A Eulogy for Pha

Before the funeral in Pinehurst

All four of the kids talked about Pha at the funeral in Pinehurst on 2/18, then again here in Georgetown last Saturday.  Mine is below:

What a bunch.  That’s what himself would say looking out on this group today.

God gave us a lot of grace at the end.  No pain, and a steady but not too long trip out.  He always liked the adventure, and now he’s on the ultimate adventure.  He’s with Denzil & Polly and his brothers, Keeley, Val, Kevin and Elizabeth, and playing Russian bank with Liza.

What are we going to do when any of us feel sick and want the wisest medical phone consult imaginable?  And if his answer was ever that you needed to go see a doctor, you knew you were in trouble.

The Great Pha.  That’s Pha spelled “P” “H” “A”.  Muv and Pha evolved as simplifications of the more formal Mother and Father strictly required in the family a generation earlier.  I remember it as being coined during the trip my father took with my high school class to Williamsburg where we added “THE” and “GREAT”.  He seemed to enjoy that so much that it stuck.

He’ll want us all to “Have a Nice Navy Day”, even today.  He certainly got to see the world when he left Georgetown to join the Navy.  His time in KY clearly had a strong impact at least on me - I’m back on the land we grew up on together.

There are too many stories to count.  One of my favorites was the baseball pickup games - driving through Georgetown and kids jumping in the back of the station wagon.  If you didn’t run out a grounder, it was two outs.  After one of the games, we had a very special treat and went to Burger Queen (I’m not going to sing the song, but yes Burger QUEEN was the first fast food restaurant in Georgetown).  Always short of cash, we had to pose mustard as cheese on the burger, and water as a flat Sprite.

After Sophia and I were 12+, sometimes we would get put out of the car before the family checked into a hotel.  We would just wander the halls until we found everybody.  “How old are we at this place?”

He loved his grandchildren, but never really got past his aversion to dirty diapers.  At 1 ½, Eleanor was staying with Grandmother and Grandfather at the townhouse that we called the squish-o-plex in Bethesda, MD while MA & I were gone, Eleanor made poo-poo for papa.  As a doctor, I guess himself couldn’t ignore it, so he put her in the car, drove both of them down to the school where Alice was teaching.  He held Eleanor up so Muv could see her through the window of her classroom and stop class to change the diaper.  Blood and guts wouldn’t get to him, but he didn’t like diapers.

His change of command from Jacksonville was in June of 1995.  Pha was able to make the party a birthday for Caroline as well as his celebration.  He even had it say happy birthday on the cake.  He was a great grandfather.

During the last few months especially, his favorite stories were about times he had told people things he thought they needed to hear that they weren’t necessarily interested in hearing.  While looking through memorabilia, he found a box of letters both to him and from him.  You have never heard the phrase “boy I write well” so often in an eight hour day in your life.

TGP put a lot of stock in the Myers Briggs test.  He’s an ENFP.  Listen to the description that he saved of that personality type:

ENFPs are warm, enthusiastic people, typically very bright and full of potential. They live in the world of possibilities, and can become very passionate and excited about things. Their enthusiasm lends them the ability to inspire and motivate others, more so than we see in other types. They can talk their way in or out of anything. They love life, seeing it as a special gift, and strive to make the most out of it.

He certainly made the most of his.

Mary Anne gave him a money clip that said: “With Money in your pocket, you are wise and handsome and you sing well too.”  That’s my father.

The tray he gave Muv for their 51st anniversary really says it all:

LI Annos We made beautiful things together We traveled the world What a joy, Amen

Children, music, laughter and theater

I’ve been married to my wonderful wife for over 28 years, and Pha gets some of the credit.  When he was exploring leaving private practice to join the Navy in 1980, he & Muv had dinner with the Hortons and their 17 year old daughter Mary Anne.  She had recently been introduced to some other Navy brat, so she involuntarily made an unenthusiastic face when Pha told her that he had a son about her age.  He took note of her reaction and tried to make it seem better for her.  He told her, “Don’t worry, you’ll like him.  He’s a blind, balding albino paraplegic”.  She laughed.

The Great Pha did love theater.  We saw him perform in his last play last September here in Pinehurst where he played an old man that fell in love with a woman, played by mother.  He wore his eyepatch and loved the playing that role.  Much of their theater experience in the 70s was at Playhouse in the Park in Cincinnati, with Pha and Muv in the audience.  The drive up from Georgetown was straight up 75, over the bridge then an interesting fly-over ramp that still exists to take the car up to the top of Mt. Adams.  He never turned off the cruise control.  Muv sucked in her breath so hard that we called it cleaning her teeth.  But he didn’t slow down his whole life, and he wasn’t about to let a curved ramp slow him down.

He somehow always made his optimistic outlook seem right to people.  We were blessed to know him, to love him and to be loved by him.