March 28, 2014

Dear Father Klotter,

Thank you for visiting Mom and Dad at the Episcopal Church Home.   I am not surprised that you have not found them in their rooms; they are off being true to their social natures.  Our family is grateful that they find joy still in their daily lives and that they are so outgoing.

As none of us know “the day or the hour” and must keep watch, so I wanted

to write you a bit about Dad.  We had a scare this week when staff could not rouse him and it awakened us.  We know the good Lord will call us when he knows we are ready and so we walk by faith.    But we want to share some of the things that so endear him to us.  

I told Marianne that Dad is a privately devout man and a humble one.  I have always credited his example for my own faith and I think most of my brothers and sisters would say that too.  He would credit his mother probably for his faith.  Born with clubbed feet at home on a farm along the Ohio ‘River in south Louisville in 1927, he did not walk til he was a young child.  His mother prayed to St Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower, and when he walked it was nothing short of a miracle to her.  And I am sure to my father, who walked to her one day across the summer kitchen floor.  Her loud scream brought Dad’s father running from the barn to see what was the matter.  Grandpa, a farmer, took things in stride, and had always comforted Grandma with the words, “Lizzie, don’t you worry about that boy.  One day he will run so fast, you won’t be able to catch him.” 

Dad was one of nine kids in the family and he sat in the middle of the line.  He outlived all his brothers, Joe, John, Ed and Earl and missed their company sorely.  Two sisters preceded him in death as well – Bernice and Therese.  He loved visits from the two sisters who remained, Sister Rosalin and Marita (Eckhart).  He grew up in a farming community where all his extended family lived as well.  It seems hard to imagine in this day and age.  It gave him security all his life.  I think it also taught him the true meaning of the greatest commandments to love God and one another at a deep level.  While many of us struggle to develop our life’s meaning, he practiced it daily in a small community that had to help one another to survive.  One of my favorite stories he used to tell was about tulips.  Dad worked as a boy helping neighbors and a Mr. Koehler grew daffodils for selling at the entrance to cemeteries for families to place at the gravesites of loved ones.  I guess the bulbs came from Holland and sometimes tulip bulbs were mixed in.  Mr. Koehler was not interested in the tulips but Dad(a teen-ager) was.  He marked the site of each tulip bulb and dug them up in the fall.  The following spring he planted them near the barn.  In the picture you can see the tulips in bloom on the day his baby sister Therese made her first communion.  That's him peeking out far left in the last row.  OH, the days were not all rosy.  When he was 17 and picking tomatoes swelling from too much rain in a muddy field with his mother, he stood up, told his mother their had to be a better way and walked off down the road to look for a job.  That would have been 1944 and their area of the world was already being transformed from a farming community to an industrialized area developed in response to the demand for rubber for the war effort.  His first paying job was stuffing rubber in bags for Dupont.  And when he returned home with his first paycheck, his father met him at the door and informed that as you live here, you must also pay for your room and board.  These lessons sound so hard now.  No wonder we call our father and mother’s generation the “Greatest.”  Their lives were entwined with harsh realities that they rose to meet.  Dad’s flat feet kept him from serving his country but serve he did.  His sister, Sr Rosalin, O.S.U., recalls the mail route he walked the Christmas of his Senior year at St. Xavier when the U.S. Postal Service would hire extra carriers.

He must have gotten a lot of satisfaction from walking that route.

Dad attended St. Denis’ one-room school and went on to St. Xavier High School downtown.  He was proud to be a graduate of St. Xavier High School and maintained friendships made there over his lifetime.  It was there he received his business training.

A friend of his, Ray Kennealy(who became a Brother at St. Meinrad), introduced Dad and Mom and the rest is history.  Mom was a graduate of Holy Rosary Academy and a real beauty.  They married in 1948 at St. Agnes with great flourish and were blessed to celebrate a lifetime of love just last year on their 65^th wedding anniversary.  That love helped them down a path that was never straight or predictable.  And as Dad liked to say, “When we got to a fork in the road…we took it!”(with thanks to Yogi Bera)  They started the business that is Pauls’ Fruit Markets, Inc. today, raised seven children, enjoyed a lively and full retirement, and basked in the joy of many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  About each baby that came into his life and all babies he met, he would say.  “Now, that is a miracle!”  The birth of each seemed to ripen and mellow him, like a tomato in the summer sun, and he became softer, juicier and sweeter. 

Of course, he was a force to be reckoned with as well.  One need only look at the size of his hands ; they were big and strong just like his voice and his stature.   People who knew Dad when he was in the throes of starting and building up a business would say, you never met a man who worked so hard.  He was up early to go to the market, worked all day and in the summer evenings drove to southern Indiana or rural Kentucky to bring crops to market.  He taught his children as well as many nieces and nephews the value of work and also gave many high school kids their first jobs.  Sundays, he took his growing family to Holy Spirit for Mass and he rested.  Holy Spirit Church was brand new in those days.  All nine of us would squeeze into a half pew.  Here we heard the parables for the first time.  I find it hard to fathom that I used to sing in that choirloft for many funerals weekly while attending Holy Spirit School in the 50’s and 60’s and (will be here for Dad’s service.)  This church like a grand upside down ark has held a lot of life!

Dad loved people and knew their strengths and weaknesses well.  He LEARNED not to judge by being a retailer and in his dealings with the public.  He believed in honesty, service,  and selling the best product at the fair price.  He knew a good joke was sometimes what people needed the most.  In his later years he liked to play a good one on the waiters and waitress who served him.  When they would ask, “Was the food alright?”  His standard response was, “No, it was not good.”  Then he would look up, smile, and pronounce, “It was excellent!”   Smiles all around. 

And so, we say back to you Dad.  Your life was not good, it was excellent!”

Thank you Father.  Hope this gives you a picture of the son, brother, husband, father and man we all love.