Tomorrow, I will deliver this eulogy at my father's memorial service at St. Mary's Episcopal church in Philadelphia.  I know you can't be there, but i would like to know what you think of this little tribute to my father.  I think he would like it.  Peace and Long Life.

Love Worf

Dad’s Eulogy

In his poem Ode: Intimations Of Immortality From Recollections Of Early Childhood William Wordsdsworth said:  Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Shakespeare, in his play Hamlet, call death “The undiscovered country from who’s borne no traveler returns.”

My father was a good man.  He wanted everyone, especially his students, to know what he knew.  He sometimes reminded me of Matthew Arnold, noted poet and literary critic of the 19th century, who felt that “If more people would share, and pursue his notions of beauty, truth and perfection - of culture – the world will be a better place.” In other words, just see it my way and everything will be fine.

Seriously though, my dad lived to teach.  He loved nothing more than teasing people to learn by peaking their curiosity with questions. Who was the first Black President of the United States he would ask? And you would go what?! I thought he was talking about Warren G. Harding, but he was going further back than that. He was the first one to tell me about Abraham Lincoln, and the great pains that people who were passing went through to conceal any Black or native blood that that coursed through their veins.  He would follow that up quickly with who were to two Black men in the boat with George Washington when he crossed the Delaware? And again you would go WHAT?! Oliver Cromwell, and Prince Whipple he would say.  What do know about Beethoven, did you know he was Black, did you know that Thomas Edison could not have made the Light bulb without Lewis Latimer who fond a process to make tungsten pliable.  He would go on and on; his reasoning was he wanted people to know that we were there, in history, not just as slaves, but also as contributors to society and our very way of life. It was one of his many passions.

His other passion, one he also passed on to me, was music.  One of the first memories I have is of my father is him playing Chopin and Bach on our old upright grand Piano at 57 N Felton Street here in Philadelphia.  I remember saying, “Father I want to play just like you. Show me.”  He said, “O.K. son this is what you must do.” And he played the C-scale.  I protested mightily to his great amusement. I did, however; learn the C-scale, and all the others major, natural, melodic, and harmonic minors the whole nine yards. He used to love to sit and listen to me play when we were together, and critique my playing and give me pointers to make it better.

It wasn’t always peaches and cream with my dad and me.  Sometimes we would have serious philosophical and ethical differences.  Those differences sometimes kept us from speaking to each other for years at a time.  I remember when we had those disagreements my father would always come out with this line, that at the time I hated.  He would say, “The father will always know more than the son because the father has been both man and boy and the son has been only the son.”  I would shout back, “What does that have to do with anything that we’re talking about?!?!”  The argument would get more heated, I would leave, and that would be that for the next two years or so.  What I wouldn’t give to have an argument with my dad one more time, and to here those words, “The father will always know more than the son.”

The greatest thing that my father taught me was, there is God.  Now I already knew this, but my dad confirmed it through actions, and words that sometimes left me in awe. I remember one time when I was giving him a testament, better known as a rant or screed, he said when I had finished, “Son, that’s good medicine.” I froze.  Why did you say that I asked?  You see I had never heard my dad put those two words together in my life, but I had, and never in his presence. In that moment a great calm fell over us both, and we sat and drank silently for a while pondering what had just happened. I think it was a good 10-15 minutes before either of us spoke about what had just occurred between the two of us and why it happened at that moment.  It gave us a new found reverence towards each other, and a newfound respect for each other. 

Another spiritual or God moment that came to mind while I was writing this was one night my father, his friend Sam Hutchins, and I were sitting in the living room, at 4717 hazel Ave., talking about family.  All of a sudden my father got up and went to the piano.  He started playing his standard fare; Sam and I were still talking. Then something changed, my father had transformed, and so had his playing.  He went from his standard fare into something that I can only describe as a fusion of classical, jazz, and blues that I had not heard before, or since.  I think that Sam had not either for both of us sat in stunned silence while my father play such beautiful music. He played for what must have been 5 minutes, and then he stopped.  He got in tears. He simply said,” My father was here.  I had to stop he had taken total control of me, I wasn’t even aware of what I was doing and it scared me,” he said.  I remember thinking, “My God, I wish I could have sold tickets to that.”  

In that moment I realized that, despite all his protestations to the contrary, his father loved him as he loved me.  That night I found out that it was his father who had influenced his style of playing.  I know his mother was the one who got him lessons and stayed on him to practice, but that night I learned that his father, my grandfather played stride piano. I never knew this about my grandfather until that night.  The only props that my dad ever gave to his father was that he worked on the B&O railroad for 50 years and lost two fingers due to frostbite. That was why his father always said to him “Put me in the alley son” when he came home and found my father playing.  It used to drive my grandmother crazy according to my father; she wanted him to play classics and spirituals, not that devil music.

That night my father and I bonded like never before.  Many things were made clear to both of us about who we were as human beings, of how the universe worked, and more importantly, that God is watching. My dad, he was a man take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.