Fred F. Gordy, Sr.

Fred F. Gordy, Sr. passed on Monday, July 25th, 2016 at the age of 91.  I, Fred F. Gordy, Jr., had the honor of delivering his eulogy.  Below is the eulogy.

Today we gather to remember and enjoy the memories of Fred Gordy… husband… photographer… life guard… teacher… And father.  Yes, he was our family’s father but we also knew him as a father of knowledge to countless others.  He taught formulas, equations,  the periodic table, physics, calculus, and more... but it was not just what was in the books…  He taught us and his students life.

I never had the opportunity to be a student of his in the classroom but I have had the opportunity to hear stories from those who did including my sister Dianne. 

There are stories of him teaching from the top of the lab tables… putting chemicals together to make controlled explosions to get the attention of those otherwise less engaged… or maybe it is was just for fun... which in the classrooms of today he couldn’t have done…  Anyway… the point is… from what I hear is that he tried to engage his students and not just preach at them.

He took that responsibility very seriously and viewed his students as an investment and extension of him.  Some of his proudest memories were of the students who become more than they thought they could.  It wasn’t just that they become doctors, lawyers, bankers, engineers, and mathematicians… it was that they became those things they didn’t think they could achieve.

I found out from my mother a few years ago that Dad passed on opportunities that most would have jumped at.  During a time when computers were in their infancy, slide rules and brains put men in orbit and on the moon Dad had an opportunity to join NASA as a mathematician.   Whatever his reason for not pursuing this… I do not know…  but what I do know is the contributions of his students to this community and beyond cannot be measured and probably far outweigh the contributions he would have made to space exploration… and you know… I think in some way… he knew it too.  He after all was a mathematician and 10 to the power of the number of students he influenced… statistically had to have had a fairly significant impact.

You know how as you age your parents become smarter and wiser than you remember growing up?...    Things that he did in raising us seemed sometimes hard and unfair but as I have found in becoming a father what my Dad did was loving and fair.  He pushed me when I didn’t want to be pushed… He let me fail when he knew I needed to fail because that was probably the only way I would learn. 

One of these lessons I hold onto even now and it has served me well…

I remember our sewer line was clogged up… boy that was a fun time…  Anyway… if you know our yard it is a long way from the house to the street.  Dad decided since the job was one he didn’t want to have to do but once he decided we needed to dig up the entire sewer line from the house to the street and put in new piping.  We didn’t have a ditch witch or Home Depot to rent something to make it easier… we had two shovels and four hands and two backs and that was enough… according to Dad.

I don’t remember how old I was but I must have been old enough to have an attitude and Dad was pretty perceptive to teenagers attitudes…  It was hot and it seemed like everywhere I put my shovel I hit a root.  He finally stops what he was doing and said “What’s the problem?”… (Like there wasn’t one)… I probably said something like “this is stupid… or there is no way we can do this because of all the stupid roots…”  He stood up… looked at me with that look that only a hot, tired, father gets when he is dealing with a kid with an attitude who would rather be anywhere but where he is… and said… “Grab a root and growl!”  Meaning “You have a job to do…  you have obstacles in your way… quit whining about it and wasting the time complaining about it… get the obstacles out the way and get the job done.

In a manner of speaking he imparted that wisdom to more than just me.  Throughout life we have objectives… if we focus on the obstacles, we will never reach our objectives.

Dad embodied this… He was raised on a farm during a time when most people didn’t have much.  By all accounts he should have stayed on the farm.  Education was secondary.  Children were needed on farm more than they were needed in the classroom.  Dad wanted that education.  He wanted more than the farm… not the farm was a bad thing… he loved science and math and learning.  Today the environment he grew up in could be considered by most as almost third world.  In order to get an education, you had to really want it.  He and his brother had to work the farm and or milk cows before school and come home do it again.  It was tough for someone just graduate high school.

When it came time for college, it would have been easier for him to not go.  As far as I remember his father didn’t support the idea and Dad had to not only pay for it himself he had to hitch a ride on the side of the road to college a couple hundred miles away.   He didn’t come home much.  He even went on to graduate school.  To me… this is the epitome of “Grab a root and growl”.  His objectives were not going to be stopped by the “roots” he encountered.

He also taught us patience in the task.  That is… how to approach the obstacle and remove it.  You had to first recognize the obstacle and then appreciate the task of removing the obstacle.  And he did this in the simple things… I remember he took me somewhere to get a load of dirt.  Do you see a pattern…. He taught me a lot with a shovel and dirt….  Anyway…  As a kid I just wanted to be finished as soon as I got started so I plowed into the task of shoveling the dirt as fast as I could into the truck.  He let me go awhile as he was slowly shoveling his part of the pile into the truck… I noticed that he was putting a whole lot more dirt in the truck than I was even though I was making 3 or 4 shovels to his one… That’s when he told me the story of the old man who was a sharecropper that worked part of their farm.  Dad’s Dad told he and his brother to move a mound of dirt.  In the process the old sharecropper came over and started to help them and he told them to slow down and they could move more dirt which didn’t make sense to me or I guessing them when they were about my age...  How can you slow down and do things faster… that’s not what he said… what he said was move more dirt. What the old sharecropper explained to my Dad and his brother and what my Dad explained to me was that taking your time and making sure each shovel full was the fullest and the most useful of your effort, you could move more dirt with less scoops and less time.  In other words, make each one of your efforts count and it will probably take less time and effort to reach your objective.

Dad’s way was not to drive the point home with extensive conversation… he simply told the story and let you figure it out.  Sometimes it took a while for the light bulb to go off but when it did,  it is stuck with me.

It also took me years to realize things he did for not only my sisters and I but for others.  He didn’t talk about them or make a big deal of them.  He did them because he believed they needed to be done.

I was too young to remember the late 60’s and early 70’s but as most know it was a tumultuous time.  Our father and mother made sure that we understood that everyone had value.  No man or woman was above another and that everyone had the right to strive to make something of themselves.  He stood by these principles… sometimes even to his detriment.  He was not a crusader or a spokesman.  He simply did what he believed needed to be done.

Now Dad wasn’t just serious all the time… He had his moments.  Most of them not intentional but funny non the less…

For example… There was the time Dad was running down Gallatin street with a gun chasing a dog we had that was severely wounded and he was going to put him out of his misery and mom was chasing behind him trying to get him not to shoot the dog.  Luckily for the dog a neighbor took the dog in and saved him… We never saw the dog again…

I remember the school bought a riding lawn mower and I got to ride on the back with him as he drove it from the Sears outlet to our house… I had no idea that was the plan when mom dropped us off at Sears.  Yes,  I was embarrassed at the time… but now it’s funny.

Speaking of riding lawnmowers… One time he decided to take the riding lawn mower and attach the military surplus trailer he bought which I think weighed about 400 pounds and load it up with limbs and back it down the hill behind the house.  The hill angled down at least at 120-degree angle and the neither one of us was thinking about the laws of physics and the braking ability of small riding lawn mower… Needless to say he started backing down the hill and the next thing I know is lawn mower, trailer and Dad go rolling down the kudzu covered hill.  I start yelling for him and I couldn’t find him.   He pops up over to the side a ways with a big ole grin and says “Guess the brakes on the lawnmower weren’t designed to hold that much weight… now go get the come-along and a rope and let’s get this mower and trailer up the hill.”  And he said it like nothing bad had happened.

But that was Dad… something happens and you just get up and move on.

He approached things from a logical and practical point of view.   Some of you may remember he had a Volkswagen that didn’t have a passenger seat… why?  Because that’s where his camera equipment needed to go when he was going to a photo job.  If you rode with him,  you either sat in the back seat or you got the little wooden school chair and put it where the seat should be.  Probably wasn’t safe by today’s standards but it was fun to ride in.

He wore suits cause that’s what you did and wore boat shoes with your suit cause they were better for walking all over the campus.

His logical and practical side also helped us to learn what to fear and what not to fear.  What to believe and what not to believe.   And to even appreciate and respect that, that which should be feared.

As a child I was afraid of thunderstorms and bad weather in general.  One particular stormy day, Dad took me on the front porch and explained to me what was going on and how all the pieces fit together.  I got a view inside the storm and the powers that it possessed.  I learned that a storm in an amazing powerful thing and while it should be respected it can still be admired.  So much so that even today I love to watch storms.   My wife knows that if a storms coming I have to watch it.

This leads me into another funny story of Dad. 

A few years ago Dad was staying a day facility in Newton called Foot Prints.  Eileen told me that they had some really bad storms blow through and the staff rounded up all the people and were trying to get them into a center room until the storm blew over but Dad didn’t want to be put in the room and he got pretty mad to the point they called Eileen to come get him.  She could not come because… well… the weather was bad.  He was bound and determined to go outside and watch it.  I think he either did get outside or almost did.  After talking to Eileen on the phone I told my wife the story.  As I was telling it she gets a smile on her face and says “Do you hear yourself?  You are definitely Fred Jr. That’s probably what you will do when you’re his age.”  She’s right and I have Dad to thank for that.  Now,  every time I see a storm I will probably be even more apt to go outside.  It’s my opportunity to visit with my Dad.  I’m sure he’ll be around somewhere.  At least while it's going on.

Dad also appreciated the science of creation.  If you’ve ever read Lee Strobel’s case for the Creator you’ll see a bit of my Dad in it.  As a scientist with an analytical mind, Dad understood that it takes more faith to believe that this all happened by accident than to believe that the divine Creator meticulously stitched us and our world together. 

In the Case for the Creator physicist-philosopher Robin Collins said that one of the most striking discoveries of modern science has been that the laws and constants of physics unexpectedly conspire in an extraordinary way to make the universe habitable for life. For instance, gravity is fine-tuned to one part in a hundred million billion billion billion billion billion.

The cosmological constant, which represents the energy density of space, is as precise as throwing a dart from space and hitting a bull's-eye just a trillionth of a trillionth of an inch in diameter on Earth. One expert said there are more than 30 physical or cosmological parameters that require precise calibration in order to produce a universe that can sustain life.

Dad gave me and many others the desire to understand the why and the how.  His was to question and explain and for you to learn to question explanations in order to firmly know the answers.

Although in his last years his mind was not what not as clear as it once was, during his life his was a mind that molded my sisters and I as well as countless others.  To have the impact he had on others…. I can only wish.

Dad…. There are no roots in your way.  There is no dirt to move.  It’s your time to rest and enjoy your restored mind and health and know that we were blessed by your presence.