My Dad’s Eulogy I have several people who I need to thank for the way that they have supported my family through this difficult time. First I want to thank Donna Baker for her love and support of my parents through the years. I want to thank her particularly for being with my mom early Monday morning. I want to thank my brother-in-law Bob Blake’s family for how they have helped my mother when we were in transit from Florida. Family means a lot during this time and the love you have shown my sister and the rest of us demonstrates that you’ve extended that word family to include us. Thank you. Thanks too for all the flowers, food, and words of condolences. These have been some of the most difficult weeks that my family has had to endure and your love and expressions of sympathy and support are very welcome. I know I express the sentiments of my family when I say thank you. At the outset it is important to note that my father Joseph Daniel Sellepack was born to Joseph Daniel Sellepack and was called Joey by his mother and father. My father’s dad was called Pop by just about everyone, maybe even my grandma – so at some point while growing up my dad was often called simply Joe. When he was born, my dad had a step-sister named Arliss who lived with him for a short time before she moved out of the house. But it was my dad who was the big brother of John and Rosemary. Rosemary is the last of those children who are left as her brother John passed away several years ago. The most interesting story that I heard growing up was the time when Uncle John was cleaning a rifle and it went off because he didn’t know that it was loaded. When the bullet was discharged after missing my dad by only a few inches, it went through a wall and through a wardrobe of clothes on the other side of the wall before becoming lodged in the wall leading out of the house. Thinking on their feet, John, Rosemary and my Dad took some plaster, or was it toothpaste, and nail polish and fixed the whole in the wall and used some of the patch to fill the hole in the wardrobe. The catastrophe of what could of happened if their father had learned that a gun went off in the house was then averted. It was a mystery to him, however, how his clothes had gotten holes in them. The explanation that my dad gave him was: “Oh it must’ve been an infestation of moths.” My dad early on began to figure out the benefits of hard work. He had a paper route from a very early age. He also cut lawns. In time he found sports to be to his liking he played catcher for a little league team and played football for the city league. In High School he triple lettered playing baseball, track and football. He also started to sculpt his body by lifting weights and doing lots of exercise. Football came very easy to him and he secured a walk on position as tackle for the Wayne State University Football team where he went on to great success. If you were to google Joseph Sellepack, you would discover that he is listed as lineman of the year for the years he played for Wayne State and has been inducted into the Wayne State University Sports Hall of Fame. Church was very important to my father. He, his mother and his siblings went to Warrendale Evangelical United Brethren Church in the neighborhood where they grew up. It was at that church that Dad learned to love Jesus and follow him. He also became a Sunday School teacher and taught a Jr. Boys Class. He had lots of adventures with these boys. Dad used to tell stories about the forts they used to build in the woods and about how they collected collector cards together. Many of those cards are still with us and reside in collections throughout the country. Most notably are the sports cards in my son Daniel’s collection. And in the cracked, three stooges cards, and famous people cards that many of his grandkids have. Most of these cards were collected and traded with his Sunday School class and were tools that he used to connect with these boys. The other tool he used for this purpose was an AMC convertible that made him very popular with Jr. Boys. He was very proud of that car. He also coached the church’s girls softball team. One of the people on this softball team was Sharon Ragula. I think she was a pitcher, if memory serves me correctly. But it wasn’t her softball playing skills that won Joe’s heart. Instead it was what Dad said was her “Spunky attitude” that did it. The story goes that Mom was headed to school at Cass Tech and Dad was headed to Wayne State. Mom had pulled the rope with plenty of warning to announce the stop she needed to be left off, but The Bus Driver, for whatever reason had neglected to stop where she needed him to. So they missed her stop and missed the next stop, finally stopping at Wayne State University. When they arrived at that stop, my mom proceeded to tell off the bus driver when my dad, who was also on the bus, noticed the altercation between my mom and the bus driver. Dad realized that this woman was not someone to be trifled with. He went on to ask her on a date. It was her spunky attitude that won his heart My dad being the man of faith he was, had made an arrangement with God. He said to God that the first woman he shared a kiss with was to be his wife. I’m not sure which number of dates that kiss on his cheek was planted, but because she did it, Joe Sellepack asked Sharon Ragula to be his wife. And she agreed after much soul searching and prayer. After my mom and dad were married, Dad was drafted by the US Army. When he was drafted he informed the army that he could not undertake the oath since if push comes to shove, he had to obey God and not the United States Government. So he was listed as a conscientious objector and was sent to Medical training at Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio, TX. Here Dad went on to distinguish himself as a very dedicated medic. Dad had said that this work tore out his heart because he learned quickly that he could not save everyone. One case of a boy who died when a car hit his bicycle he was riding haunted Dad for many years and was the reason that while the doctor he served under had recommended him to pursue becoming a doctor that Dad refused to go into medicine. While they were there in San Antonio, their first child was born. They named him Joseph Daniel Sellepack III, but I was simply known as Joey to them. They lived in an apartment that is now a parking lot for a fried chicken store. My mom and dad shared memories of riding the train at Breckenridge Park and getting the paper and a pop to share because money was tight. My dad told stories about having to roll out of a truck into a small group of cacti that caused my mom to pull out many needles out of his back side. It was soon after I was born that they moved back into the basement of my Grandparent’s House. They lived there for about a year while my dad worked and my mom and dad looked for a place to move to.. At this point my dad secured a job at Ford Motor Company . Soon they were able to move to Syracuse St. in Taylor, MI. It is while they lived there that Joe finished his B.S. degree at night school at Lawrence Institute of Technology while he worked a full time job as a metallurgist during the day. Since time was tight, when Joe came home from work, he would lock himself into the spare bedroom that they used as a study. So there was a few minutes between the car door slamming and the bedroom door slam that I could see my dad. The story goes that my mom was giving me a bath when my dad came home from work. We heard the car door slam and I popped out of the bath and ran stark naked out the front door to see my dad. This scenario was played out by all three of us boys and our sister as we longed to see our dad, but his work and other commitments made him so very hard to connect with. It was soon after moving to Syracuse St. that Sharon and Joe had another Son, David Matthew Sellepack. David was named after the Biblical David – a warrior – a figure in the Bible that my dad admired and respected. A short time after David was born my brother Steven Michael Sellepack was born. Mom and Dad named him after the first martyr in the New Testament who served as a deacon and an exemplar of the faith. With five people in the house, the small house on Syracuse St was becoming very cramped. So my mom and dad purchased a home on the other side of Taylor on Bailey Street. Soon after they moved into that home, Sara Elizabeth Sellepack was born – you can imagine how difficult it was for this girl in a house dominated by men. She was named after the biblical matriarch of the Children of Israel. But I affectionately tell her that she still hasn’t earned her H yet. Together our family had many adventures. Camping was one of our main stay activities – first we had a tent and then a pop-up trailer. Then a small pull behind trailer that had two bunk beds at one end and a dining room table that folded down into a double bed. Dad and mom took us on many trips around the country – seeing the Badlands and Wall Drug. This trip that was supped to end at Yellowstone but we got side tracked when we had to spend a whole week in a little town in Minnesota while the engine on our Grand Torino was rebuilt. Who can ever forget the green water and the little insects growing in the lake there? Anyway, we also traveled to New Mexico and Texas. The Great Smokey Mountains and Shenandoah Park and to Washington DC. We also wandered yearly into the Upper Peninsula of MI where we camped with Grandma and Grandpa Ragula at places like Lake Gogebic, Thunder Bay and Wawa Ontario and Sally’s Place and Copper Harbor. We also went to remote places in Canada, notably Rocky Island Lake, and made picnic tables, fashioned latrines and found rocks – lots of rocks. It’s hard to believe but vacations were a lot of work for us. My dad would orchestrate forest recovery programs where he would find wildflowers like trillium, lady slippers, jack in the pulpit and fox glove and dig them up in the wild. We would then transport them and any trees he had his eyes on back to our home in Taylor where they would get planted. If it wasn’t plants it was rocks. Who can forget sitting on the slag pile in the Keweenaw Peninsula looking for silver and copper or the time in Canada when we found that vein of Amethyst that we mined and hauled back to Michigan. I’m not really sure how we got through customs – but my dad was never one to really obey the rules. My dad and his three boys would climb waterfalls and up mountains on the other side of fences with large warning signs attached telling everyone of the inherent danger of crossing the boundary. This usually terrified my mom, making her glad that she had a daughter’s hand to hold while her boys went off on these adventures. One of the most terrifying things that ever happened was when we were climbing a cliff and Steven couldn’t hold onto the rock and he fell backwards into my dad. My Dad caught him in midair and got him to the top safely. My dad loved gardening. He would spend hours of time cleaning and mulching and weeding and pruning. He grew lots of vegetables and my mom would can or freeze them. Joe also frequently bought beef and pigs from local farmers. Who can forget the pig’s head that he made into Headcheese or beef tongue or eating other weird things that he insisted were good for you. Is this story making you hungry yet? But his culinary skills didn’t end there. There were the fried bologna and onion sandwiches or the egg concoction that he would make Saturday mornings with leftovers. I think that often it could be tasty if you added lots of ketchup and hot sauce. I’m not sure but I still remember him making potato pancakes once that were edible. I do think it was a good thing my mom could cook! And who can forget the mulch pile – making trips to the police horse stalls in Detroit so we could collect manure? Or the time when Grandpa Ragula got Dad into the Ringling Bros Circus so he could collect some elephant, tiger and lion manure. I still remember how the elephant manure decomposed so hot that we had oats growing in the middle of January and it was years before rabbits would again try to eat anything from his garden because of the lion and tiger manure he put around his plants. While we were growing up, my mom and dad taught Sunday School Classes and became the Junior Youth Directors at Church and later youth directors. They had lot of kids who loved and were affected by them because of their ministry to them. My dad coached youth co-ed softball teams and boys basketball teams. He helped lots of kids make it through difficult times in their lives and took a lot of responsibility for people who made poor choices – sometimes driving many miles on a Saturday to look in on one of the kids who had been put into a Juvenile Detention Center. Throughout this time too, my dad continued to work at Ford Motor Company and the opportunity came for him to take a job in Australia. This decision would create the need for the family to pack up and move for two years to Geelong Victoria. While there they attended Aberdeen Street Baptist Church and lived on a beautiful house down the gulf side of the peninsula. While there Joe continued to garden, to travel and to find rocks. The gypsum mines in South Australia too had slag piles, and who can resist a good perusal of minerals in places where every snake you see is poisonous? Well obviously not my dad. Can you remember spending Christmas Morning on the beach in Queensland? Or traveling through tropical rain forests or climbing to the top of Ayres Rock? Or seeing the twelve apostles or the London Bridge before it fell down? Ferry Penguins and Wallabies and Wombats. Being woken up by Kookaburras and walking through forests with your necks and eyes looking to the top of trees for Koalas… Then there was pavlova something that my mom and sister learned to make because my dad found it to be so irresistible. Mom and Sara learned to cook this by going to the Pastor’s House, Rev. Baker, and his wife taught them how to make it. Both Sara and Mom still make it to this day. Our family moved back to the states and into the house on Bailey Street. Soon to the mix came daughters and son in law and grandchildren. First into the family was Shelly Beecher who married Joey. Then there was Cheri Colbeck who married David. Then came Bob Blake who married Sara and Brandi Pool who married Steven. Soon grandchildren came into the mix. Michael Sellepack was the first one to be born and who died recently in a diving accident. I can just imagine Joe and Michael today finding some quiet corner in heaven so they can be together. Then came Audrey and Daniel. Then John. Then Hannah and then Matthew and Jackson. This is an amazing, tight family who get together nearly yearly or in some cases bi-yearly as we camp, play and celebrate the milestones of life. We celebrated my father’s retirement from Ford Motor Company with a family luau orchestrated mostly by Cheri that included a play written and directed by Shelly and Sara in which all the grandkids played out different scenes in my dad’s life. It was very cute and exactly how my Dad wanted to mark his retirement from Ford. At some point in the mid nineties my Dad developed Type 2 Diabetes. He continued to do gardening and many of the things that he had done while he was healthy, but now entered first battery of pills and then insulin injections. While the doctors told him that he had to lose weight, exercise more and eat better, my dad continued to do pretty much what he always did. He ate large, played large and did pretty much what he wanted to. Unfortunately with diabetes, these practices eventually led to kidney failure. The last year of his life was spent on dialysis and he was in and out of hospitals. My mom has been pretty much captive to the ins and outs of his illnesses, running dad to doctor’s appointments and to dialysis. In many ways this has been the fulfillment of her marriage vows to my father. For richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. How I wish he had taken the doctor’s advice. I wish to God that I didn’t see him wasting away and making life difficult for himself and my mother. But that’s what he did, and it was that decision not to take care of himself that cut his life off shorter than what it should have been. One of Joe’s favorite subjects to study was church history. Several years ago I bought him his first subscription to the magazine “Church History” and often would buy him books on Paul, the early church, and the history of the reformation. As I was thinking about my father and his legacy, my mind has been captured by John Wesley. In 1742 John Wesley went to Epworth England to the ancestral home of his Father Samuel. He had informed the pastor at St. Andrew’s the church that Samuel had served that he was going to be present and requested permission to help with the service. The pastor of the church did not honor this request. Instead, knowing that Wesley was present, he preached a sermon against what he considered enthusiasm and it was apparent that the sermon was designed to put down the Wesleyan revival that was occurring in the Church of England. So Wesley decided at that point that he would preach sermons from the grave of his father Samuel Wesley which was located in the cemetery that belonged to St. Andrews. His father had a large sepulcher that stuck up about three feet above the ground. Wesley climbed to the top of his father’s grave and preached a series of three sermons from that vantage points. Historians say that he drew large crowds to his father’s grave. Some indicated at one point that there were more living people in the graveyard than the dead. What Wesley did in those sermons was to lay out firmly how the Wesleyan revivals fit into the larger story of the church and to indicate that despite the claims to the contrary, he was firmly within Anglican and Biblical tradition. By preaching on his father’s grave you could say that John Wesley stood up and looked beyond what his dad was able to do and be more than what his father ever could be. That is my father’s legacy too. Today I am here because my father opened the door for me to be what I am. In many ways, I am still hurt by some of his actions, there have been times when he did not love my mother with the tenderness and the care she deserved. There were times he treated my sister and my brothers and me with a certain amount of contempt especially when the subject of his health was concerned or the antics he put us through. We wanted him to be different – to take care of himself and help alleviate the suffering that he caused people who loved him. But my father stood on the grave of his father. Compared to my grandfather, my dad looked out further and saw more than his father could ever have done. And today as I stand on my father’s grave, I look out even further. Because my dad chose to be different, I am capable of offering love, tenderness and care to my family and to the families of my brothers and sisters. And together we can be family and enjoy each other and accept each other in spite of our differences and occasion disputes. I know that some may have unfinished business with my dad. He was a complicated person with some very complicated relationships. There is always forgiveness, always love, always reconciliation and these things are always possible because my father is today living with the heart of our God. While he lived with us for 71 years, he was always God’s Child. In God’s presence there is no disease, no diabetes, no kidney failure or dialysis. In God’s presence congestive heart failure does not exist nor does sleep apnea. All are whole, and death and disease are no more. And so by drawing close to God and to each other we find the healing and the resolution our broken, hurting souls crave. And so I offer my dad to the keeping of God. May God guard his soul and receive him into the arms of his mercy. May he be granted the love and joy that every child of God deserves. And may he finally find the rest that his aching soul craved on earth in our great God and in the company of all the saints that have gone on before him. May God grant him these tender mercies and may God bless each one of us peace, love and comfort during this time of loss.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 14:36:26 +0000
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