My Dad

Today is the first time in thirty years I will not follow preaching a Father’s Day sermon with a phone call to my dad—oh, wait, twenty-nine years; last year he was yet living but unable to talk on the phone. Knowing I will not be making that call makes the celebration of the day and my preaching a sermon for it quite a different thing. My father passed away last August. I shared a eulogy at his memorial service. For thirty years, each week, I have written an entry (which, sometime back at folk’s suggestion, I began to share on social media) for the Pastor’s Pen space of our church’s Sunday bulletin. For today, having nothing else relevant to surface above the ache of missing my dad, I’ve shared a mostly unabridged copy of my eulogy of him, Allen E. Hurst: Yesterday morning Sandra and I walked west from my parents’ home to uptown Shawnee; we walked up 10th St., then through Woodland Park, back down 10th street, and then over to the Santa Fe Depot. I had often taken that walk with Dad when I was home to visit. At every building, every edifice, every street corner, the bridge, the creek, the railroad tracks, Dad would have a story to tell, a memory to share, a historical note to make. Not counting two very short hiatuses, one at the beginning of marriage and the other at the end of life, Dad lived his whole eighty-eight years never moving more than a half a block as the crow flies. He was born at home on 9th St., raised three houses down on McKinley, and lived the rest of his life in the house on Harrison St., whose lot adjoined the backyard of the house where he was raised. But, on Sunday, close to 5 p.m., he made a move, the biggest move he ever made. He moved to his mansion in the House of the Lord on Heaven’s Boulevard in the Celestial City. Dad wasn’t famous. But he was just what this world needs--a moral, hard-working provider and producer--and a faithful Christian. Among our earliest memories of Dad are of him reading the Bible to us and praying with us before we went to bed at night. From a child, I believed Dad to be a man of faith. I was deathly ill once. He prayed for me, and I immediately fell asleep awakening the next morning completely well. Dad had to get up early for work—while it was still dark. What times I had to get up to go to the bathroom, I would see Dad in the living room either reading his Bible or knelt down to pray before work. He was always a person of prayer until it came time to eat. His advice then was, “It’s time to eat. Pray short. If you need to pray through, you can do that some other time.” Few, even preachers, knew the Bible as well as Dad. He had read it over and over, cover to cover. Pre-disease Dad was a quiet, mild, gentle man. Yet, he was a man of inalterable principles, unflagging devotion to duty, and unerring common sense and wisdom. As we were raised, he said and did a thousand things that built character into us. Let me just share a few examples of this: We were never late for anything. We would sit in the car in front of church way before it started, ready to go inside when other folks started getting there. “Always be early. It isn’t right ever to keep someone waiting.” I guess we didn’t keep God waiting. When I was a really young child, just starting to color, he would not allow me to turn the page until I had finished coloring that picture. “Always finish what you start.” Then there were those axioms he restated over and over: “If you turn it on, turn it off. If you got it out, put it up.” “It’s not how much money you make. It’s how you manage what you make.” Yes, he was a wise man with the wisest reflections on and advice for life. However, sometimes he showed a lapse of wisdom--like when he got Mom a paint scraper for her birthday. Dad’s chief concern in life was to provide for his family. After I was grown, he told me his greatest fear in life was that he would be able to get us children raised. He did. He took care of those not in the family too. He was always making something for someone. He was continually helping widows of the church repairing things gone wrong with their houses, etc. Once, Dad had a mentally disabled neighbor whose only means of transportation was a bicycle. It was always breaking down. Dad was always repairing it—even after the neighbor moved across town. Dad never believed he was very smart—he was always self-deprecating of his intelligence—Over and over he’d say, “I’m a dummy--I can’t spell.” Yet, he could repair or make anything mechanical. He could do any carpentry, electrical, or plumbing work. When Tinker Air Force base got CNC machines, Dad wanted to be, not only an operator but also a programmer. He borrowed my college trigonometry book and taught himself all about sines, cosines, tangents, and the rest. He soon was programing using up to five axes. He submitted many suggestions and designs concerning aircraft and repairing them that were accepted and adopted—and awarded with cash bonuses. Here are a few things even family members may not have known: Despite being shy, Dad used to lead songs and give youth talks in church. I’ve read his notes of these. Some of them were blistering. He was also a good artist. He could sketch things very realistically. Something he was especially proud of--he was the champion ice cream and watermelon eater in his unit at Tinker. I don’t know if I have any other fans of my ministry, but I know, if I do, that Dad was my biggest fan. We will be throwing out tons of cassettes and CDs of my preaching that he listened to over and over again, saving each one. Soon after I declared I was called to preach, he came back into my bedroom with a list of scriptures. He said, “Called to preach, huh? These will help you preach. If you are really called to preach, you will memorize them.” I did. To this day, I still quote them while preaching. He would bug me incessantly to do the necessary work to get my ordination until I did. He always had this sense of humor: When I was first called to preach, I asked him once, “What about this fasting, Dad.” He replied, “Tried that once. Got hungry. Didn’t like it.” Of all the memories, the one, I think, that reminds me most of his love for me was when he took off from work when I was sixteen to take me to get my driver’s license—in his 1946 Willys Jeep. He had taught us to drive with it. He’d said, “If you learn to drive this stick shift, you will be able to drive anything.” Afterward, we loaded up the dogs in that jeep and went rabbit hunting until the sun set. I still vividly remember that sunset, that day, that Dad. One image that is indelibly branded on my mind and heart is of Dad worshipping the Lord. During altar time, there by the piano, at the edge of the platform, one of us boys on either side, he would lift up his hands, tears running down his cheeks praising Jesus, and soon he was speaking in tongues and shouting, “glory”. Those times were the few times when I saw Dad truly experiencing freedom and joy. It is into that joy, unending joy, unmitigated joy, that he entered Sunday: “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” (Psa 16:11). This is where he is. This is what he is experiencing. Right now