Eulogy

Tuesday morning just after 11am I got a call from my parents telling me that my grandpa - mom's dad - had just died. It was a call I knew would come, but was not expecting in the next couple of months.

Ernest Scott was 82 1/2 (to the day) when he died of complications from Lymphoma and COPD. He had been married to my grandmother - Jeanne - for 62 years. They have 3 daughters - Jennifer, Teri, and Amy (my mom). Those three children gave them 7 grandchildren - Darin, Missy, Scott, Christy, Erica, Jillian, and myself. To date they have 12 great grandchildren.

Grandpa grew up in the Weleetka, OK area, south of I-40. He later moved to Okmulgee where he and grandma lived, worked, and raised their children. After retiring in 1986 he and grandma moved to Vinita where he enjoyed working with horses, gardening, and wood-working.

The classic picture of grandpa for me will always be the one of him riding one of our horses. In this particular picture the horse is standing nearly straight up on her two hind legs and there he is holding on like it's not a big deal. He was in his early 60s at the time. Grandpa loved westerns - movies, books, whatever. He is the closest thing to a real cowboy I knew growing up.

Grandpa spent part of his working life as a barber, so any time we went to see him a haircut was involved (for the guys, not the girls). He grew up in an era of short hair for guys, so he was very proficient with a buzz cut, which suited me just fine. One of the last times I remember him cutting my hair (though I know there were at least a couple after this one) he inadvertently cut a really short spot right in the front of my head. There was no way to hide it, so he smoothed it out the best he could. It just so happened that I was moving back to Stillwater for my Sophomore year the next day. He was the only one who could have done that and it be okay. I guess sometimes when you really appreciate and love someone you just overlook something that otherwise might be fairly frustrating or hurtful.

Grandpa is also the patriarch of faith in our family. He and grandma have been faithful servants for decades. He has been an elder longer than I've been alive and who knows how far back he taught Sunday School. They raised 3 daughters who are all committed believers who have raised families of believers as well. I can remember as a child going to church with grandpa and grandma and talking to them about the Bible. For everything else he did and was, being a Christian was first, last, and the most important.

After they moved to Vinita I spent a lot of time out at their house. I can remember riding horses, going fishing, even learning to shoot grandpa's .22. As I got older I had less and less time to spend with them, but the impression those times left on me will always be a part of who I am.

All of my grandparents have thought it was a big deal that I went to college and graduated. That wasn't such an automatic thing in their generation or even in my parents generation for people from rural Oklahoma. He would always ask about school and always cared about what was going on. After I graduated and moved to Joplin he started following what went on here at CIY as closely as he could. He would always ask how work was going.

More than anything I knew that he cared, his questions were always sincere and he always took time to listen - whether what I was telling him made any sense or not. I hope that I will acquire those traits as I grow older, too often I am in too much of a hurry to stop, ask, and listen.

And so tomorrow we will say "goodbye" to grandpa, or better yet "until we meet again". One thing I know with certainty is that he is in a better place now, no more pain, no more sorrow.

In attending OSU I came to identify with a certain set of principles that my alma mater was founded on. Among them was its purpose as an institution where middle and lower income rural Oklahomans could send their children to receive a quality education. Because of my identification with that idea and the OSU community I have developed a tradition of wearing black and orange in honor of certain people and events. Grandpa never went to OSU or any other institution of higher education, but surely his life exemplifies the greatest hopes and ideals that O-State was founded on. And so in his honor I will wear black and orange to his funeral and burial tomorrow.