Sacred Heart Parish, March 24, 2018, 1 p.m.

My father and I met when he was barely 24. It was 1957 and he’d just returned from active duty in Korea.

The last leg of his long trip was a flight that no longer exists, from Moses Lake to Pasco. The plane was already fully booked but, the way he tells the story, he pled with the gate agent and she found a way to squeeze him aboard. Within an hour or so, he arrived at the Hartman home in east Pasco, much to the surprise of my mother, my sister, and my mother’s sister. It is a staple of our family story that dad’s surprise worked better than he expected, and some merry bedlam ensued, with screams and laughter. Of course, I have no recollection of this.

The first memory I have of the Coach is from Panama, when I was three or four. We were in his office at the Gamboa gym, right by the pool, and I remember him teaching me to tie shoelaces on my little boy sneakers. It was like magic. I was so proud. It was the first thing I remember doing that actually worked; the first useful thing I could do by myself. And I remember him smiling and laughing with delight at the joy I was experiencing.

Not long after he taught me to tie my shoes, he took me with him on the train. It was a Friday afternoon, and he was taking me to see a football game at Balboa Stadium. I remember the sounds as the train hissed and rattled beneath the thick canopy. I remember the coolness of the air and that jungle smell, like freshly cut cucumbers. I’d never heard a band play. I’d never smelled cigar smoke, nor seen a cheerleader, except of course for my mother. I’d never heard a crowd roar and I’d never seen anyone kick or pass a football. Funny how a trip with your father can change your life.

As the years passed, the Coach and I did other things together. He taught me photography, and we took trips with cameras into the swamps and jungles, looking for egrets and blue morphos. We had close encounters with snakes and at least one crocodile. For me this was all in the beginning, or near the beginning.

The end came on my birthday, this past December. I remember hearing his feet in the hallway very early in the morning from where I was sleeping, on the couch next to mom. I remember getting to my feet in the darkness and giving him a hug, and exchanging muffled laughs. A bit later I made him an omelet. As I was cooking his eggs I heard him bubbling with laughter in the living room. When I left later that morning we both chuckled when I said I’d be right back.

These memories are the bookends of how I knew him. What was in between seemed like the raw material for scripts for “The Wonder Years”—a two dimensional relationship with five layers of simple truths and baffling complications. Our family came of age during one of the most volatile and transformative periods in American history, when the world seemed to be morphing from black & white to psychedelic color. Doris Day to Janis Joplin, Mitch Miller to Mick Jagger, from the wreckage of 19th century French dredging equipment to Apollo 11, to Vietnam and Watergate and our own exodus from the tropics.

I remember the coolness of the air and that jungle smell, like freshly cut cucumbers. I’d never heard a band play. I’d never smelled cigar smoke, nor seen a cheerleader, except of course for my mother. I’d never heard a crowd roar and I’d never seen anyone kick or pass a football. Funny how a trip with your father can change your life.

My father, the Coach, was determined to get us through this with a whistle, a stopwatch, and carefully highlighted maps from Triple A. He much preferred things be well organized and planned, and with six children to herd through the world, there wasn’t a lot of room for dissent, or improvisation, or even relaxation.

The Coach was not the kind of guy to kick back and drink a few beers. He was restless and uncomfortable with leisure. Things always needed to get done or be put back in place. He didn’t want our lives to tip over. And so he did his best to keep us all upright and on the trail, so to speak, as we marched, swam and stumbled through time together.

My dad was wrong about some things, but I’ve never known anybody who cared more about what is right. In Korea he befriended another lieutenant who also did not drink or visit brothels. The two were nicknamed “the parsons” because they were such straight arrows.

In this way, I came to understand that he was lonelier than he wanted to be. His friendships mattered a great deal to him. But it was a strength of his that he wouldn’t compromise his principles in order to be one of the guys. To be succinct, he wanted to do right by God and be true to his values. And, of course, he was utterly devoted to our mother, Joan, his wife for 63 and a half years.

When I was 11 or 12 I had something—I can’t remember what—that I needed his help with. His and mom’s bedroom was one door down the hall and I heard him in there and just sort of barged in. I could tell right away that something was wrong. He was hurting, though not physically.

It was not at all like him to talk to me about things that were bothering him, but this time he did. He told me about what was happening in his Army reserve unit, about how members of the unit were working together to cheat on the testing they were required to complete that would be used to evaluate them for promotions.

He was not agonizing over whether he would participate. Anybody who really knew him would know there really was no decision for him to make. His values and ethics were baked into his Catholic upbringing. What he was in pain about was the effect this was having on his friendships, on his relationships with his peers.

My first impression was a sort of shock that my father, an adult, was struggling with a problem. Not just a scheduling problem but a real problem, you know, like the ones we adolescents had to struggle with.

Yet, his sharing his dilemma with me was an extraordinary gift. He’d shown me what he was made of, and he’d shown me his heart, about how much it mattered to him to be true to himself. It’s one thing to hear your parents instruct you on what’s right and wrong. It’s another to watch them actually live it, and endure the stress and pain that comes in walking the talk. From this I learned that adulthood isn’t just following the Triple A map to wherever you’re headed, it’s a life-long process of becoming who we really are.

The other great lesson was more show than tell. It was about how he engaged others.

To be sure, he was a devout Catholic. But he was very much a new Testament Christian, one guided by the golden rule of Matthew 7:12—to treat others as you would have them treat you.

At the core of this was his deep commitment to humility and fairness. He was not the kind of person who would argue with a Muslim, a Jew, or an atheist that there was only one way to heaven. He believed in equitable relationships built upon mutual respect. He wanted to play his small part in fashioning a world where people of all beliefs could come together, and work together, for the common good; for the love of their families and the betterment of their communities. That is who he was.

Our cousin, Janelle, met him at the Eugene Airport in 1968, carrying a big sign that said, “Uncle Don for President.” I think he would have made a fine President.

Finally, I need to add that dad got better as he got older. I don’t need to tell you how well he married. But what was really beautiful about his marriage, as time went on, is how his love for Joan deepened. Life has taught me, as it has taught pretty much every one who knows her, that my mother is the rarest of spirits. It was remarkable and beautiful to see the ways in which her spirit burnished his spirit, polished his edges, and made him an even more decent, vibrant and compassionate human being.

There’s a wonderful line in one of Leonard Cohen’s songs: “there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

I’m not here to paint a rainbow above dementia. It is heartbreaking in the way it seems to slowly dissolve our loved ones right before our eyes. Dad knew that it was upon him. He was alert to what it was taking from him and especially his organizing skills and memory.

And, yet, it presented him with another choice that would again define him, or at least reaffirm him. He had to choose between rage and love.

And, bless his heart, he found the strength to choose love. He really pushed himself to accept what he knew he was losing, and to embrace with love and humor all that was still left to him. And he did. Right up until his last day.

I’m blessed that he and I had completed our circle at the time he passed. There really was nothing more for us to say to each other, about how much we loved each other, and how tightly we were bound as father and son.

Among so many other things, I’m so grateful he taught me to swim. On my better days, in real life, I find myself swimming in his wake, with so much work still to do.

In my dreams of our afterlife I imagine the two of us swimming together, sometimes in the towering blue waves that thunder toward the beach at Waimea, sometimes in the swells that carve the sea stacks on the Oregon coast. We happily test our spirits and strokes against these riptides and currents. And then we laugh. And then we body surf home with barely a scratch, with still more stories to share.

I am, at this end, one of six of his children, all of whom are here today, all of whom revere him and miss him deeply. But we are so blessed to be united by our admiration and affection for him, and the desire that still lives in each of us, to carry his lessons and love forward in the world.

Amen.