This is the eulogy I gave for my dad at his memorial just under three months ago. I've been wanting to put it up here for a while, and for some reason today seemed like a good day to do it. It's here in its entirety.
I want to start off with a funny story of my dad’s, because he had a thousand of them. He couldn’t let any gathering of people pass by without a Rich Reinersmann story, and this one should be no different. As my friend John once said, “My favorite stories from your dad are when he’s being a hilarious ass,” so I’ll tell you one of those.
He was a construction manager for Toys ‘R’ Us at the time, and was working on the lighting. The ceilings are really high, so he and his partner were up on scissor-lifts. The other electrician was a big beefy guy, who later played pro football if I remember right, but he really didn’t like what they were working on that day – he was terrified of it in fact.
They had to make a ton of connections in the lights, and that meant they had two choices. They could either cut the power, go up the lifts, make a connection, go down the lifts, turn on the power to test the connection, turn off the power, go up the lift, yada yada yada. Orrrr…
They could make the connections live – with power still running through the lines. This part is what the other guy didn’t like (and here, by the way, is where my dad would have been able to tell you the guy’s full name, address, and what kind of car he drove). As the lines came into contact, they went POP! POP! POP! a couple times, but it was totally safe as long as you weren’t touching them. Still, and quite understandingly, the guy was nervous about it.
So as the guy is making his first connection, very nervously and slowly, my dad readies a big wrench, and just as the wires make their first POP!, he slams the wrench down on the deck of the guy’s scissor lift. The guy screams at the top of his lungs, drops both wires, and throws his own wrench clear across the store. Luckily, it didn’t go near anybody, but no so luckily for Dad, the big beefy linebacker guy was pissed. My dad was apparently a faster runner, though, so the story ends well.
But what I really came up here to say was this. By society’s standards, my father was not a great man: he didn’t cure any diseases, stop any wars, or solve any of the world’s problems. But he raised and loved four kids, was a great teacher, and had a network of close friends and relatives who loved him. So to me, and to those many lives he touched, my dad was a good man – a great man.
It says a lot about him that his ex-step-son TJ was at his wedding, visited him in the hospital, and was expecting my dad to be at his own wedding next year. Our mom and my dad haven’t been married since 1996, but if you asked him, my dad would always answer that he had four kids, always counting TJ as one of his own (sometimes even counting Casady as number five). His kids were so important to him, and it pains me to think of the years I missed out on being mad at him.
When my parents divorced, the kids gravitated toward our mom. And for a while, seeing only one side of the situation (and being kind of an angsty teenager), I hated my dad. I am so thankful that I got over those feelings and got to really know him as an adult – I’ll cherish these last seven or so years I spent with him especially closely. He of course wasn’t always perfect with us – he was human – but he helped raise us, and he loved us. He was a great man.
I can’t speak to the kind of teacher he was at the IEC apprenticeship program. I can say that he loved doing it so much, and he did it really well – his Teacher of the Year awards and the continuing relationships with some of his students speak well to that. I can tell you that god-knows-how-many scraps of paper, the walls of every project I helped him on, and every wall of our garage growing up were covered with diagrams and equations – the world was his impromptu blackboard, and he loved using it to teach. He was a great teacher, and a great man.
What I think speaks best about his character is this room full of people right here today, and I don’t just mean the number. It’s the depth of his relationships that I’m talking about. Everybody has a lot of acquaintances, but my dad had so many friends. I want to thank you all for coming today, and to let you know – if you didn’t already – that he loved you just as much as you love him. He was a great man.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, and I don’t want to pretend that he was a saint or anything, but he showed me that there is real honor and pride to be had in being a Working Class Hero. That what you do for a living isn’t nearly as important as how you do it, and that your career isn’t nearly as important as your friends and family. He defined himself as a father, a husband, a brother, and a son, but most importantly as a friend – a real friend – to a great many people. And that’s how I’ll always remember my dad – as my friend.
