But there was so much more to him than I ever saw.
I attended his funeral yesterday and was moved by the story of his life. Raised on a farm, he went to college and became a successful accountant. He was an accomplished musician and during WWII often was called on to play Taps for fallen soldiers. He and his wife stayed married until her death in the early 1990s and raised two daughters together. One of his daughters spent 30 years of her 37-year life in an iron lung due to the effects of polio. Not wishing her to be denied more of life than she already had, he designed and built a "portable" iron lung so that she could go on short trips with the family.
He served God's Kingdom as deacon, elder, and, most important, faithful child of God. After retiring he spent 13 years in nearly full-time volunteer service digitizing the card catalog for the largest theological library in the south. At the church he and his surviving daughter, who grew into a woman who displayed his same passion for serving others, and her family attended, he built the church's library into one of the best church library's around.
All the while he lived a deeply frugal, but not ungenerous, life and by the time of his death had contributed $50,000 to the endowed scholarship fund created in loving memory of his wife and dedicated to the training of God's ministers on earth.
I don't blame myself for not really seeing him. We cannot truly see the depths of everyone with whom we cross paths. I don't know that my relationship with this laughter-loving man of God would have changed had I known his heart more deeply, but I do know that in his death he has inspired me to look closely and pay rapt attention to those I do have the blessing of truly knowing and seeing in this life.
