THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609270226
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: JOHN PRUITT
LENGTH: 67 lines
A couple of Sundays ago, when the minister announced that we'd be singing ``How Great Thou Art,'' on page 17 of the Methodist Hymnal, I had the greatest urge to yell out, ``What page?''
Yes, I'd heard him. But you see, this was at the funeral of Robert Lee Vaughan at Whaleyville United Methodist Church. And in his healthy days, when he'd sung in the choir, one of his ongoing jokes at practice was to yell out at the organist/pianist, ``What page?''
It didn't matter that she'd just said something like, ``Turn to page 9,'' in a book held up for all of us to see.
When the minister said we'd sing the familiar hymn at Robert Lee's request, then, it just seemed to follow that somebody should ask him to repeat the page number.
No one did. But I'll tell you, Robert Lee would have been pleased with the way the crowded church sounded that day.
He was blessed with a lot of friends, and they wanted to sound good for him. They did. They sang as if they were at a celebration, just the way he would have wanted it.
Robert Lee would have taken a lot of pride, too, in all the firemen who came to bid him goodbye - not only people who had worked with him in the Whaleyville Volunteer Fire Department, of which he'd been assistant chief - but from throughout the city.
That was one of the things that made Robert Lee so likable. He sincerely delighted in simple things. In recent years, as his health continually failed him, that became increasingly evident.
How, I often wondered, did he cope? On one day, he was a healthy man, holding down a job, volunteering at the fire department and helping neighbors with cranky cars. And on the next, after a stroke, his world had changed forever.
The simplest of tasks had become tremendous barriers: bathing, eating, getting around, talking.
Wouldn't the struggle against bitterness have overpowered some of us? Would I have appreciated small jokes, as he did, or would I have thought there was nothing funny left in my world?
Would I have laughed, as he did, when - as volunteers were fixing up a home that he'd bought in his healthy days but had never been able to complete - I chided him for laziness, just sitting in that wheelchair while we painted and papered, hauled lumber and cleaned up messes?
Would I have said only that I'd be doing the work if I could, and - minus one trace of self-pity - that I sure wish I could?
I knew that. And I certainly knew Robert Lee wasn't being lazy. I knew that, not even so deep down, it had to hurt to have all these people doing things that he'd hoped to be able to do himself. And I knew he'd see humor, too, in getting fussed at for something over which he had absolutely no control.
Just the way he was able to laugh when, on his first meeting of a new minister, he fell from his wheelchair. When the minister went to the rescue, Robert Lee looked up and, without any hint of discomfort, simply said, ``Hey, preacher!''
He would have loved knowing that his ``last ride'' was on a fire truck, his body transported to the cemetery before a parade of firemen. And he'd have been moved by the way the honor guard folded the flag of the Whaleyville Fire Department and presented it to his widow.
Most of all, though, I think he'd have liked the way the fire whistle blew just as the flag was being presented.
Together, the simple touches added up to a dignified departure - appropriate for a man who took such pleasure in things as small as asking, ``What page?'' by CNB