MarketingSteph

Was.

I think the biggest struggle over these last few weeks, for all of us, has been coming to grips with that word. Having to tell people, “My father was…” For my sister, he was always her “highly logical father” and the man that, at 22, chose her when he didn’t have to. Dad flew in Navy S-3s and for my brother, the clone, he was always the man that “landed planes on aircraft carriers.” My earliest memory of Dad is him coming in the door in Virginia Beach in his brown Navy uniform and me running up to jump in his arms - for me, he was always “Dad”.

To many in this place he was a friend. He was a co-worker. He was a neighbor, an uncle, a brother, a grandfather, a father and a husband. He was a proud, gun toting Texan (even though he was born in California). He was a yellow Nissan 350Z mid-life crisis kinda guy. He was a man that never stopped studying.

As I thought back, I remember him always reading something, always practicing something - whether it was a magic trick to carry on the tradition of card tricks that his father passed down or studying the ins and outs of F stops for the Sun City Photography Club.

Even more recently, despite the fact that we grew up with him playing the organ, he started learning piano. But he wasn’t satisfied with just normal piano; no, he needed to learn the version that would let him sit down in a room and just start playing Johnny Be Good or Somewhere Over the Rainbow as if he knew it by heart.

He was a wealth of knowledge. I remember as a young high school kid, CJ would have friends over to play games and they would sit in the dining room laughing and discussing different topics. Every time they were over, Dad would sit quietly in his recliner in the living room watching the news or reading a book. 

And once in a while, this quiet man, in the other room, would poke up his head and interject some morsel into the conversation coming from those college guys.

I don’t remember the morsels, but I do remember, every time, the guys in that room would look at my brother and say, “man your Dad is smart.” 

Unfortunately, that recognition also meant that when we asked him to join us for a game of Risk or any other strategy game, he had six or seven college guys teamed up against him because we all knew we needed to knock him out first if we wanted a chance at winning.

It was Steph who first cracked the code of actually talking to Dad. All through our formative years, we would ask Dad how he was doing, or how his day was, or how he was feeling, and his response would be the same – I’m good. Or it’s good. But Steph figured out the puzzle: just ask him how something works. If you asked him how something worked, he would launch into 20 or 30 minutes of explanation; it didn’t matter what the topic was. We all got in on it and would ask just to hear him talk. Eventually he caught on, but he didn’t stop, he embraced his new role of wisest sage on the planet and those explanations began to start with a little chuckle because he knew what we were doing, and he loved it.

He was a man who, quite literally, always had a trick up his sleeve or in his pocket. Just a few days ago, Mom and I were going through one of the closets where his jackets were. Three jackets, hanging, haven’t been worn in probably eight months - a deck of cards in a pocket of every one of them. He loved showing tricks to us growing up and then to his grandchildren as they came along. Whether it was pushing coins through his phone or grabbing lights off the Christmas tree that made all of us freak out a little. He liked amazing people.

He was a Disney enthusiast. Loved everything Disney, the wonder, the magic, the joy it gave all of us. And so, it was fitting that this summer, on what would end up being his last trip to Disney World, he would be honored as the veteran of the day at the Magic Kingdom. When they asked him if he would represent the Navy, we all thought, “Ok. It’ll be Dad and then someone from the Air Force, the Coast Guard, Army, and Marines.” But no, it was just my father, helping retrieve the flag, standing, in the middle of the square on Main Street with a band in front of him and a quartet serenading him. And then afterwards every cast member walking past, shaking his hand and thanking him for his service. It was magical.

But as I pondered all these things, remembered who my father was, I started to get angry. Not the whole third stage of grief angry, but angry about the fact that he lived for 70 years, he accomplished so much, and now is relegated to the past; to a “was.”

So, I asked myself, “If I don’t want to keep him in the past, how do I keep him in the present?” And the answer is to stop looking at what was, and recognize what is. What is his legacy?

And the answer to that is all of you and all of us. His legacy is the part of you that was touched by his life. Maybe he made you laugh and you carry on his legacy by making others laugh because this guy named Bob brought a smile to your face when you needed it. Maybe he was your boss or your co-worker and you realize that he did it right, so you carry that forward into how you treat your co-workers or employees. Maybe he opened your eyes to the joy of photography so every time you take a picture you know a little part of that is something you learned from him.

For us, his family, his legacy is 48 years of marriage and love to my Mom. She would probably not want me to tell you, but I will, it wasn’t always pretty, it wasn’t always happy, but then, any of us that have walked through love know that it is never always pretty or happy. But it was real, and even when we as kids had questions they didn’t.

Mom would probably tell you it was survival or stubbornness. But I would tell you it was faithfulness, faithfulness to honor a commitment and vows that said “for richer or poorer, through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.” I can tell you they lived out all of those commitments, even through the last few weeks as mom stayed by his side every day and every night he was in that hospital until he breathed his last breath. She is his legacy of faithfulness.

His legacy is his children.

Steph who has conquered cities across the globe and embraces the spirit of adventure. The same spirit of adventure that led Dad into the Navy led her to New York, Orlando, and Austin. She’s backpacked Europe, driven convertibles down the coast of Hawaii (like ya do) and conquered rock climbing, which if I’m being honest, still blows me away.

Steph will always be his chosen daughter and for that she will always be fiercely protective of our family. She is his legacy of love.

CJ will forever be “the clone.” If you ever wanted to see the closest example of a father who was a best friend, you just needed to watch the two of them together. They shared a love of history, reading, comedy, you name it and they had probably discussed it. I always joke that dad had two jobs in his lifetime, the Navy and Boeing, for 20 plus years each. CJ isn’t too far off, somehow segueing newspaper publishing to ranch hospitality and history. He’s closing in on a decade or two.

If you asked any of us in college who was going to wind up working for the Ranch, I don’t think any of us would have said CJ, but he has embraced it and excels at it. I don’t know how many conversations he and dad had about management and decisions that CJ was facing, whether he was asking for advice or just telling dad what was going on, but I imagine they were some great talks. CJ is the walking continuation of Dad’s legacy of hard work.

And me, the baby. I am the one that gave Mom and Dad grandchildren. I remember the day I told my parents and Grandmom that I was going to propose to Christina.

For those that don’t know, our older two boys came pre-assembled, and Dad and Grandmom both told me “You love those boys like they are your own, because they deserve to be loved no differently than anyone else.” And to the best of my ability, I’ve done that. There are no “stepchildren” in our family. There are our three boys, and Dad loved each of them with the embodiment of that love that we are all family.

Every time I would call to chat, he would ask how Matthew Isaiah was doing, and any time I would sound frustrated about a decision, or an attitude, Dad was quick to remind me that I, too, apparently, made many frustrating decisions in my time and I turned out ok. He was so proud of Philip for joining the Navy and carrying on the legacy for our family and Glen’s, and so happy he got to talk to him one last time. And he was always excited to talk to Micah because Micah always made him laugh with his quirky comments and his “actuallys.” We are Dad’s legacy of family.

And through all of that, there is one more legacy that I think Dad would want us to leave this place understanding. And that is his legacy of faith.

When I say my father was the smartest man I know, I mean it. When I told him I was applying for my first job as a youth minister - I was 19 and had no formal training - my father, who I thought just taught Sunday school every Sunday, proceeded to ask me question after question about everything from eschatology to post tribulation doctrine to the sanctification of believers. I had no idea what he was talking about. I realized, years later, that he didn’t just teach Sunday school, he studied the Bible. He studied and learned everything he could to make his faith as strong as it could be. And so, I want to end with that in mind.

We ask in times like this, “Why? Why did a good man have to die?” “Why did my father have to die?” “Why, when I prayed and asked God for healing, did it not come?” I can’t answer all those questions, but scripture can answer some -

Genesis 2:17 God tells Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil “for in the day that eat of it you shall surely die.”

One chapter later in Genesis 3:19, after Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit they were not supposed to, God tells Adam, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

And now, here today, thousands of years later, we stand in this place still experiencing the repercussions of that moment. Dad didn’t die just because medicine failed, or some doctor or nurse somewhere messed up. Dad died because sin entered this world in the garden and ever since then it has been appointed unto man once to die. We are all going to face this moment. We are all going to face the end of life here on this earth.

I don’t claim to understand all of it. I don’t have all of the answers, but I do have hope.

The hope that we can carry, the truth and the legacy that my father carried, is that Adam isn’t the end of the story. The Bible doesn’t end in Genesis, it’s just getting started. For, you see, where death entered the earth through sin, so also did eternal life enter through Jesus Christ.

John 3:16 says it better than any other – God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

1 Corinthians 15:21-22 tells us – For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Our bodies are going to die. But we don’t have to die an eternal death. You may sit here today and say, “oh I don’t believe in that.” And that’s for you to believe or not. All I can say is one of us is wrong. If I’m wrong, I wind up in the ground and eventually become worm food. If you’re wrong, you spend the rest of eternity separated from the love of Christ. Please don’t leave here today with that as your future.

I am sad, rightfully so because my father is no longer here on this earth. For years to come there will be no more Christmases, no more birthdays, no more conversations and no more trips. But I can still rejoice because I know where my father put his faith. I know that he gave his life to Christ and that even now he is in heaven rejoicing before the throne and one day I will get to see him and run into his arms and hug him again!

Isaiah 25:1, 8-9 – O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure. …. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces… It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, that He might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”

Don’t let your legacy be a legacy of a choice never made. God offers eternal life, and He offers it freely. My Dad made that choice, to choose eternity. That is part of his legacy.

Robert Jerome Maher – passed from this life into eternity on October 14th, 2022. He leaves behind a legacy of faithfulness, love, hard work, family and faith. I encourage you to live a life worthy of that legacy.

You had the blessing and the joy to be touched by this man for however long or however briefly you knew him. If you only know of him through one of us, you are still being touched by that legacy. Live a life that honors him. Choose love, choose faithfulness, hard work, family. Choose eternity.

And to Dad, our hero, our father, our friend, I say well done, good and faithful servant. You’ve finished the race. You’ve completed your tour.

Fair winds and Following Seas.