funeral Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Ramblin' with Roger

Rev. Robert Pennock (1926 – 2019)

The funeral of Robert Pennock will be on Saturday, February 16 at our old stomping grounds, Trinity UMC.

Bob Pennock The third funeral I will sing at this calendar year is for the Rev. Robert Pennock.

At the FOCUS churches service in early February, I happened to be sitting behind Nancy, an alto at Trinity United Methodist Church in Albany. I used to sing with Nancy there until 2000 and “the troubles.”

Nancy enjoyed my familiar voice behind her. It prompted me to say that back in the 1990s, that Trinity choir was really good. And Bob Pennock was a large part of that.

I generally sat near Bob in the choir loft. When I joined the ensemble in early 1983, my choir singing skills were rusty. As the bass soloist and section leader, he was quite helpful in getting me on track.

He and his wife Holly often hosted choir functions at their home. I watched his younger kids, David and Jessica, grow up in the church.

There was a move at Trinity in 1997 or early 1998 to consider changing the organizational structure of Trinity. It was allowed by the United Methodist governing body. But it was Bob who rightly said, “Where are the checks and balances?” The proposed plan, it seemed, gave too much power to the pastor.

As a minister ordained the year I was born, he immediately recognized the potential for usurpation of congregational authority. He voiced what I, who had served as chair of the Administrative Board, had only been thinking.

Someone said, “Give [the new structure] a chance,” and it was passed. Just as predicted by Bob, the pastor achieved more control without accountability, which led to my departure and that of others less than three years later.

I would see Bob only sporadically after that, including at least twice at a small rural church he served as pastor in the early 2000s.

The funeral of Robert Pennock will be on Saturday, February 16 at our old stomping grounds, Trinity UMC. We will sing two John Rutter pieces, The Lord is My Shepherd from the Requiem, and The Lord Bless You and Keep You, music I first learned while I was singing with Bob and Holly.

Cousin Donald Yates (1943-2016)

Donald Yates was my late mother’s first cousin. As I explained when his brother Robert died last year, they, their late older brother Raymond (d. 1978), and their older sister Frances were my mother’s closest relatives, though Raymond, the oldest, was a decade and a day younger than Mom.

They lived in Binghamton until their dad Ernie died suddenly in 1954, when Charlotte and the kids moved to St. Albans, Queens in New York City. The Greens would go down and the Yates would come up at least annually. Their kids, including Don’s’s kids Donnie and Tanya, were the closest relatives my siblings and I had, even though they were a decade or more younger than us.

My late father arranged the flowers for Donald’s wedding to his first wife, Carole – who I saw at the funeral – as he did for Robert and Audrey back in the 1960s.

I’d see Don only occasionally in the past couple of decades, always with Robert, but they would always be memorable. My wedding in 1999, the birth of my child in 2004, a few mini-family gatherings in Binghamton (one definitely in 2006), and Thanksgiving 2013 at the home of their niece Anne outside New York City. They were always generous with their resources – my wife specifically recalls their generous monetary gift after the Daughter was born.

The last time I saw Donald was at his brother Robert’s funeral. My trek to Donald’s funeral was nearly a carbon copy – early train to NYC, the E subway out to Queens, then local bus (Q4) to the funeral home where I spoke, open casket, the trek to the cemetery in Long Island, trip back to Jamaica, Queens for a 2 p.m. repast that was closer to 3 p.m., and a train back north. The repetition does NOT make it easier.

There WAS one significant difference, though. At the cemetery with Robert, there was just the ceremonial burying. At this service, there was a drape covering a pile of dirt, and after we all flung flowers on the casket, it was lowered, and a backhoe that was nearby was driven over to the gravesite and filled the hole with dirt. I had heard of such things, but I had never actually seen it happen in the dozens of burials I’ve attended.

The winter of my discontent

Friday the 13th, my lovely bride got up at 4 a.m. and drove me to the train station.

It’s cold, it’s snowy, but it’s also winter in upstate New York, so I’m not one to complain. (I save my vexation about the weather for the summer.)

So the stuff outside is not specifically bothering me, though if I were to, it would sound like The Grounds for Violence – Key of Bart. People who don’t shovel their walkways, ESPECIALLY at the corners, and make it difficult to walk; now THEY really bug me.

I did fall down outside recently, trudging through the white stuff, and had a difficult time getting up. You’d think the snow would be more forgiving, but I guess not when it’s 10F/-12C. Landing in it managed to bang up both shoulders, my left knee, and my right thigh; my back and ribs are hurting, too.

This is Black History Month and, at church, I’d somehow gotten myself involved with not only the adult education for February but most of January as well. The annual luncheon process became more complicated by ANOTHER event in February at church.

Because the calendar fell as it did, I was unable to go to the annual Midwinter’s gathering in my college town area, which I often find restorative, because it clashed with RESPONSIBILITIES at church; it’s only a problem when February 1 is on a Sunday.

The Daughter’s church musical is on March 1, which has meant attending extra rehearsals.

A big issue in my life is work, which has become stressful. We had had five librarians working on reference questions. One has been out on maternity from Thanksgiving, returning at the end of February. But another left to take another job at the end of January, and I will miss seeing her every day. Worse, there is no promise the position will be filled.

So for most of February, we’ve had three librarians, except on those days when one of us was out – at least twice because of the weather – and we had but two. Yet the workload did not ebb.

Surely, it’s THREE funerals in seven weeks that have worn on me. They were actually all very nice events in their own ways. I spoke at two of them.

I think that sense of loss has made the deaths of public figures, such as Bob Simon and Lesley Gore – my, I LOVED You Don’t Own Me – somehow more poignant.

Basically, it’s that I’m damn tired. The Tuesday before my cousin Robert’s funeral, a cousin called, waking me at 10:30 p.m. telling the funeral as on THAT Friday. I went back to sleep, but then woke up again at 1 a.m., trying to problem-solve how to get there by looking at Amtrak and Greyhound schedules. I never DID go back to sleep.

When I got home Wednesday evening, I was SO exhausted that I changed into my pajamas at 7 p.m. A half-hour later, the doorbell rang. One of my church buddies was there to pick me up to take me to a meeting, something I had asked him to do only two days earlier. I ran upstairs to get dressed and went out.

Friday the 13th, my lovely bride got up at 4 a.m. and drove me to the train station a half-hour later. Took the Amtrak to New York City, the subway to Queens, and then a bus to the funeral parlor. At the end of the day, got a train to Penn Station, then the Amtrak back to Albany (or rather Rensselaer, on the other side of the river), and waited for the CDTA bus; got home at 11:15 p.m.

It’s all made me rather impatient. After an Islamic center in Houston, TX was torched, some Facebook friend of mine, someone I knew in childhood, wrote: “May HaShem forgive me, but I don’t think it could happen to a more deserving group of individuals…Terrorists, whatever you choose to call them, but human they are NOT…!!!”

Someone unknown to me replied to her, “Such comments are disgusting and a real Chillul Hashem“. I just unfriended her, only the second time I’ve done that. Can’t be bothered with the debate.

Some of this will likely get better. The weather will break, a coworker will return, the play will be over. Now if I can be sure there won’t be any more funerals to attend anytime soon, I’d be a whole lot better.
***
“What Makes Us Happy?” (The Atlantic, June 2009).

November Rambling: Candy, Poetry, and 50 Shades

SamuraiFrog, bless his heart, is writing 50 Shades of of Grey, as Summarized by a Smartass.

An Opinion Piece On A Controversial Topic. “Pretty awesome meta.”

Gettysburg Address at 150.

Heidi Boghosian joins Bill Moyers for a conversation on what we all need to know about surveillance in America. “Spying on democracy,” indeed.

The defense should not be permitted to refer to the prosecutor… as “the Government.” It might sound… prejudicial.

Texas Man Sued for Defamation by Fracking Company that Contaminated his Water Supply.

“You could get better if you wanted to.” “You should just try harder.” “You’re being lazy.” “You need to be more motivated.” “You’re so needy.”

Methodist Pastor Has 30 Days to Renounce His Gay Children or Be Defrocked; it’s a matter of right and wrong.

Always Go to the Funeral.

Exclusive excerpt from Art Spiegelman’s Co-Mix retrospective. Some lifetime ago, before Maus Continue reading “November Rambling: Candy, Poetry, and 50 Shades”

Blood, football, and a funeral

he Red Cross had been bugging me to donate plasma for some time, but I hadn’t been able to carve out the time.

This keeps happening, so I shouldn’t be surprised, yet I often am anyway: I meet some older persons, generally at church, and get along with them well. Yet, when they die, and I read the obituaries and/or go to the funerals, I realize how little I really knew them.

Such was the case with Carolyn Garvin, a member of my church, whose funeral my wife attended this weekend. She was the nice old lady who always commented on how well the choir, of which I was a member, performed. She always was a very good conversational listener as well.

The things I DIDN’T know about her, though, were staggering. For one thing, she graduated from Binghamton Central High School, my alma mater, in 1947, though she was valedictorian. She was an elementary school teacher, which didn’t shock me, but was later the co-director of a migrant labor camp, which did. She was very active in the Civil Rights movement and was executive director of Planned Parenthood of Albany. She went back to school and eventually spent several years as the director of the Kairos Center for Care and Counseling in Albany, and had other responsible positions.

I was familiar with her gardening, love of pets, enjoyment of nature, and dedication to her church. I didn’t know that she had three adopted kids, one of whom died in a car accident.

I also wonder if some people also might have perhaps not take her seriously, or been impatient with her, in the latter days because she was suffering from what I’ve since discovered were signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

In any case, a learning, or relearning experience.
***
Something else I did Saturday: I gave a blood donation by apheresis. I had donated blood via the more traditional method over 145 times. The Red Cross had been bugging me to donate plasma for some time, but I hadn’t been able to carve out the time. The process takes a couple of hours, including 74 minutes hooked to the machine. Got to sit around and watch part of some JEOPARDY! video someone gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago.

The strange thing about it is that it makes one rather chilled. It wasn’t that bad at the time, but I continued to feel cold even a day later.

I ended up watching all four NFL football games over the weekend, none of them in real-time. Well, one was a blowout and I gave up on that match. I discovered that one can watch a 60-minute game, that usually takes three hours or more in real-time, in 75 minutes or so. One key for me is to stay away from social media so I don’t learn the scores; once I learn the outcome, then the enjoyment of watching is greatly diminished.