Footsteps: A Remembrance

My father’s name was Jackson. Although my grandma loved the name Jack, Grandpa insisted on adding the “son” on the end so there would be no mistaking Dad’s moniker as a nickname for John. So, Jackson Russell Day was born on February 24 in the year of our Lord 1921 in the wilderness of Oregon near a little town named Prineville. Over the course of almost 99 years on the face of this earth, Dad made a path that stretched from that wild and lonely homestead in Oregon to Grand Rapids, Michigan where he spent most of his life. It was a rich, long and wonderfully adventurous journey. And when he passed I could honestly say that for the first seventy-some years of my life here on this earth, I never faced one day of my own journey without knowing that Dad was there.

He was a constant guide, like a compass pointing to true North. Not only was he a great example to follow, but he was also a mentor and a path-maker. Although it’s a shock to lose a loved one no matter how prepared you are, I didn’t feel anchor-less when Dad passed. It was more like I was still tethered to the path he had left behind. In fact, as I look back now—close to seven years after his passing—I see an amazing convergence between the steps Dad pioneered during his lengthy journey and the steps I have taken during my own lifetime. 

Dad was a “Jack of all trades” (Grandma would have loved that line). The list of his many roles, occupations and pastimes is an amazingly long list: son, brother, husband, father, uncle, brother-in-law, grandfather, great-grandfather. He was a student, debater, orator, director/producer, factory worker, steamfitter, welder, Naval enlistee, college student, teacher, counselor, innovator, basketball announcer, welding instructor, summer school teacher, Sunday school teacher, elder, administrator, and board president. 

My own list is much shorter, but it mirrors the path that Dad stepped off before me. Dad and I graduated together: he from Calvin College with a teaching degree after enrolling through the GI bill following his stint in the Navy during WWII; I from Kindergarten that same spring. Sixteen years later I graduated from that same institution and became a high school teacher, teaching some of the same classes that he had taught while he was at Grand Rapids Christian High. My teaching career included becoming a drama director like my father had been, directing eighty plays and musicals during my forty-one year career. Growing up, Thanksgiving week was always centered around the Christian High senior play which was presented on Thanksgiving night. Dad directed the senior play for many years and I actually got to act in one of those productions my senior year. 

Jackson Russell Day loved to use his voice. With the influence of one of his high school teachers, Dad got very involved in forensics and debate during his high school years. He was selected to give the graduation oration as he graduated from Central High. He used his voice not only in teaching: he was the voice behind the microphone at Christian High’s basketball games for years, and he read scripture at church services. 

But I have to say that my favorite memory of Dad’s voice has to be sitting on his lap as a kid listening to him tell stories, with no book in his hand, using his amazing voice to embody every character in the story. To this day I have on my phone one of Dad’s voice mails that he left as he made one of his “every Saturday morning” phone calls that always started with “Heyyyy, Tom.” That’s one voicemail I will never erase. This voice thing is a path into which I have tried to step. As my teaching career began to focus on the teaching of literature I started reading various passages aloud, trying to bring what we were studying to life. My students would generously give my reading aloud positive reviews. In fact, as I was nearing retirement, they urged me to get into voice acting. I took their recommendations to heart and have recorded a few audio books along with other voice over projects. And, like Dad, I love reading scripture at our church services. 

Besides being a “Jack of all trades”, Dad was definitely a “Mr. Fixit”. And this is where our paths diverge. My wife is more of a MacGyver than I will ever be. But there was nothing Dad couldn’t tackle. He could fix anything that was broken or build anything that he thought needed to be built. I remember when I was in high school Dad and a couple of his colleagues decided to build a pool table for each of their families. That pool table was awesome. The hours my two brothers and I spent around that table are too numerous to count. A couple of years later Dad and our pastor at 12th Street decided to build a sailboat for each family. The boat was called a “Pelican”, and it was as ugly as an old bathtub. But whenever I took the tiller in my hand, sailing around Camp Lake, I felt like I was leaving the world in my wake. 

Dad’s teaching career at Christian High lasted 25 years. Then, as sometimes school politics dictate, he left that career and began another. Still teaching, but this time it was welding, a skill he had picked up while in the Navy. So he finished his teaching career heading up the welding program at Grand Rapids Junior College, serving students who were interested in entering the trades. Dad’s pathfinding was still making an impact on me. Not every career path is a straight line. 

Even in his later years, Dad blazed a trail for me to follow. It was in the process of grieving that he showed me the way. We lost Mom (Grandma Tookie to my children) in 1995. I watched him as we shared this common and deep loss: Dad lost his wife of 54 years, and I lost my mother. And as my mom entered hospice a few days before she passed away, my own dear wife, Pamela Joy, was engaged in her own battle for life as she fought the breast cancer that had invaded her body. Four short years later I was walking in the same steps my father had so recently taken. How do you go on when you have lost the love of your life?

You take your next breath, you take your next step, you get up and try to live well one more day. And then, over a casual game of cribbage, you meet someone that God had planned all along for you to spend the rest of your days on earth with. Dad met dear Lois. They married and spent the next nearly twenty years making each other happy. I learned that sometimes God brings a beautiful second chance for happiness into a person’s life. Even though I honestly had some weird mixed feelings about Dad getting married again as I sat in the chapel where the ceremony took place (that’s NOT my Mom!), I know now that God, through Dad and Lois, was preparing me for my own experience of remarriage that God in His loving Providence was making ready. 

One picture of the happiness that Dad and Lois were blessed with stands etched in my memory. They were leaving the halls of the school where I taught, having come to Chicago to sit in the audience of one of the plays I had directed. The curtain came down, the parents and friends of cast and crew mingled onstage and people were starting to head for home. Dad and Lois headed for the door as well, ready to make that long drive home, and Dad grabbed Lois’ hand as they walked out the door. Two lovebirds. A picture of love and happiness. I’m so grateful for that vivid picture. And I am so grateful for my dearest Deborah who came into my life through an amazing blind date set up by a caring and compassionate colleague. God had been working behind the scenes through this thoughtful friend for many weeks. Deborah and I, Lord willing, will celebrate 25 years of marriage later this fall. 

So, Dad, how do I summarize your wonderful, long, richly adventurous life? I’m grateful for the moments that still live in my memory. I’m even more grateful for the steps that you took before me that set a path so worthy of following. To summarize? Any orator worth his salt knows that you need to have a good finish so I will try to live up to that here, Dad. We shared a passion for the theatre and for a well-written line. And we both agreed that Shakespeare had a pretty good way with words. 

As I was walking down this path of remembrance, a particular line from Julius Caesar kept scrolling at the bottom of my mind’s screen: 

“His life was gentle; and the elements 
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up 
And say to all the World, This was a man!”