Eulogy for Carl William Witte

October 10, 2003

My father was a cheerful butcher of the English language.  He was always mispronouncing words and names.  When Joy and I got married, my sister Cate and Joy’s secretary made a video of the guests at our reception.  When the camera was pointed at my Dad, he looked at the camera and said, “I hope Norm and Joy are just half as happy as we have been.”  We always wondered, why only half?  Couldn’t we be just as happy?  At least three quarters as happy?

I would consider my life a spectacular success if I could be just half the man that Carl Witte was.  Dad could chew the fat with the best of them, and he had plenty to say, but more than anything else he was a man of deeds.  His were working hands.  A saw, an axe, a hammer or a wrench all fit comfortably there.  His house—and the houses of many others around him—testify that he found satisfaction in a job well done.  There was power in his arms.  These were arms that could chop and load firewood for hours, haul buckets of sap for days, roll massive logs onto sawmills, and fell huge trees with a chain saw. 

My father was a careful man when it came to his money.  He watched where his pennies went and kept track of his dollars.  This was the legacy of his humble beginnings as the oldest of ten children in Estey, Michigan .  His parents had very little and throughout his life it was important to be prudent with his resources.  In one of our many, many talks as I was growing up, he told me that the one thing that he could not give me was poverty. 

If this were all there was to my father, I suppose it would not be so much to talk about.  While frugality may be a virtue, I suspect that few of us would want our headstone to read, “He was careful with his money.”  But just as he saw poverty as a tool that honed his stewardship skills rather than a handicap, he saw his ever-expanding collection of tools and equipment, his home, his woods, and his financial resources as a means to an end as well.  He lived his life according to this principle:  people first, things second.

My father was a man who loved to serve others.  I would like to see a show of hands of everyone who was helped by my Dad in some way.  Like the hobbies he pursued so vigorously, to my Dad the business of helping others was not to be taken as a half measure.  Whether it was spending extra time with a student, helping a janitor with a chair that needed to be welded, fixing a pump that was broken, mowing a yard for a neighbor, loaning money to a son who is still has much to learn from his father’s good example, chairing a board or serving as a treasurer for a committee, writing a newsletter, building a fireplace, wiring a barn, erecting a steeple on a church...he was always there to help, and the first to pick up a shovel and get to work. 

Now, I am not going to say that he didn’t have a little bit of a curmudgeonly streak in him.  In going through the materials on his desk this week I found this letter he sent last week to Terri Lynn Land, the Michigan secretary of state:

(At this point I read from a scathing letter to the secretary of state complaining that even though the street signs said he lived on "Cherry Grove Lane," his license and registrations consistently said "Cherry Grove Road."  He included a picture of the sign.)

It’s just that dad was a passionate man.  He was passionate about his hobbies.  His office is filled with reams of paper about genealogy, tractor shop manuals, newsletters for bird clubs and maple syrup makers, photographs of family, and woodworking magazines.

He loved his wife, and they were inseparable.  With my parents, the two truly did become one.  Like any couple they had their rough moments but growing up we knew that our family’s foundation was on solid ground.  He was passionate about his children, who never questioned that they would have a college education because he wanted the very best for us.  All three of us can point to any number of home improvements that were the product of his efforts.  I have no idea how many people have told me how proud my dad was of me. 

He was passionate about his grandchildren.  He loved to take them fishing or on a hayride.  His eyes would shine when they came to see him and he loved to take them down to the woods to grille hot dogs or go for a walk. 

He was passionate about his mother and father and brothers and sisters.  When his mother was sick and dying, he made the 45-minute drive from Essexville to the hospital in Midland countless times to stay with her.  After she was gone, he drove to Estey to be with his dad at least once a week.  He was always the one who called his brothers and sisters with important family news and each of them was a treasure to him.

And he was passionate about his religion.  My father’s religion was not scholarly.  He read his Bible and he was in church every Sunday but like everything else in his life, his religion found life not through words but deeds.  He made the cross behind me and trimmed every one of these windows with his wood.  He helped to pay for the seats you are sitting in right now and built the sign that stands in front of the church.  It was my father who did much of the work to put a proper steeple on the church not that long ago.  And if there was a need in the church, he would try to meet it in practical ways.  Dad never needed to wear a bracelet that said WWJD.  He needed no reminding to care for those around him.

I am humbled by the things he accomplished and the people he touched.  He spent weeks making maple syrup, countless hours cutting wood, but he always had time to help.  I think the secret of his success was that he never slept.  Sleep simply was not a good use of time when there was so much that needed to be done and so many who needed his care.

Then there is Witte’s Woods.  By any reasonable measure, those 80 acres were a tiny corner of heaven for my father.  Hunting, syrup season, making a new road for the latest grandchild, running his sawmill, or playing with the latest tractor mom ran out and bought, there was always something to do in the woods.  He loved to walk in them, and could name all the birds, plants and animals around.  He would always be pointing out a barrel-chested thrash thrusher or some such thing to me, not that I could tell them apart. 

This summer Dad was fascinated to follow the progress as lumber was harvested from his woods.  He worked carefully with the forester, Ron Scott, to make sure that the harvest would leave the woods looking good and would promote new growth in the forest.  He loved to see the men dropping trees and watch them at their work.

Earlier this week on a bright fall day as the colors just began to turn the biggest tree in that forest fell.  There in the woods he loved, my father laid down upon the ground and rested his burden.  It was a big heart that stopped beating that day.  My father has reached the clearing at the end of the path, but along the way he was a good forester and he left much beauty in his passing.

It is now my turn to say words to him that he said so very many times to me:  I am so very proud of you.  I love you.

And to those of you who are here to wish my father well, I have one other thing to tell you.  He was my hero.

 

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