Recently I read a book by Eric Metaxas called, "7 Men and the Secret of Their Greatness." It inspired me to introspection and to ask the question, 'Who are the men that shaped my life? And in what ways did they affect me?' Although I wanted to stretch it to seven, these four men have been pivotal, and besides, that book has already been written.
A therapist once told me that we all have voices inside our heads (it was at a dinner party, not on the couch), the councilors that help guide us through life's decisions. Some we choose, but others are just there. I have seen the cartoons that depict a demon on one shoulder and an angel on the other. One urging to do evil and the other to do what's right. But I come to the fight loaded for bear. I have a counsel of 4 that I carry along with me that help shape my answers to all the many demons that we meet every day. I actually have more than four but these four men have been with me for a long time and I keep them there as my inner counsel.
I believe that this is our legacy. The people in our lives that we influence, it isn't just a one time thing. We carry the voices of people throughout our lives and they help to shape the people that we become. I was fortunate to have great men in my life from an early age and they have been a great comfort for me as I have faced trials and tribulations, and when those trials came I have called on the memories of these four men, and often asked not only what would they do in this situation, but would they approve of what I'm doing.
I know that my church would rather that I view my life through a "What would Jesus Do" motif. And I honestly aspire to do just that. But these four men, like the four pillars of the faith, have pointed the way towards my vision of Christ. It may be that some people have lived their lives without role models and they have to rely on their definition of Christ as depicted in the scriptures in order to make their way in the world. I have been much more fortunate. These four men have been the lampposts of how to be a man and to help me know the peace that comes with living in harmony in the world of our creator.
Recently a friend of mine came to me and confided that he has been so depressed lately that he had to start taking medicine just to make it through the day. Now this is a good man, a man of high morals, who is civically involved, a member of a wonderful church, he is a great husband and has raised his children in an exemplary fashion. But my friend lost his confidence. He started listening to the demons too much, and he doesn't have the council of angels in his head to help him battle the onslaught of doubt and second-guessing that plagues all men as we grow older. This man has been a great role model for many, but he has not received the accolades that should be commensurate with living a noble and circumspect life. This is a consequence of living in a post-modern era where the overarching philosophy is that no one has the right to judge another, so we walk around like C.S. Lewis would describe as men without chests; too afraid to make a decision or call something right or wrong. So we act like the small silver fish in ocean that all try to move to the middle of the swarm, not looking left or right, only reacting to the whims of the group.
It doesn't have to be this way. There are great role models in our midst (or in my case, in my mind). We can acknowledge them, honor them and most importantly, shape our lives to reflect the qualities of these great men who point the way to real manhood.
My cast of men took the stage in the backdrop of sixties and seventies when real manhood was being questioned as was all authority. They knew that to be a man you had to have heart. Just as the bible admonishes men to take heart, and be of strong courage, so too did my council teach me that it's the heart that makes a real man. I can't resist a quick story about Joe Biden to illustrate my point. He is one of the most unmanly characters in the political spotlight, a buffoon that in the days of chivalry would have been shot for his ill manners many times over.
Biden was attending the funeral of a SEAL Team 6 member that was killed in the Benghazi attack. Biden went up to the parents of Tyronne Woods and in a loud and boisterous voice said, "Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?"
Now forget for a moment the pure impropriety of saying something so disrespectful and disgraceful at a hero's funeral, one in which history will show was caused by the improper action of the President and his administration including Joe Biden, and focus for a moment of what he was trying to say. He was trying to tell the father of this fallen hero how courageous his son had been. But instead of pointing to the hero's heart, Biden pointed to the man's sexual organs. This is where the modern day "men without chests" point when trying to define courage. Rather than looking at the heart of a man - the couer, they look at the characteristics that point to a man's balls; the machismo, the unruly, the uncontrollable.
This is not how God intended to define masculinity. At the center of manhood lies the heart - the couer of courage. Metaxes called it "The courage to be God's idea of a real man and to give of yourself for others when it costs you to do so and when everything tells you to look out for yourself first."
These four men did more than just teach me about what it means to be a man of heart, they exemplified courage and walk along with me today, my counsel, and advise me to "take heart."
I don't remember when Grandpa Coy first introduced me to the Lord, it was probably the first time he saw me. I say that because he always spoke about God and the great adventures of his life while living for the Lord. Ed Coy loved the Lord and through that love he loved God's people. His love of God never overshadowed his love for people, and even though he was well versed in the scriptures, he always used the scriptures to point to God's love for people. He was a Baptist preacher by trade, but I wonder if he ever gave a "fire and brimstone" sermon. That just wouldn't parse with the man I know who loved to share with people, the intimacy he experienced with a loving God.
While we were growing up in the sleepy little town of Sumner WA, family visits were a huge part of our lives. Almost every weekend we were either going to visit relatives or they were visiting us. And for the Weber kids there was nothing better than having Grandma and Grandpa Coy come over for a visit. It usually meant that mom was going to fix a pot roast and we were going to hear great stories about the Quixotic life of Grandpa Coy.
Grandpa had been in vaudeville in his younger days, and as Mom and Grandma prepared the food, Grandpa would start the show for us kids with a little warm-up humor. He would often start by pulling a quarter out of my sister's ear, or making his false teeth push out of his mouth. "How Long is a Chinaman," he would say. One of the problems we have with the spoken language is that we can't see punctuation, we can only assume it. Grandpa wasn't asking a question, he was making a statement, "How Long is a Chinaman." Of course we all thought that there was an answer to this and so we would try to guess the answer. But after each response Grandpa would restate his assertion, No, How Long is a Chinaman." Usually, the first one to break was Grandma Coy. She would come to our rescue; "Oh Eddie," she would say, "Kids, How Long is the name of a Chinese man that Grandpa knows." And then Grandpa, totally unperplexed by his wife's interruption, would say, "that's right Bessie, How Long is a Chinaman."
"A man stood on a burning deck, his feet were full of blisters,
He looked aloft, and his pants fell off, and the wind blew through his whiskers."
After some enticing humor he would settle down to tell us some wonderful stories, and his life was full of them. He could trace his ancestry back to William Bradford of the Mayflower (with a few leaps of poetic license), and then weave a story that claimed Bradford should have rightfully been named the king of the United States of America and that if he had we would be in the lineage of royalty and all be rich as lords. He was looking onto the matter this very week.
Ed Coy and his wife Bessie Lou were icons of the Christian community in Tacoma, WA. They had started many Baptist churches in the area and he was often called upon to fill in for vacationing preachers, which was the case on the day of my conversion. My mom told me that in the old days, whenever he was called to preach he would have all seven of the children there in the front row, along with his wife Bessie Lou. He would introduce them all by saying, "In the congregation I have with me today my first wife (he only had one wife). We had one and a half dozen children together(that totals seven if you take one plus a half dozen 6)."
The day I was "born-again." I was eleven years old and my Aunt Maudie had taken me to church to hear grandpa preach. At the end of the service he had an alter call and I went up front and told him I wanted to be born again. He didn't make a big deal of it - that would have been out of character for him, but he was touched that I had come up. I could see it in his eyes and I heard his voice tremble as he led the congregation in one more verse of 'Just as I am.'
Grandpa use to tell us stories of how the Chinese had built tunnels all through the hills of the port of Tacoma so that they could smuggle people into the country. As a young kid he and his friends had discovered one of the tunnels and they followed it down to a huge labyrinth of tunnels that the boys mapped out. Eventually they found a tunnel that came up in the backstage of the Rialto Theater. This is how he was first introduced to Vaudeville. He wound up backstage from one of the tunnels and got to see the show.
Ever after that he wanted to be in Vaudeville, and he began signing at local churches and other venues. Soon he got his chance, and made the best of it. He was picked up to sing for one the Vaudeville shows, but as fate would have it, at the young age of 17 he got cancer in his lymph-nodes and was told he only had a year to live. He decided that the best way to live out his last year was to take a car trip with his friend down to California and enjoy the warm climate. Once down there Ed Coy had a conversion experience and prayed to God, "Gracious Heavenly Father, if you take this illness away from me I will use all my talents to worship you." This must have sounded look a good deal to the Gracious Heavenly Father because he took him up on the deal and cured him of his cancer. And Ed Coy, being a man of his word, started living his life telling people the good news of love of Jesus. Once back in Tacoma, all the Vaudeville acts courted him to come join their company, but he refused them all and became a devout Christian.
I loved to hear Grandpa's stories. He came to love California and always saw it as a land of opportunity, sunshine, and gold. One year our family took a trip to California and went to Disneyland. Grandpa was an expert on Disneyland and had even met Walt Disney. In fact he advised Walt to create hats with mouse ears on them and sell them there at Disneyland. Walt thought it was a great idea and was going to pay Grandpa a penny for every hat sold. But something got messed up with the paperwork and he never saw a penny of it, but he did have an original set of bunny ears from Disneyland that he kept around just to prove the story.
When Grandpa found out we were going to California he told us, "Disneyland is fun but they have a new park down there called Knot's Berry farm, and not only do you get to ride all the rides, you get to pan for gold! Real gold!" And just to prove how authentic it was he pulled out a small treasure bag with some pieces of fools gold in it. He told us that even though this was fools gold, people usually found real gold close to where fools gold was found, and owning gold was a great way to get rich.
Getting rich was a hot topic with Grandpa Coy. He had many stories of close calls and near misses with great wealth. He once told me about a day when he was walking in the rain, and a great big limousine came and picked him up and took him to a huge mansion where he got cleaned up and got new clothes and then the owner had his driver take him home. He found out later that it was one of the Rockefellers.
Even with all his near misses, Ed Coy enjoyed a rich life. Rich in love and peace and a close walk with God. Not only that, he had more adventures in his life than men with ten times the wealth. He made many trips down into Mexico in his VW Van where he would hand out bibles to the people he met. When I was a teenager he was trying to design a music system that would let him play background music while he sang the melody. He was the first one to come up the idea of Karaoke. He took his idea to the guys over at Sony and they thought it was a great idea, but he never saw a penny from that either. Still, he took more trips down to Mexico and would preach to the people that would come and hear his music.
My Grandfather was a real man. He was bold, and courageous, and never feared any situation because he had the faith to know that God would never put him in a situation that he could not handle. His stories confirmed that and I believed it too, but in 1975 all that strength and will was challenged. I had just come back from a weekend ski trip when I got a call from my girlfriend's mother. "I'm so sorry to hear about your loss Eric. Please tell your mother that she is in our prayers."
That was how I found out that my grandmother, Bessie Lou Coy, had passed away. I started looking around the house and noticed that it was just me and Dad at home. He found me and told me that she had a stroke and had not recovered. She had passed away the day before and mom and the kids had gone to be with Grandpa for the day.
We all loved Grandma Coy. She was more than just support for Grandpa, she always made the person she was with feel special, and she had a great testimony on her own. But she did really support Ed and I kept wondering just how Grandpa would handle this loss. I didn't see him until the funeral and that was when my faith was tested. He sat in front and didn't show much emotion as the proceedings went along. He spent that time thanking people for their kind words and acknowledging other's pain as they came up and spoke to him. But as the formal proceedings drew to a end Ed Coy got up and addressed the gathering.
He spoke about the wonderful life that he and Bessie Lou had shared; the trips, the tennis, and the wonderful singing. His eyes glistened with tears, but he smiled tenderly at us all. My heart was breaking for him and for his loss, but he pressed on. He straightened his back as he closed his bible, that he carried everywhere, and said, "We were so close, I really don't know how I will go on in life," and at that point my psyche started to crumble. How could I stand on the solid rock of Christ if my faith leader couldn't depend on Him in his biggest moment of need; but he wasn't finished. It was just a comma, not a period, he continued, "but I know that my gracious heavenly Father will give me the strength to press on even though I can't see it through, he can, and I will rely on Jesus to show me the way."
Grandpa lived another four years after Bessie Lou passed away, and I'm here to testify that he lived it well. Yes, he lived with the loneliness of being a widower, but he set his mind to new tasks and new adventures. During that time he joined the Pentecostal Church of God in Tacoma where I joined him in worship on several occasions. He loved that church, and Pastor Fulton Buntain loved him too.
After Grandma died, Grandpa set out planning a trip around the world. Then, when he would come over to the house he started talking about the trip instead of telling us the old stories. I guess it was time for a change as I was sometimes piercing the vale of hyperbole. He planned his trip out for a long time and then, in 1977 he actually did it. He made it as far as India, but caught a bug and had to come back.
The last time I saw Grandpa was in Colorado in 1978. He had driven out to see Aunt Maudie in Denver and he was planning a new trip down to Mexico. He had performed my wedding ceremony in August of '76 and after that I had joined the army and moved away from Tacoma. I was so excited to see him that I wanted to quit the army and join him on his Mexican mission! It wasn't much longer after that visit that we got the word that he had passed away after having a stroke.
But Ed Coy lives on in my mind. Rarely does a day go by where he isn't guiding my path, nodding in approval when I choose well, and taking that beanie off and scratching that silvery dome of his when I don't.
One day in 1976, I went to Grandpa Coy with news that I thought could ostracize me from him and the family forever. I had gotten a girl pregnant, and I was planning to run off to California with her and have the baby down there. I was just graduating from high school and couldn't bear to think that people would know that I had done such a thing. I thought that we could go down there and get married and then wait to tell everyone that we had a baby. You know, sort of get first things first, except first things weren't first and the proof was getting real hard to keep hidden. I know I had to tell him, and so I went to his house and told him I needed to tell him something. He greeted me so warmly that day, I had to hold back the tears knowing that this embrace would be the end of his belief in my innocence. In my heart I wanted to run and not face the humiliation I had caused for me and my family.
He led me into the house and showed me some of the maps he had spread out on the table. They were National Geographic maps and he had colored needles stuck in the places where he had visited. We sat down together and I could tell there was no turning back. "Tell me what's on your mind Eric." Ok, I thought, here comes the news to end all news. I stuttered and stammered and finally just blurted out, "Cathy's pregnant."
There was a pause and then a big bright smile crossed his face. "Did you know there was another girl in the Bible who got pregnant before she got married? Her name was Mary." Grandpa Coy was once again saving me by pointing the way to salvation through Jesus. He was a true man of honor that showed me love at a time I believed I was completely unlovable. By the time I left that day we had prayed that God's hand be on that child and that He perform a miracle through her like he had so many years ago. Now, 35 years later, whenever I say her name I think of Grandpa Coy and the story of her namesake... and Councilmember number one smiles down on me and says, "Well done."
Uncle Larry is the husband of my mother's younger sister Mertz. Mom has three younger sisters that all had a huge influence on my life growing up. Mabel, Maudie, and Mertzy were like three angels that surrounded me with blessings and joy. They were always uplifting, telling me that God had his hand on me and that God had a special plan for my life. I sometimes wish I had accomplished great things for the kingdom to help fulfill the expectations that these wonderful women had for me. To the extent that I have accomplished anything is more a natural evolution of the expectations of my aunts, than any great goal that I had for myself. Uncle Larry is married to the seventh Coy. The youngest of the seven children of Ed and Bessie Lou Coy. I was blessed to be surrounded by many great Aunts and Uncles that all had an influence on me, but for some reason I was attracted to Larry's humor and wisdom and I have placed him in my 'wacko closet upstairs' and labeled him Councilmember III.
The last time we had a family gathering it was out in Spokane, WA. Most the Coys live in Western Washington and they made the trip over to a beautiful campsite near Spokane. Nancy and I flew into Vancouver and drove an RV over the mountains and through Eastern Washington to the campsite. It was a beautiful trip. We had a wonderful time and got to hear a lot of great stories about the family while sitting around a campfire or early in the mornings as Larry would get up and start making the coffee for everybody.
One morning I was listening to Larry tell a self-deprecating story about singing in church. He said that he was attending services with Bessie Lou and Ed, and the music that day was particularly inspiring. Larry had felt moved and sang out boldly to some of the great historical hymns. The closing hymn was one of his favorites, 'Blessed Assurance,' and he really gave it his all, letting God and all those surrounding him just what a 'glory divine' it was to know Jesus. Larry went on to say after the benediction they were filing out of the pew and as they got to the crowded isle Bessie Lou turned to Mertz and said "Isn't it great that Larry just signs out anyway?"
Now that's a great story to tell on yourself, and he got a good laugh from everybody around the table except for me. You see, for the last ten years I had been telling the exact same story only I was the object of Granma Coy's backhanded compliment. I was so befuddled. Had this been a story of Larry's that I had transferred to myself? As I thought back and tried to remember the setting I could see Grandma leaning over and saying the very same thing to mom, just loud enough for me to hear. Was it possible that Grandma Coy liked her joke and had played it on both of us? I honestly feel like I own that joke, but then I do have this Councilmember that I look up to and maybe, just maybe it was his story that I convinced myself had actually happened to me.
Uncle Larry has an especially well developed sense of humor and has a great way of deadpanning a story right up to the point where he weaves in a humorous twist and delivers a surprise that is the essence of humor. We all love to hear his stories and enjoy the special brand of humor that makes his stories so enjoyable. Storytelling is an art, but in order to be a good storyteller you first have to be an observer of human behavior and Larry and Mertz are great observers of human behavior, and what really makes the stories great is that Larry always goes out of his way to maintain the dignity of object of his story.
Larry is unabashedly Christian, as is Mertz, and when we get together and talk it's always about how the Lord is working in our lives. It's so inspiring to hear him talk as he has kept his faith despite being challenged strongly by loved ones for doing so. There is nothing disingenuous about Larry's faith. He is fully convinced that God is working in his life and the lives of the ones he loves. His convictions and desire to show others God's love for them, is steadfast.
But Councilmember III resides in my head, not because of humor, but because of his ability to reason. The first two councilmembers are heavily weighted towards taking risks. When opportunity knocks on my door the Ed Coy in me grabs ahold of the adrenaline lever and pours it on, singing out "If I were a rich man ...." The Duke says, "Go for it - even if you land in a pile of poop it will still smell like ham & eggs! But, thankfully, Councilmember III activates the engineer paradigm and says, "We may want to build a bridge over that canyon rather than just running and taking a flying leap."
Larry may be surprised to hear that he is a voice of reason inside my head but it's true.
Larry has lived out before me what it means to be a servant leader. He is always the one with the broom in his hand or the one supervising meal preparation and yet he takes time to learn how everyone is doing in the big family reunions. He and his family have for years worked to ensure that we all get together at a special site and enjoy God's great nature in the Northwest.
Many times I call in the voice of Larry to fight off the impetuous demon, the one that says, lets do it now lets do it fast. One time, Larry was caught in a tight spot. He had stepped in to help a troubled child in our family and was looking for a family to house the young boy. He knew that if no one stepped up the boy was going to be put in foster care. Eventually, Larry called me to get my feeling about it and to see if Nancy and I would be willing to take the boy in. This was an odd time where the Larry inside my head was trying to convince me not to take the boy in, while the Larry inside my phone was trying to convince me to take in the boy. Here was the perfect distilling of the two great characteristics of Councilmember III. On the one hand , the Larry on the phone was desperate to help this child find a home in the family. His sense of duty and moral turpitude were on display and I was proud of him for taking up the cause. He was trying hard to convince me, but he didn't know I had a secret weapon inside my head... Councilmember III!
We had adopted two children already, and we were up to our eyeballs struggling to get them through their teenage years when the call came and so we eventually, thanks to Larry, said no to Larry.
Some people have to push their memories of their fathers out of their minds, I embrace mine. Mom and Dad were married on September 7, 1956 in Tacoma WA and two years later I was born, followed by four other siblings through the next ten years. Dad was studying to become a doctor when I came along and my earliest memories are of living in the projects in Seattle while Dad went to medical school. It was a rough area to live say the least. I remember that mom would work hard to make sure that we respected Dad's precious time. She was (and is) a wonderful mate for him. She was always telling us how great Dad was and that the work he was doing to help save people was very important, and we all believed it. I knew from a young age that Dad was a great man, and growing up in his house, he taught me what it meant to be a dad.
I know that being a father came naturally to Dad. He had a wonderful father that he admired dearly. Grandpa Weber died of a heart attack at a much too young age and Dad grieved hard when we lost him. Dad wasn't ashamed to show his tears and he and Duke both cried hard when they lost their father. Seeing them cry at a young age could have been a little scary, but actually it was in some way comforting. Their tears weren't hysterical, and even though I was young I could tell that these two men crying was a way of getting through it. They were drawing closer together through their grief and I watched and saw that even great men can crash.
After Dad graduated from medical school at the University of Washington, we moved to Fresno California for his internship. They worked him like a slave down there and we rarely saw him during that time. But we never worried about Mom and Dad getting along. We had no idea of the meaning of divorce. We did have our share of tough times down there in Fresno, like the time I stuck a hoe in my brother Chris's head. Man did he bleed! During those early days Dad worked hard to get through school and mom worked hard raising us. Looking back, we must have been poor back then, but I never knew it. We always had plenty of love and we never seemed to go without. I do remember one time in Fresno when things must have been a little tight. Aunt Maudie planned to be married to Uncle Mike and they wanted have the wedding at our house. All Mom's family came down from Washington and to cool off everyone got in the little kiddie pool we had out back. Before the wedding we all went out to eat at a restaurant. It was going to be great; with all my aunts and uncles. As we stood in line to go in my Aunt Mabel noticed that I wasn't wearing any shoes. Aunt Mabel said, "Eric, you can go in the restaurant without shoes, lets go back to the house and get your shoes." "But I don't have any shoes Aunt Mabel," I told her. It seems I had grown out of shoes that summer and they had been passed on to my younger brother Chris. Aunt Mabel, who at that time knew all the cool stuff to do, took me to a variety store and introduced me to a whole knew type of shoe. It was called the flip-flop, and I thought I was the neatest thing since... shoes.
That day at the restaurant was quite special. I think it may have been the first time I had ever gone out to eat. I remember Dad saying that I had to mind my manners, but it was a day of joy so I got to go to the fountain and make what all kids love to make; a rainbow drink. That's where you put in a little coke, a little sprite, a little root beer, and a little Fresca, and then do it all over again (gross, I know but so much fun to make). Then to top it off, they had a twist ice cream machine and I got to have my own twist ice cream cone.
When Dad finished his internship we headed back to Washington State and Dad started his practice in a little sleepy town called Sumner. I got to spend the rest of my childhood in that little town, as Dad built his practice and got involved in the town politics and the local Methodist church. We took vacations in the summer and learned to ski in the winters, and all the time my larger than life dad was teaching me how to become a man.
Around the town of Sumner Dad was building a reputation as a caregiver, not just a doctor, but someone who cared about his patients and the town that he had adopted. As I was growing up people came to recognize me as Doctor Weber's kid, and people usually wanted to stop me and tell me how great my dad was. Back then, in the 60's and early 70's, before the welfare state took over, people didn't always have a way to pay Dad for his services so he would take whatever they had as payment. People use to love to bring him salmon, and finally Dad had to buy a freezer just so we could hold it all.
Back then the doctors around town worked together to take call so they weren't always working, all the time. Dad bought a Corvair supposedly so he could get to the hospital quickly when there was an emergency. Somehow Mom bought into the idea, and soon you could hear that little racy car running up the RPM's as Dad set off on a house call or an emergency at the hospital. As the legacy of the hometown doctor grew, our family was growing too.
One of the great lessons that my Dad taught me was the importance of loving your wife. It's probably a tendency in American family culture to place the kids needs ahead of the marriage but that's not the way God intended it. A marriage is between a man and a woman and their love for each other must come first or a family can get unbalanced. If the mother thinks the kids come first, then her role as a wife is diminished, and the same will happen with the husband. Marny and Don always made sure that their bond to each other came ahead of the needs of us kids. Often times Dad would take Mom for a special get-away and leave us kids with Grandparents or other relatives while they got away. A couple of days away from the five of us did wonders for them both and it was good for us kids to see how much they loved each other. There were many times when the two of them would express their love for each other and it taught me the importance of making sure you keep first things first.
After Nancy and I adopted our two boys, things got kind of crazy around our house. I remember struggling to figure out how to best help the boys feel secure. Finally, Nancy and decided that we were just going to have to start kissing in front of them every time they made a commotion.
So Justin would come in the house and say, Josh just hit me on the head, and Josh would be right behind him saying "No I didn't, he's lying!" About that time I would put my arms around Nancy and we would start making out right there in the kitchen. What fun! I'm not sure our cure will get written up in any textbooks, but it helped the two of us put things in perspective and I attribute that to the love Marny and Don displayed for each other.
A therapist once told me that we all have voices inside our heads (it was at a dinner party, not on the couch), the councilors that help guide us through life's decisions. Some we choose, but others are just there. I have seen the cartoons that depict a demon on one shoulder and an angel on the other. One urging to do evil and the other to do what's right. But I come to the fight loaded for bear. I have a counsel of 4 that I carry along with me that help shape my answers to all the many demons that we meet every day. I actually have more than four but these four men have been with me for a long time and I keep them there as my inner counsel.
I believe that this is our legacy. The people in our lives that we influence, it isn't just a one time thing. We carry the voices of people throughout our lives and they help to shape the people that we become. I was fortunate to have great men in my life from an early age and they have been a great comfort for me as I have faced trials and tribulations, and when those trials came I have called on the memories of these four men, and often asked not only what would they do in this situation, but would they approve of what I'm doing.
I know that my church would rather that I view my life through a "What would Jesus Do" motif. And I honestly aspire to do just that. But these four men, like the four pillars of the faith, have pointed the way towards my vision of Christ. It may be that some people have lived their lives without role models and they have to rely on their definition of Christ as depicted in the scriptures in order to make their way in the world. I have been much more fortunate. These four men have been the lampposts of how to be a man and to help me know the peace that comes with living in harmony in the world of our creator.
Recently a friend of mine came to me and confided that he has been so depressed lately that he had to start taking medicine just to make it through the day. Now this is a good man, a man of high morals, who is civically involved, a member of a wonderful church, he is a great husband and has raised his children in an exemplary fashion. But my friend lost his confidence. He started listening to the demons too much, and he doesn't have the council of angels in his head to help him battle the onslaught of doubt and second-guessing that plagues all men as we grow older. This man has been a great role model for many, but he has not received the accolades that should be commensurate with living a noble and circumspect life. This is a consequence of living in a post-modern era where the overarching philosophy is that no one has the right to judge another, so we walk around like C.S. Lewis would describe as men without chests; too afraid to make a decision or call something right or wrong. So we act like the small silver fish in ocean that all try to move to the middle of the swarm, not looking left or right, only reacting to the whims of the group.
It doesn't have to be this way. There are great role models in our midst (or in my case, in my mind). We can acknowledge them, honor them and most importantly, shape our lives to reflect the qualities of these great men who point the way to real manhood.
My cast of men took the stage in the backdrop of sixties and seventies when real manhood was being questioned as was all authority. They knew that to be a man you had to have heart. Just as the bible admonishes men to take heart, and be of strong courage, so too did my council teach me that it's the heart that makes a real man. I can't resist a quick story about Joe Biden to illustrate my point. He is one of the most unmanly characters in the political spotlight, a buffoon that in the days of chivalry would have been shot for his ill manners many times over.
Biden was attending the funeral of a SEAL Team 6 member that was killed in the Benghazi attack. Biden went up to the parents of Tyronne Woods and in a loud and boisterous voice said, "Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?"
Now forget for a moment the pure impropriety of saying something so disrespectful and disgraceful at a hero's funeral, one in which history will show was caused by the improper action of the President and his administration including Joe Biden, and focus for a moment of what he was trying to say. He was trying to tell the father of this fallen hero how courageous his son had been. But instead of pointing to the hero's heart, Biden pointed to the man's sexual organs. This is where the modern day "men without chests" point when trying to define courage. Rather than looking at the heart of a man - the couer, they look at the characteristics that point to a man's balls; the machismo, the unruly, the uncontrollable.
This is not how God intended to define masculinity. At the center of manhood lies the heart - the couer of courage. Metaxes called it "The courage to be God's idea of a real man and to give of yourself for others when it costs you to do so and when everything tells you to look out for yourself first."
These four men did more than just teach me about what it means to be a man of heart, they exemplified courage and walk along with me today, my counsel, and advise me to "take heart."
Edwin L Coy 1907 - 1979
Whenever I'm asked to pray in a group I always start my prayer with "Our gracious heavenly Father..." and as I pause, the councilmember inside my head that is in charge of prayer smiles, and then I continue on with my prayer. Ed Coy, my grandfather, was an iconic man. He is the patriarch of a large close-knit family, and his loving influence has now spanned four generations. I am certain that he occupies space in the heads of many of my family and most likely beyond. Thirty years after his death we still celebrate his influence every time we have a family reunion, which seems to be about once a year. But I carry him with me every day. He is there in my head, a chief council member, helping me to rebuff the demon on my other shoulder. I start my prayers that way because that's how I remember him praying, and he is the one that introduced me to the One to which I pray.I don't remember when Grandpa Coy first introduced me to the Lord, it was probably the first time he saw me. I say that because he always spoke about God and the great adventures of his life while living for the Lord. Ed Coy loved the Lord and through that love he loved God's people. His love of God never overshadowed his love for people, and even though he was well versed in the scriptures, he always used the scriptures to point to God's love for people. He was a Baptist preacher by trade, but I wonder if he ever gave a "fire and brimstone" sermon. That just wouldn't parse with the man I know who loved to share with people, the intimacy he experienced with a loving God.
While we were growing up in the sleepy little town of Sumner WA, family visits were a huge part of our lives. Almost every weekend we were either going to visit relatives or they were visiting us. And for the Weber kids there was nothing better than having Grandma and Grandpa Coy come over for a visit. It usually meant that mom was going to fix a pot roast and we were going to hear great stories about the Quixotic life of Grandpa Coy.
Grandpa had been in vaudeville in his younger days, and as Mom and Grandma prepared the food, Grandpa would start the show for us kids with a little warm-up humor. He would often start by pulling a quarter out of my sister's ear, or making his false teeth push out of his mouth. "How Long is a Chinaman," he would say. One of the problems we have with the spoken language is that we can't see punctuation, we can only assume it. Grandpa wasn't asking a question, he was making a statement, "How Long is a Chinaman." Of course we all thought that there was an answer to this and so we would try to guess the answer. But after each response Grandpa would restate his assertion, No, How Long is a Chinaman." Usually, the first one to break was Grandma Coy. She would come to our rescue; "Oh Eddie," she would say, "Kids, How Long is the name of a Chinese man that Grandpa knows." And then Grandpa, totally unperplexed by his wife's interruption, would say, "that's right Bessie, How Long is a Chinaman."
"A man stood on a burning deck, his feet were full of blisters,
He looked aloft, and his pants fell off, and the wind blew through his whiskers."
After some enticing humor he would settle down to tell us some wonderful stories, and his life was full of them. He could trace his ancestry back to William Bradford of the Mayflower (with a few leaps of poetic license), and then weave a story that claimed Bradford should have rightfully been named the king of the United States of America and that if he had we would be in the lineage of royalty and all be rich as lords. He was looking onto the matter this very week.
Ed Coy and his wife Bessie Lou were icons of the Christian community in Tacoma, WA. They had started many Baptist churches in the area and he was often called upon to fill in for vacationing preachers, which was the case on the day of my conversion. My mom told me that in the old days, whenever he was called to preach he would have all seven of the children there in the front row, along with his wife Bessie Lou. He would introduce them all by saying, "In the congregation I have with me today my first wife (he only had one wife). We had one and a half dozen children together(that totals seven if you take one plus a half dozen 6)."
The day I was "born-again." I was eleven years old and my Aunt Maudie had taken me to church to hear grandpa preach. At the end of the service he had an alter call and I went up front and told him I wanted to be born again. He didn't make a big deal of it - that would have been out of character for him, but he was touched that I had come up. I could see it in his eyes and I heard his voice tremble as he led the congregation in one more verse of 'Just as I am.'
Grandpa use to tell us stories of how the Chinese had built tunnels all through the hills of the port of Tacoma so that they could smuggle people into the country. As a young kid he and his friends had discovered one of the tunnels and they followed it down to a huge labyrinth of tunnels that the boys mapped out. Eventually they found a tunnel that came up in the backstage of the Rialto Theater. This is how he was first introduced to Vaudeville. He wound up backstage from one of the tunnels and got to see the show.
Ever after that he wanted to be in Vaudeville, and he began signing at local churches and other venues. Soon he got his chance, and made the best of it. He was picked up to sing for one the Vaudeville shows, but as fate would have it, at the young age of 17 he got cancer in his lymph-nodes and was told he only had a year to live. He decided that the best way to live out his last year was to take a car trip with his friend down to California and enjoy the warm climate. Once down there Ed Coy had a conversion experience and prayed to God, "Gracious Heavenly Father, if you take this illness away from me I will use all my talents to worship you." This must have sounded look a good deal to the Gracious Heavenly Father because he took him up on the deal and cured him of his cancer. And Ed Coy, being a man of his word, started living his life telling people the good news of love of Jesus. Once back in Tacoma, all the Vaudeville acts courted him to come join their company, but he refused them all and became a devout Christian.
I loved to hear Grandpa's stories. He came to love California and always saw it as a land of opportunity, sunshine, and gold. One year our family took a trip to California and went to Disneyland. Grandpa was an expert on Disneyland and had even met Walt Disney. In fact he advised Walt to create hats with mouse ears on them and sell them there at Disneyland. Walt thought it was a great idea and was going to pay Grandpa a penny for every hat sold. But something got messed up with the paperwork and he never saw a penny of it, but he did have an original set of bunny ears from Disneyland that he kept around just to prove the story.
When Grandpa found out we were going to California he told us, "Disneyland is fun but they have a new park down there called Knot's Berry farm, and not only do you get to ride all the rides, you get to pan for gold! Real gold!" And just to prove how authentic it was he pulled out a small treasure bag with some pieces of fools gold in it. He told us that even though this was fools gold, people usually found real gold close to where fools gold was found, and owning gold was a great way to get rich.
Getting rich was a hot topic with Grandpa Coy. He had many stories of close calls and near misses with great wealth. He once told me about a day when he was walking in the rain, and a great big limousine came and picked him up and took him to a huge mansion where he got cleaned up and got new clothes and then the owner had his driver take him home. He found out later that it was one of the Rockefellers.
Even with all his near misses, Ed Coy enjoyed a rich life. Rich in love and peace and a close walk with God. Not only that, he had more adventures in his life than men with ten times the wealth. He made many trips down into Mexico in his VW Van where he would hand out bibles to the people he met. When I was a teenager he was trying to design a music system that would let him play background music while he sang the melody. He was the first one to come up the idea of Karaoke. He took his idea to the guys over at Sony and they thought it was a great idea, but he never saw a penny from that either. Still, he took more trips down to Mexico and would preach to the people that would come and hear his music.
My Grandfather was a real man. He was bold, and courageous, and never feared any situation because he had the faith to know that God would never put him in a situation that he could not handle. His stories confirmed that and I believed it too, but in 1975 all that strength and will was challenged. I had just come back from a weekend ski trip when I got a call from my girlfriend's mother. "I'm so sorry to hear about your loss Eric. Please tell your mother that she is in our prayers."
That was how I found out that my grandmother, Bessie Lou Coy, had passed away. I started looking around the house and noticed that it was just me and Dad at home. He found me and told me that she had a stroke and had not recovered. She had passed away the day before and mom and the kids had gone to be with Grandpa for the day.
We all loved Grandma Coy. She was more than just support for Grandpa, she always made the person she was with feel special, and she had a great testimony on her own. But she did really support Ed and I kept wondering just how Grandpa would handle this loss. I didn't see him until the funeral and that was when my faith was tested. He sat in front and didn't show much emotion as the proceedings went along. He spent that time thanking people for their kind words and acknowledging other's pain as they came up and spoke to him. But as the formal proceedings drew to a end Ed Coy got up and addressed the gathering.
He spoke about the wonderful life that he and Bessie Lou had shared; the trips, the tennis, and the wonderful singing. His eyes glistened with tears, but he smiled tenderly at us all. My heart was breaking for him and for his loss, but he pressed on. He straightened his back as he closed his bible, that he carried everywhere, and said, "We were so close, I really don't know how I will go on in life," and at that point my psyche started to crumble. How could I stand on the solid rock of Christ if my faith leader couldn't depend on Him in his biggest moment of need; but he wasn't finished. It was just a comma, not a period, he continued, "but I know that my gracious heavenly Father will give me the strength to press on even though I can't see it through, he can, and I will rely on Jesus to show me the way."
Grandpa lived another four years after Bessie Lou passed away, and I'm here to testify that he lived it well. Yes, he lived with the loneliness of being a widower, but he set his mind to new tasks and new adventures. During that time he joined the Pentecostal Church of God in Tacoma where I joined him in worship on several occasions. He loved that church, and Pastor Fulton Buntain loved him too.
After Grandma died, Grandpa set out planning a trip around the world. Then, when he would come over to the house he started talking about the trip instead of telling us the old stories. I guess it was time for a change as I was sometimes piercing the vale of hyperbole. He planned his trip out for a long time and then, in 1977 he actually did it. He made it as far as India, but caught a bug and had to come back.
The last time I saw Grandpa was in Colorado in 1978. He had driven out to see Aunt Maudie in Denver and he was planning a new trip down to Mexico. He had performed my wedding ceremony in August of '76 and after that I had joined the army and moved away from Tacoma. I was so excited to see him that I wanted to quit the army and join him on his Mexican mission! It wasn't much longer after that visit that we got the word that he had passed away after having a stroke.
But Ed Coy lives on in my mind. Rarely does a day go by where he isn't guiding my path, nodding in approval when I choose well, and taking that beanie off and scratching that silvery dome of his when I don't.
One day in 1976, I went to Grandpa Coy with news that I thought could ostracize me from him and the family forever. I had gotten a girl pregnant, and I was planning to run off to California with her and have the baby down there. I was just graduating from high school and couldn't bear to think that people would know that I had done such a thing. I thought that we could go down there and get married and then wait to tell everyone that we had a baby. You know, sort of get first things first, except first things weren't first and the proof was getting real hard to keep hidden. I know I had to tell him, and so I went to his house and told him I needed to tell him something. He greeted me so warmly that day, I had to hold back the tears knowing that this embrace would be the end of his belief in my innocence. In my heart I wanted to run and not face the humiliation I had caused for me and my family.
He led me into the house and showed me some of the maps he had spread out on the table. They were National Geographic maps and he had colored needles stuck in the places where he had visited. We sat down together and I could tell there was no turning back. "Tell me what's on your mind Eric." Ok, I thought, here comes the news to end all news. I stuttered and stammered and finally just blurted out, "Cathy's pregnant."
There was a pause and then a big bright smile crossed his face. "Did you know there was another girl in the Bible who got pregnant before she got married? Her name was Mary." Grandpa Coy was once again saving me by pointing the way to salvation through Jesus. He was a true man of honor that showed me love at a time I believed I was completely unlovable. By the time I left that day we had prayed that God's hand be on that child and that He perform a miracle through her like he had so many years ago. Now, 35 years later, whenever I say her name I think of Grandpa Coy and the story of her namesake... and Councilmember number one smiles down on me and says, "Well done."
Ellery K "Duke" Weber Jr. 1933 - present
We were hunting for the golf ball along the tree line of the third hole at the Elks Golf course in Tacoma. The ball had taken a wicked right turn off the tee, it came down from high onto the cart path, then hit a tree and shot to the right further into the woods and out of our sight. We started hunting for the ball and found it on a little patch of grass near a rock and beside a tree. The ball must have ricocheted back onto the cart path and rolled for quite a while because it came to rest about 50 yards closer to the hole than we anticipated. The problem was there were tree branches behind the ball that would make a swing difficult. There was a tree close to the ball that would make a normal stance impossible, and there was a row of tall pines in-between the ball and the hole. When we finally found the ball and Duke saw his circumstance, he pronounced his situation in the manner that anyone who has ever golfed with him knows, and it is the epithet that defines his attitude about life; "Perfect!" he declared, and proceeded to take his 7 iron out and slide his low flying shot right onto the green. "I don't know why I aim for the fairway, I'm much better out of the rough." And that sums up the indefatigable attitude of Councilmember II, my Dad's older brother, the Duke.
It's hard to understate the desire most Washingtonians have to see the sun. After months of darkness and rain it's just about all people talk about. California is a popular topic and so is Hawaii. But for the more reasonable minds there is always Eastern Washington. Yakima, Moses Lake, and Lake Chelan attract a lot of vacationers from the wetter side of the mountains in the summer. But it is brutally dry so it's not a great destination for people from anywhere other than Western Washington. For the Webers in the 1960's, Sun Lakes was dry air Nirvana.
If you Google Sun Lakes, Washington, you will have to click out four times before you can even see a city that will show up on the map; the great town of Wenatchee. In other words, its out there. But for us it held the magical memory of family summer vacations. Dry air, swimming and horseback riding, throwing baseballs and eating pancakes off an iron skillet. But the nights were the times that melded into my memory and made my Uncle Duke Councilmember II.
Everyone is familiar with the tensions that can build in the day to day life of a growing family. Add to that four straight months of rain, and tensions can get pretty high. Going to Sun Lakes was a getaway from all that and hearing my Uncle Duke tell stories to Mom and Dad while I laid out under the stars was like an elixir that washed all the tensions away. It would usually start with a game of cribbage between the brothers at the end of a day. Dad and Duke with a bottle of rum and lots of coke. Later it was gin rummy with the four adults, but the cards mattered little to them and none to me. I just loved to hear the wonderful laughter that carried across the campfire and soothed the fears of a skinny little kid looking out on God's beautiful universe of stars and drinking in the almost musical carefreeness of two brothers loving each other and truly enjoying life.
The Councilmembers that I keep in my head are not so much teachers as they are guides. Duke was put in my head to help me see through the complexities of life and find joy in the day to day living. Duke would tell me the story of being in the army. "My favorite thing about being in the army was KP duty. I use to volunteer for it all the time."
'Nobody likes KP duty', I thought, 'what could he possibly like about KP duty?' He continued, "I loved peeling the potatoes because nobody could yell at you. Nobody wanted to disturb the guy peeling potatoes Then, at the end of the shift, they let us eat as much as we wanted and it was always nice and quiet in the mess hall by the time we were done." And then came what my brother coined as a Dukism; a saying that we attributed to Duke and you knew it came from him, Yes, Duke said, "I thought it was a neat deal."
This story is axiomatic of Duke's life. Whenever he has been handed lemons he not only made lemonade, he probably got someone to bring some vodka over too. He took on life's obstacles with such a great attitude and not only made the best out of the situation, he could convince you that hitting the ball in the rough might just be the best approach.
For years Duke worked at St. Regis paper mill in Tacoma, WA. It was a good job but the processing mill used a strong sulfuric compound to strip the wood. It emitted an odor that was so bad, people for miles around Tacoma complained about it. Robin Williams came to the Tacoma Dome when he was doing stand up comedy and said, "Tacoma is an ancient Indian word used by the Muckelshoot Indians. It's true meaning is "What's that smell."
Pretty funny, but Duke worked at ground zero of the funk-dome. I once got a chance to tour the plant with him. It was interesting to see all the big machinery, but the smell was overwhelming. Finally I broke down and said, "Uncle Duke, how can you stand the smell of this place?" Without batting an eye he took a big deep breath and said, "It smells like ham and eggs to me."
Councilmember II fights the demon that tells me, "You've really screwed up this time. You are in way over your head. There's no way out of this. You might as well just give up." Then Duke responds, "Let's count our blessings Eric, this could really be a 'neat deal!'"If you Google Sun Lakes, Washington, you will have to click out four times before you can even see a city that will show up on the map; the great town of Wenatchee. In other words, its out there. But for us it held the magical memory of family summer vacations. Dry air, swimming and horseback riding, throwing baseballs and eating pancakes off an iron skillet. But the nights were the times that melded into my memory and made my Uncle Duke Councilmember II.
Everyone is familiar with the tensions that can build in the day to day life of a growing family. Add to that four straight months of rain, and tensions can get pretty high. Going to Sun Lakes was a getaway from all that and hearing my Uncle Duke tell stories to Mom and Dad while I laid out under the stars was like an elixir that washed all the tensions away. It would usually start with a game of cribbage between the brothers at the end of a day. Dad and Duke with a bottle of rum and lots of coke. Later it was gin rummy with the four adults, but the cards mattered little to them and none to me. I just loved to hear the wonderful laughter that carried across the campfire and soothed the fears of a skinny little kid looking out on God's beautiful universe of stars and drinking in the almost musical carefreeness of two brothers loving each other and truly enjoying life.
The Councilmembers that I keep in my head are not so much teachers as they are guides. Duke was put in my head to help me see through the complexities of life and find joy in the day to day living. Duke would tell me the story of being in the army. "My favorite thing about being in the army was KP duty. I use to volunteer for it all the time."
'Nobody likes KP duty', I thought, 'what could he possibly like about KP duty?' He continued, "I loved peeling the potatoes because nobody could yell at you. Nobody wanted to disturb the guy peeling potatoes Then, at the end of the shift, they let us eat as much as we wanted and it was always nice and quiet in the mess hall by the time we were done." And then came what my brother coined as a Dukism; a saying that we attributed to Duke and you knew it came from him, Yes, Duke said, "I thought it was a neat deal."
This story is axiomatic of Duke's life. Whenever he has been handed lemons he not only made lemonade, he probably got someone to bring some vodka over too. He took on life's obstacles with such a great attitude and not only made the best out of the situation, he could convince you that hitting the ball in the rough might just be the best approach.
For years Duke worked at St. Regis paper mill in Tacoma, WA. It was a good job but the processing mill used a strong sulfuric compound to strip the wood. It emitted an odor that was so bad, people for miles around Tacoma complained about it. Robin Williams came to the Tacoma Dome when he was doing stand up comedy and said, "Tacoma is an ancient Indian word used by the Muckelshoot Indians. It's true meaning is "What's that smell."
Pretty funny, but Duke worked at ground zero of the funk-dome. I once got a chance to tour the plant with him. It was interesting to see all the big machinery, but the smell was overwhelming. Finally I broke down and said, "Uncle Duke, how can you stand the smell of this place?" Without batting an eye he took a big deep breath and said, "It smells like ham and eggs to me."
Larry Hiegel 1944 - present
Uncle Larry is the husband of my mother's younger sister Mertz. Mom has three younger sisters that all had a huge influence on my life growing up. Mabel, Maudie, and Mertzy were like three angels that surrounded me with blessings and joy. They were always uplifting, telling me that God had his hand on me and that God had a special plan for my life. I sometimes wish I had accomplished great things for the kingdom to help fulfill the expectations that these wonderful women had for me. To the extent that I have accomplished anything is more a natural evolution of the expectations of my aunts, than any great goal that I had for myself. Uncle Larry is married to the seventh Coy. The youngest of the seven children of Ed and Bessie Lou Coy. I was blessed to be surrounded by many great Aunts and Uncles that all had an influence on me, but for some reason I was attracted to Larry's humor and wisdom and I have placed him in my 'wacko closet upstairs' and labeled him Councilmember III.
The last time we had a family gathering it was out in Spokane, WA. Most the Coys live in Western Washington and they made the trip over to a beautiful campsite near Spokane. Nancy and I flew into Vancouver and drove an RV over the mountains and through Eastern Washington to the campsite. It was a beautiful trip. We had a wonderful time and got to hear a lot of great stories about the family while sitting around a campfire or early in the mornings as Larry would get up and start making the coffee for everybody.
One morning I was listening to Larry tell a self-deprecating story about singing in church. He said that he was attending services with Bessie Lou and Ed, and the music that day was particularly inspiring. Larry had felt moved and sang out boldly to some of the great historical hymns. The closing hymn was one of his favorites, 'Blessed Assurance,' and he really gave it his all, letting God and all those surrounding him just what a 'glory divine' it was to know Jesus. Larry went on to say after the benediction they were filing out of the pew and as they got to the crowded isle Bessie Lou turned to Mertz and said "Isn't it great that Larry just signs out anyway?"
Now that's a great story to tell on yourself, and he got a good laugh from everybody around the table except for me. You see, for the last ten years I had been telling the exact same story only I was the object of Granma Coy's backhanded compliment. I was so befuddled. Had this been a story of Larry's that I had transferred to myself? As I thought back and tried to remember the setting I could see Grandma leaning over and saying the very same thing to mom, just loud enough for me to hear. Was it possible that Grandma Coy liked her joke and had played it on both of us? I honestly feel like I own that joke, but then I do have this Councilmember that I look up to and maybe, just maybe it was his story that I convinced myself had actually happened to me.
Uncle Larry has an especially well developed sense of humor and has a great way of deadpanning a story right up to the point where he weaves in a humorous twist and delivers a surprise that is the essence of humor. We all love to hear his stories and enjoy the special brand of humor that makes his stories so enjoyable. Storytelling is an art, but in order to be a good storyteller you first have to be an observer of human behavior and Larry and Mertz are great observers of human behavior, and what really makes the stories great is that Larry always goes out of his way to maintain the dignity of object of his story.
Larry is unabashedly Christian, as is Mertz, and when we get together and talk it's always about how the Lord is working in our lives. It's so inspiring to hear him talk as he has kept his faith despite being challenged strongly by loved ones for doing so. There is nothing disingenuous about Larry's faith. He is fully convinced that God is working in his life and the lives of the ones he loves. His convictions and desire to show others God's love for them, is steadfast.
But Councilmember III resides in my head, not because of humor, but because of his ability to reason. The first two councilmembers are heavily weighted towards taking risks. When opportunity knocks on my door the Ed Coy in me grabs ahold of the adrenaline lever and pours it on, singing out "If I were a rich man ...." The Duke says, "Go for it - even if you land in a pile of poop it will still smell like ham & eggs! But, thankfully, Councilmember III activates the engineer paradigm and says, "We may want to build a bridge over that canyon rather than just running and taking a flying leap."
Larry may be surprised to hear that he is a voice of reason inside my head but it's true.
Larry has lived out before me what it means to be a servant leader. He is always the one with the broom in his hand or the one supervising meal preparation and yet he takes time to learn how everyone is doing in the big family reunions. He and his family have for years worked to ensure that we all get together at a special site and enjoy God's great nature in the Northwest.
Many times I call in the voice of Larry to fight off the impetuous demon, the one that says, lets do it now lets do it fast. One time, Larry was caught in a tight spot. He had stepped in to help a troubled child in our family and was looking for a family to house the young boy. He knew that if no one stepped up the boy was going to be put in foster care. Eventually, Larry called me to get my feeling about it and to see if Nancy and I would be willing to take the boy in. This was an odd time where the Larry inside my head was trying to convince me not to take the boy in, while the Larry inside my phone was trying to convince me to take in the boy. Here was the perfect distilling of the two great characteristics of Councilmember III. On the one hand , the Larry on the phone was desperate to help this child find a home in the family. His sense of duty and moral turpitude were on display and I was proud of him for taking up the cause. He was trying hard to convince me, but he didn't know I had a secret weapon inside my head... Councilmember III!
We had adopted two children already, and we were up to our eyeballs struggling to get them through their teenage years when the call came and so we eventually, thanks to Larry, said no to Larry.
Dr. Donald C. Weber 1936- Present
The fourth person that resides on the council is my dad. He plays a much larger role in my psyche than all the others combined and is with me almost every step of the way throughout my life. In fact sometimes it has been difficult for me to draw the line and distinguish myself from him. I still measure almost everything I do to his standard. Being a father creates such a huge impression on a child that it's hard for me to imagine going through life without one.Some people have to push their memories of their fathers out of their minds, I embrace mine. Mom and Dad were married on September 7, 1956 in Tacoma WA and two years later I was born, followed by four other siblings through the next ten years. Dad was studying to become a doctor when I came along and my earliest memories are of living in the projects in Seattle while Dad went to medical school. It was a rough area to live say the least. I remember that mom would work hard to make sure that we respected Dad's precious time. She was (and is) a wonderful mate for him. She was always telling us how great Dad was and that the work he was doing to help save people was very important, and we all believed it. I knew from a young age that Dad was a great man, and growing up in his house, he taught me what it meant to be a dad.
I know that being a father came naturally to Dad. He had a wonderful father that he admired dearly. Grandpa Weber died of a heart attack at a much too young age and Dad grieved hard when we lost him. Dad wasn't ashamed to show his tears and he and Duke both cried hard when they lost their father. Seeing them cry at a young age could have been a little scary, but actually it was in some way comforting. Their tears weren't hysterical, and even though I was young I could tell that these two men crying was a way of getting through it. They were drawing closer together through their grief and I watched and saw that even great men can crash.
After Dad graduated from medical school at the University of Washington, we moved to Fresno California for his internship. They worked him like a slave down there and we rarely saw him during that time. But we never worried about Mom and Dad getting along. We had no idea of the meaning of divorce. We did have our share of tough times down there in Fresno, like the time I stuck a hoe in my brother Chris's head. Man did he bleed! During those early days Dad worked hard to get through school and mom worked hard raising us. Looking back, we must have been poor back then, but I never knew it. We always had plenty of love and we never seemed to go without. I do remember one time in Fresno when things must have been a little tight. Aunt Maudie planned to be married to Uncle Mike and they wanted have the wedding at our house. All Mom's family came down from Washington and to cool off everyone got in the little kiddie pool we had out back. Before the wedding we all went out to eat at a restaurant. It was going to be great; with all my aunts and uncles. As we stood in line to go in my Aunt Mabel noticed that I wasn't wearing any shoes. Aunt Mabel said, "Eric, you can go in the restaurant without shoes, lets go back to the house and get your shoes." "But I don't have any shoes Aunt Mabel," I told her. It seems I had grown out of shoes that summer and they had been passed on to my younger brother Chris. Aunt Mabel, who at that time knew all the cool stuff to do, took me to a variety store and introduced me to a whole knew type of shoe. It was called the flip-flop, and I thought I was the neatest thing since... shoes.
That day at the restaurant was quite special. I think it may have been the first time I had ever gone out to eat. I remember Dad saying that I had to mind my manners, but it was a day of joy so I got to go to the fountain and make what all kids love to make; a rainbow drink. That's where you put in a little coke, a little sprite, a little root beer, and a little Fresca, and then do it all over again (gross, I know but so much fun to make). Then to top it off, they had a twist ice cream machine and I got to have my own twist ice cream cone.
When Dad finished his internship we headed back to Washington State and Dad started his practice in a little sleepy town called Sumner. I got to spend the rest of my childhood in that little town, as Dad built his practice and got involved in the town politics and the local Methodist church. We took vacations in the summer and learned to ski in the winters, and all the time my larger than life dad was teaching me how to become a man.
Around the town of Sumner Dad was building a reputation as a caregiver, not just a doctor, but someone who cared about his patients and the town that he had adopted. As I was growing up people came to recognize me as Doctor Weber's kid, and people usually wanted to stop me and tell me how great my dad was. Back then, in the 60's and early 70's, before the welfare state took over, people didn't always have a way to pay Dad for his services so he would take whatever they had as payment. People use to love to bring him salmon, and finally Dad had to buy a freezer just so we could hold it all.
Back then the doctors around town worked together to take call so they weren't always working, all the time. Dad bought a Corvair supposedly so he could get to the hospital quickly when there was an emergency. Somehow Mom bought into the idea, and soon you could hear that little racy car running up the RPM's as Dad set off on a house call or an emergency at the hospital. As the legacy of the hometown doctor grew, our family was growing too.
One of the great lessons that my Dad taught me was the importance of loving your wife. It's probably a tendency in American family culture to place the kids needs ahead of the marriage but that's not the way God intended it. A marriage is between a man and a woman and their love for each other must come first or a family can get unbalanced. If the mother thinks the kids come first, then her role as a wife is diminished, and the same will happen with the husband. Marny and Don always made sure that their bond to each other came ahead of the needs of us kids. Often times Dad would take Mom for a special get-away and leave us kids with Grandparents or other relatives while they got away. A couple of days away from the five of us did wonders for them both and it was good for us kids to see how much they loved each other. There were many times when the two of them would express their love for each other and it taught me the importance of making sure you keep first things first.
After Nancy and I adopted our two boys, things got kind of crazy around our house. I remember struggling to figure out how to best help the boys feel secure. Finally, Nancy and decided that we were just going to have to start kissing in front of them every time they made a commotion.
So Justin would come in the house and say, Josh just hit me on the head, and Josh would be right behind him saying "No I didn't, he's lying!" About that time I would put my arms around Nancy and we would start making out right there in the kitchen. What fun! I'm not sure our cure will get written up in any textbooks, but it helped the two of us put things in perspective and I attribute that to the love Marny and Don displayed for each other.
