Gary Peterson

My dear friend Gary Peterson died suddenly last Monday.  Barb and I traveled to Sacramento  to attend his memorial service Friday.    My thoughts...My eulogy

Myself, Gary, his brother Alan, and their father, Pete, 1967

Alaska fishing, 2016

.  Hosea 10:12     Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap the fruit of steadfast love.

Look around the room today.  It is clear that Gary sowed righteousness as the love for him is evident today. 

As you developed as a youth, I hope you too have some true and entrusted friends who share deep and life developing experiences and milestones with you.  Gary Peterson was one of those for me.  He is a true friend.  How can one be a deeper friend than one who comfortably roomed with you in a college dorm; probably a 10’ x 18’ room and when the bunks were pulled out, our sleepy heads were probably no more than 4 feet apart.  Our junior year, 1967-1968, was transforming.  Gary was deep into his business classes, me in my education classes.  Then there was the escalating war in Viet Nam and our possible draft into military service if we didn’t perform well in class and still there upon our graduation.   Martin Luther King Jr was murdered in April of 1968 and in June Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Police and antiwar protestors violently clashed outside of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that summer.

Throughout that school year Gary and I entered into new territory.  Gary knew early that Diane was the one and I had found my Barb.  As our junior year progressed, with the academic demands increasing, the Viet Nam war escalating, Gary and I plunged into the world of romantic love to a level that we had never known.  I can’t count the many nights, our heads just feet apart, we shared the new territory that we were entering with our new found loves and the question of our life after graduation, just a year or so away.

Gary had visited my home in Lacrosse, Washington and we’d hunted pheasants and lived our family life together there.  I had visited his home in Astoria and we had dug clams, baked them with his mother’s recipe, and eaten them together with his family that included his Aunt Gert, who shared my March 16 birthday although about 50 years my senior.  She shared many stories of her family history.  My family was Gary’s family.  His family was mine.

Experiences that junior year included the four of us driving down to the Centralia (about half way between Seattle and Portland, Oregon) area and visiting Gary’s dying grandmother in a convalescent center.  She, ravaged by diabetes and a double amputee, lay at death’s knell.  But Gary, tending to her lovingly, bid her comfort, attention and then goodbye, his last.  We then traveled out to her nearby home, overrun with weeds and forest, and in the spring sunshine, mowed and cleared away the debris, as if his grandmother would return.  She didn’t. 

As our lives changed that 67-68 school year, the profound relationships with what would be our life mates developed.  Gary and Diane were married the summer of 1968.  Barb and I first talked of marriage the night of their wedding. Over the next year, we often visited Gary and Diane in that small apartment over the garage at the Howard Morgan estate on nearby American Lake.  They were so happy.  Gary and Diane so projected a lifestyle that Barb and I wanted to emulate.  It took Barb and I another year as we were married the summer of 1969.

It’s been 50 years since that pivotal year of 1968.  The Petersons and the Aunes have traveled many different paths.  But no matter how those paths have gone off into many directions, they have many times come back to intersect.  Those intersections were grounded in shared experiences.  Those heartfelt discussions of our junior year, as our heads were so close in proximity and in common experience, as we developed from those shared experiences from faith and family to envisioned future, gave root in shared values that lead us to this day.  As it was in 1968, it still is today. 

Barb and I bought at RV in 2003, Gary and Diane soon thereafter.  We traveled together to Yosemite and Glacier and too few times into Gary’s old stomping grounds around Astoria.  The shared experiences were evident again in 2016 when Gary invited me to accompany him and his colleagues to the fish camp in Alaska.  Again, Gary and I slept in the same room, our heads just feet apart.  I brought home 100 lbs of salmon and halibut fillets, but I also brought home a whole lot more of memories.

So my dear friend and roommate, thank you for your insights.  Thank you for the shared experiences from PLU to Lacrosse, to Astoria, to Yosemite, to Glacier to Alaska.    Thank your sharing your faith and walking your walk.  Well done, good and faithful servant.  Well done. You have blessed me richly.

In Memoriam

Phyllis, my youngest sister, died last week.  I was asked to speak at the memorial.  I have enclosed my notes below.

My sisters Ann, Corinne who passed in 2016, and Phyllis, who passed last week.

Selected Verses from Isaiah 25 and 26

On this mountain (Zion), the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples: a banquet of aged wine, the best meats and the finest of wines.  And on this mountain, the LORD will destroy the shroud that envelops all peoples, that pall that covers all nations; for the LORD God will devour death and will wipe away the tears from every face. Thus says the LORD, “Your dead will live; their bodies will rise.You who grieve, awake and shout for joy!” 

Oh, it is hard to shout for joy today but as I acknowledge to those closest to her, David, Doug, Karen and your families, the grandchildren and great grandchildren, you can rest in that consolation.  The pall that caused Phyllis pain and discomfort all these years is gone.  She rests in the comfortable arms of the Lord.

I have been asked by the Stueckle family to speak to the early years.  Well, to begin with, there we 8 of us born to Gunder and Betty Aune.  Here are the birth years:

CORINNE    1930                            ANN    1932

PHYLLIS   1935                               BUD    1937

GENE 1940                                        JOHN   1941

NORM   1947                                   DWIGHT 1954         

If you do the math you can deduce that our mother gave birth for 24 years.  And all 10 of us lived in a small 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house,  I guess 1000 to 1200 square feet, located on the Hay road.  There was also a bunkhouse for “the boys” as they got older, that was approximately 200 sq feet, a sink and shower but no bathroom.  But in the throngs of winter, and in those early years, it was Mom and Dad in one bedroom, the 3 girls in a double bed in another bedroom, and 4 boys in bunk beds and a double bed in a “lean to” bedroom that barely had room to walk between the beds.  That would leave one infant in a crib somewhere.  With no slight intended toward our Catholic and Mormon friends, acquaintances of mine in Puyallup where I now live, on learning of my many siblings, have asked, “Catholic?  Mormon?”    My reply has been, “No, just passionate Protestants.”

Now some were gone to college (ie Corrine left for PLU just after I was born), but the house was extremely crowded.  As a result we all spent a lot of time outdoors, Phyl, no exception.  I have to admit I have few memories of Phyl when I was a youngster.  She was 12 when I was born so my memories of her is her going off to PLU, then LBI (Lutheran Bible Institute, then in Issaquah)  She came home in 1954 to help Mom.  Our dad had already had a debilitating heart attack, but not debilitating in a way as our youngest, Dwight was born that year.  Phyl helped with the care of Dwight, helped mom, who had her own health challenges, and renewed her acquaintance with Dave.  They were married in 1955.

But before those years, the rest of my older siblings have memories that they shared with me:

Ann shares that Phyl loved the outdoors and spent a lot of time riding horse and gardening.  I’m sure each of you children and grandchildren are not surprised at that.  Phyl also enjoyed going down to the creek to gather tadpoles in the late spring.  She’d keep them in a glass jar, feeding them soda crackers until they began to form as frogs.   Then she’s let them go, we think.  Mom often dressed Phyl and Ann in similar clothes and often people would get them mixed up.  Ann also shares to this day that people will see her and greet her with “Hi Phyl.”  Ann is also thankful for the many times that Dave and Phyl chauffeured her around in recent years, taking Ann to many family and community events.

Bud shares that he rescued Phyl at least twice.  Once, on the place they lived before I was born, Phyl and Bud went into the chicken house and let the door slam behind them.  The outside latch fell as it slammed and the door was locked.  The window and chicken portal to the outside pen too small for Bud to get his youngster body through, They stayed with the chickens for “a long time” yelling for help until Dad did hear them and rescued them.  The other rescue occurred again in the chicken house, this time on the farm where I grew up.  The family was sitting down to dinner, the entire group as was the custom, and mom asked, “Where’s Phyl?”  Bud went out and found Phyl in the chicken house.  Now Phyl had been instructed by Dad how to skillfully but firmly extricate the hens from the nest so as to access the eggs.  Well, apparently Phyl had encountered a uncooperative hen whose habit was to peck at those trying to retrieve her eggs.  In Phyl’s persistence she did battle with the hen for perhaps an hour.  When Bud entered the chicken house he found Phyl, armed with a stick.  No one remember how the situation was resolved but I can imagine the hen did not win.

Gene has fond memories of how Phyl, when our mother needed constant assistance in the mid 1980’s and was living with Gene and Lola, Phyl was the first one to come to Gene and Lola’s aide when they needed to go out.  Gene said Phyl, who answered every beckon call, was extremely helpful.  Gene also recalled recently sitting in the Lacrosse Tavern having dinner with Lola (the only place in Lacrosse to eat at that time) and see Phyl walk in.  Gene shares that eating dinner with Dave and Phyl under large posters of young  ladies holding a can of beer  was quite unnerving.

John shares that the boys learned to drive at a young age.  I remember driving a wheat truck at age 12 after learning to drive the Jeep at 10.  The “boys” were probably more prone to drive at a young age.  The “girls” though not so.  When Phyl was 16 her job was to take the harvest lunch over to the Miller place, land that Dad farmed a few miles from the house.  The “boys” went along in the old pickup and, Phyl, still mastering the 3 speed standard stick shift on the column, stopped at the bottom of the Carlson hill, putting it in low so she didn’t have shift half way up the hill.  The “boys” teased Phyl unmercifully.  Phyl like to experiment with cooking.  She once made a scratch recipe of brownies with peppermint candy and it didn’t set.  Since it was still tasty and sweet, the solution was to pour it over ice cream. The boys were unmerciful and going so far as to spread the brownies all over their elbows and naming the concoction “elbow grease.”

In all these situations, and many more, there is the common theme of family and sometime unmercifully, but still honest and unwavering love.

The most vivid example of this is perhaps the most popular of Bible verses, John 3:16.   “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.”  What a sacrifice.  We all try the best we can to extend our love.  We all love in our own way, to the best of our ability.  Sometimes we fail.  Some times our efforts are misconstrued.  Phyl’s efforts to love are extremely evident.  And today I speak mainly to David, Doug, Karen, and your loved ones.   Our loved one, who has now passed from this stage of life, has left us a legacy of love, something that should warm your life and carry you forward.  She carried forth a life rooted in the words and actions of our dear Jesus Christ.  She led a life of sacrifices but a life full, meaningful and enriching.

I leave you one more thought

From: I Thessalonians 4

Now we would not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, regarding those who have died; so that you may grieve, but not as those who have no hope.  For we believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God take to heaven those who have died, believing in Jesus.

May God comfort and even bless the Stueckle family in their grieving.  And may their grieving rest in the comfort of a life lived in faith and love.