editor’s note: There were so many of you who wanted to be there for Dad’s memorial today; but time and distance made it understandably tough. I thought I’d get you the adapted notes of my eulogy for him. Thanks so much for your love and support!

Let me begin my time with a small vignette into the personality of my dad:

April, 2002 over Easter brunch at the Clinton Inn with Bob and Mabel; and I tell them that after some intense personal work which included a mission trip to India, I am leaving a successful career in the auto industry to pursue a life of ministry. My father, ever the pragmatist, said, “Finally – someone to do the funerals for free!”

Not sure if this particular moment qualifies, but we’ll go with it…

Pragmatic with a wry sense of humor – that was Bob – but still connected to the God I intended to pursue with my whole life. And I know he supported me in that career change. How?

I remember sitting in silence with him in this very sanctuary – 5-6 rows back there to the left – only a few months earlier as the nation grieved the Twin Towers’ fall. It was something he initiated with me and wanted deeply.

Bob lived out his embrace of the mystery of God more quietly – with action more than words.

Who was Bob Cook? You look up “regular guy” in the dictionary and you would see his picture. It feels like almost a derisive term in the celebrity culture we find ourselves in, but I suggest we reclaim it. I think I would get general agreement that the world needs more Bob Cooks and fewer Kardashians. 

He knew adversity – loved his family well – served his community – and he worked. Hard. 

His fingerprints and legacy are all over Willow Road, Saline Township and the greater community, and will be long after his name is forgotten.

But his first priority: Mabel.

For years – from the new kitchen to woo her out of the suburban life back to the land of her childhood to the milk house from the farm next door that he repurposed to her potting shed – if Mabel had a dream, Bob would make it happen. It was a love affair of respect and mutual service we all got the privilege of witnessing for fifty plus years.

And when it all went sideways on that hot summer day in 2002, Bob set aside a well-deserved retirement and got in up to his elbows serving her – even when she had little of earthly value that she could give back.

And in witnessing the steely beauty of those hard six years, I have two things to thank him for:

1. Wooing my wife Jocelyn – because she saw how Bob had modeled true devotion in his care for Mabel. (She also rooted for him over me in our epic cribbage games – so I’m pretty sure winning her heart was a team effort)
2. Teaching me more about the sacrificial love of Christ than all of the middle aged white male professors ever taught me in four years of seminary

That kind of love and service in action is something he had been repeatedly speaking into me, especially when he would tell this sometimes slovenly teenager:

Get up. Get productive. Do good. Serve others. 

(get out of my chair and go mow the lawn)

I remember many times I hacked him off (mostly stupid stuff I did that I’ll not get into); but the one that really sticks in my mind was a time in early high school when I was doubting my intelligence and ability to have a fulfilling career. He got pissed. He seriously put me in my place – and that place was higher than I could have imagined on my own.

And the echoes of that exchange found themselves in just about every other conversation I ever had with him.

So – I have to share something from the Bible (gotta earn the honorarium I’m not getting). I’m going to read a little bit from a translation of Paul’s letter to the Philippians – but I defy you to tell me how this doesn’t fit our guy to a tee:

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

Philippians 2:1-4

What made Bob Cook such a likable guy?

• He had a heart – and he cared
• He was agreeable – but still willing to make the tough call when the need arose
• He loved (very, very well)
• He was a friend – I can’t count how many classmates of mine and Lauren’s and Lisa’s said how much they wanted to be adopted by Bob and Mabel
• He had no desire for the spotlight and didn’t suffer ladder climbing bosses well (I only got a glimpse of that toward the end of his career)

And ultimately, he put himself aside and let go of any advantage he had and forgot himself long enough to help others.

As a result, it never took very long for a stranger to get to know and rely on him as a person of peace.

He came out of circumstances in his childhood that could have wooed him into choices that would have elevated him at the expense of others:

• Born in the deprivation of the Great Depression
• Losing his father at nine years old
• All the attendant uncertainty of a world going to the 2^nd“war to end all…”

Instead, he chose differently every time:

• At the apex of his career potential, he made the decision to let go of stratospheric business success to give his family an environment where they would truly thrive
• After we lost Mabel, he didn’t medicate the ache of her loss, but gathered marvelous and life-giving friends (one especially in his special friend, Sue) and settled into “elder statesmanship”
• He’s the only veteran I have ever known who specifically asked notto have an honor guard
• And in the truest display of integrity and humility, I was told of a conversation he had with Sue at the sunset of his life wondering if he had been the father he aspired to be. (unqualified YES)

We had to do a lot of hard, hard things over the last year…

• Sell the farm
• Move him out of his community and close to Jocelyn and I
• Lovingly deal with the indignities that come with advanced age 
• And finally make the decision not to go to the hospital anymore…

Then at 5:30am – November 17^th– I got the call that things had really gone sideways for him and hospice was going to give him the meds to keep him comfortable.

I was there 15 minutes later; and as I walked into the bedroom of his apartment, I saw him in the scary distress as his soul started letting go of this reality and more fully embracing the Larger Reality.

But he looked at me kneeling next to him, looked at the aide next to him, and jamming his thumb at me, said, “That’s my boy.”

It was the last intelligible thing I heard him say…

It’s the badge of honor I will take with me and do my best to live up to for the rest of my life.

There is a keen responsibility that comes with being “Bob Cook’s Boy”, and it’s a real stinger that I don’t have him here to remind me of what that means.

But I cling to the possibility that he may be MORE present with us than he ever was when he walked the good ground of Saline Township.

And in a strange way, I can still hear him among the ancestral cloud of witnesses:

Get up. Get productive. Do good. Serve others. 

(and, yes, stay out of my chair)

Thanks so much for being here today…