some forest preserve. Other times, Dad would invite our relatives to come over. More often than not, we had company at our house on weekends. Dad always invited his bosses, friends and others over for dinner on holidays. Over the years, Dad repeatedly demonstrated his generosity in this regard. As adults, my sisters and I each returned home at various times, and grandchildren were allowed to live there as well. Since they were first married, my Mom & Dad really never had the opportunity to be “empty nesters.” The last ten years, Mom & Dad spent weekends with my sisters Dorothea and Amanda and their families in Dekalb. Dad was also willing to “share” himself with others, and that included being a Dad or a grandfather to those who didn’t have one. Dad was also very forgiving; he never reminded us of some of the stupid stuff we did in the past.

Anyone who knew Dad knew that he liked to talk and especially debate. Dad was proud of his family. He often liked to tell others what his kids were doing. I remember one occasion where Dad told my prospective father-in-law how very proud he was of me, and that I never let him down. Dad often liked sitting outside, talking to whoever happened to walk by. Religious differences didn’t matter either to Dad, and he reached out to befriend agnostics and people of every denomination, though he was an Evangelical Protestant. Dad was also ahead of his time when it came to things like racial prejudice. I remember Dad talking about how in his Army days, segregation had just been lifted and there were several Black recruits in his outfit, a couple of whom Dad became friends with. I also remember Dad telling me when I was young to never use any kind of racial slur when referring to someone of another race, and to always treat everyone with dignity and respect, something Dad always demonstrated himself. When my sister Amanda’s family began attending Iglesia Cristiana Vida Nueva, a Hispanic Wesleyan Church here in Dekalb, my Dad felt that they were his family too.

Dad had other interests: he liked fishing, gardening, and farming. Dad didn’t spend a lot of time on his hobbies, however, as he was always doing things for others. Dad really enjoyed fishing, especially some of the good times we had in Hayward fishing with the family. Dad liked helping others with fishing. Just a few weeks ago, Dad told his hospice caregiver, Telly, how to make Catfish bait. When Telly returned from his vacation just prior to Dad’s passing, he told us how good Dad’s fishing advice was and how many fish he caught.

1961 marked the turning point in Dad’s life. Up to this time, my Dad was not a religious person; in fact Dad questioned whether God even existed. He was disappointed with some of the religious experiences he had growing up in a strict, moralistic household. He also rejected the idea that a god existed that would have allowed him to suffer as an orphan at such a young age, where he was forced to live in different places without parents. However, Dad was presented with the truth of God’s existence, and Dad’s arguments against God were answered one by one. Through examining the evidence, Dad became convinced that there is a God who is there, an infinite personal God who has spoken objective truth. Because God is there and created us, we are not products of chance, we have intrinsic value. Sin is the reason there is disease and death in this world, but God has provided a way of salvation by faith alone, in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and God has given us hope for the future by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Dad accepted Christ, and became a believer and had a relationship with him. Dad’s hope and faith in this case was a something more than just “Gee, I hope the Bears can beat the Packers someday.” Dad’s hope in Christ was what the Bible describes hope and faith to be, a confident expectation and dependence on God.

In chapter 10 of Luke’s gospel, Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. My Dad was a believer and loved God. Jesus also said that the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. You see, loving your neighbor is an unselfish, open handed love that often requires self sacrifice, just like Christ sacrificed himself for our sins. It means loving people who are not like you. I believe my Dad demonstrated and lived out the second commandment, loving your neighbor as yourself.

My Dad wanted others to know about the hope he had of salvation in Christ, and the resurrection from the dead, which is the hope of all believers. Dad and I discussed this many times. In one of my last conversations with Dad, I told him that when we meet again after the resurrection, we will both look a lot better than we do now. We laughed.

I want to close by reading a passage from scripture that gave me comfort when I knew that Dad was in his final days. It is from St. Paul’s letter to Roman Christians who were suffering persecution. This is what is says:

Romans 8: 18-24 18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. 19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. 24 We were given this hope when we were saved.

In closing, if my Dad were here now, he would tell us that if we haven’t thought about our eternal future, that we should start thinking about it now and settle things with God today.