George and Nelson

George and Nelson
Two Lives, both Good


I attended two memorial services within 24 hours on Friday, October 15th and Saturday, October 16th. Both services were for older men who died of cancer. Both men had been teachers, and both lived by their spiritual beliefs. Chillingly, both men died exactly one month before their next birthday.

Neither man was a war hawk, but they both served in the military as part of their sense of obligation to something larger than their personal life stories.

Both men remained married to their first sweetheart for over half a century and raised a small family. George fathered a daughter and a son, Nelson three daughters. At the memorial services, the genuine love and admiration for their fathers was keenly evident to those of us who didn’t really know either man all that well.

What separates the two men and their life stories is the different spiritual paths they chose. Although they both came from humble, rural backgrounds, each was led by an inner light of a different color. Having been raised on an Iowa farm, George was surrounded by nature and evidently sought consolation in it. His father died when he was seven years old, and his mother raised four boys in the kind of poverty typical of the Great Depression.

George excelled in school and, naturally, chose biology as his college major. One of the speakers at his service summed up George’s intense curiosity about the world around him with this line: “The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.” George taught his students to wonder, to be curious, to open their minds to endless possibilities. After he retired from teaching, he led tours of Rockwoods Reservation, and a plaque thanking him for his 1,000 hours of volunteer time was displayed during the post-memorial service reception. One can only wish to have been on one of his nature walks and sharing his excitement and awe of the complex living things around him.

Evidently, from the comments by speakers at the service, Darwin was foremost in George’s understanding of the natural world. In his honor, one of the lay ministers at the Unitarian Universalist service wrote a hymn to Darwin and sang a few lines for us.

The issue of what happens after a person’s body dies didn’t really figure into the service for George except in the sense that we can all imagine his former students “wondering” about the living world around them and inspiring others to feel their same sense of awe. In this way, George still lives and will for many generations hence.


Nelson, too, was a child of the Great Depression. His early surroundings in rural Missouri molded him into a fervent Christian believer which he practiced wholeheartedly until just weeks before his death. He taught school and served as an assistant principal. The students called him “the nice principal,” and, from what people said about him at his memorial service, he must have been one of the kindest, gentlest human beings the world has known. His daughters shared some of their wonderful moments with their father, and we all got a glimpse into the life of this humorous, life-loving man. He told his “girls” that there was no need to be angry enough to call anyone anything worse than a “turkey.” That would certainly be a valuable lesson for all of us, especially in this age of nasty name calling on TV.

The minister at Nelson’s Methodist service described a life dedicated to Christ and Christ’s work here on Earth. Mission trips, leadership roles on several church committees, regular attendance and support of the church all figured into Nelson’s daily comings and goings. There was no doubt in the minds of those in attendance that Nelson had “gone to the Lord” and that his family would join him someday. That is a comforting image for those who felt their love for another so deeply and whose sense of loss is too painful to bear. “I’ll Fly Away” was our “hymn of victory” for Nelson.

Both services were followed by the sharing of food, a communion of sorts, and a recognition that physical death is inevitable. But both of these men live on, each in his own way.

Susan Cunningham
October 2010