(From the Janesville Messenger, 6-17-07)
Today’s column won’t delve into my usual topics of business, politics, the community, or slice-of-life observations.
Today’s column is about a man.
My father-in-law, Loren J. Risse, is a carpenter. He’s 80 now, having retired several years ago after a lifetime working for Milwaukee County, but his work never stopped. He is not the type to sit still. His post-“retirement” years have been spent working on a variety of carpentry projects, including working with Habitat for Humanity and carving birds.
Loren’s work has shaped his life. And he has used it to touch others’ lives. He built the house his children grew up in. He built his son’s house. He built his daughter’s house. He extensively remodeled another son’s house. He did several projects in our house.
Retirement did not dim Loren’s skills. Even though he got so good at carving that his work was of equal or better quality than carvings sold for hundreds of dollars, he always did his birds for gifts, never for money. Our living room is adorned with his work; a loon, a chickadee, a cardinal and an owl are daily reminders of his talent.
It comes as no surprise that Loren has always been strong in his Christian faith. Carpenters with a passion for serving others tend to stick together.
A devoted husband, a supportive father of six, Loren is the quiet, hard-working everyman that perfectly fits the profile of an American patriarch. He is the epitome of the work ethic and the devotion to family that you might expect of someone raised during the Depression. But he also has taken time to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Since retiring, he and his wife of 52 years have taken several trips around the world, seeing things that he probably never dreamed he would see while growing up on farms in rural Iowa and Upper Michigan.
Last year, when we were remodeling our dining room, Loren custom built a corner china cabinet for us. It was the first time I had noticed age having any kind of an effect on him. While he was working on it, he kept experiencing shortness of breath. Never had he been huffing and puffing like this. He commented that he felt like he had aged 10 years in a couple of months.
Little did we know at the time that our china cabinet would be his last major carpentry project. He was soon diagnosed with mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the lining of the lung. The only cause of this form of cancer is exposure to asbestos, which he and other workers unwittingly threw around like hay bales in the 1950s.
Loren has a silent way about him, but he is a fighter. There was never a doubt that he would take this on with every means available to him. He quietly accepted the horrible side effects that came along with the chemotherapy and experimental drugs meant to keep the cancer in check.
It has been hard to see this seemingly ageless dynamo get whittled down so quickly. We had hoped to have Loren over to our house for Father’s Day, to see how we finished the kitchen and dining room project of which his cabinet is the centerpiece. Instead, we will be going to his home, as he is no longer well enough to travel.
This Father’s Day, more than any one previous, Loren will know in no uncertain terms just how much his family loves and appreciates him. Of course, he has always known it, but it probably never has been expressed as emphatically as it will be this weekend.
I encourage each of you not to wait to let your father know just how much they have meant to your life. If you need a reason, let this weekend’s holiday be it.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
When Your Favorite Songs Are Safe Enough For Show Choir
(From the Janesville Messenger, 6-3-07)
A couple of months ago, I wrote in this space about how my latest birthday jolted me into a midlife crisis. Well, I’m pleased to say that I’ve moved on. I’ve now accepted my advancing age and the fact that things that seem like they happened yesterday are in reality ancient history.
Exhibit A to this self-realization occurred recently when I peeled a day off the daily sports calendar on my desk. Besides featuring a “This Day in Sports History” event, the calendar also lists the day’s sports birthdays. My eyes popped out of my head when the calendar said that Brooks Robinson, one of my childhood baseball heroes, was turning 70. I had to do the math to believe it. As a kid, I had a poster of Brooks on my bedroom wall, making one of his patented diving stops at third base. I watched Baltimore Orioles games on TV just to see him play. He is 70??
To add insult to injury, Reggie Jackson, one of my personal baseball villains, turned 61 the same day. I used to go to Milwaukee County Stadium when the New York Yankees were in town just to boo Reggie. But now he’s gone from the AL to the AARP.
Exhibit B occurred the following week when I attended my daughter Corinne’s final show choir concert of the year at Milton High School. Corinne plays trombone in the band, which means she’s relegated to the back, behind the singers and dancers. However, for this final performance, some extra numbers were added. In one, the horn section of the band got to take the stage for its own choreographed performance. So what songs did the horn section perform for their big debut? A medley of songs by the band Journey.
For those of you not familiar with Journey – like my daughter – they were big stars in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, in the genre now known as “classic rock.” Hearing them as part of a show choir performance was as jolting as the first time I heard a David Bowie song redone as elevator music. Of course, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised since this choir has been doing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” all year long, and for good measure, added “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas to their final show. Also not surprising was Corinne’s admission after the show that she had never heard any of the original versions of the songs she was performing.
When we got home, I looked up some old Journey videos on YouTube so she could get the full experience. I struck gold, finding the priceless old MTV video of their song “Separate Ways.” It’s priceless because it is hysterically bad. The over-dramatized expressions are unintentionally funny, and their apparent stab at intended humor consisted of pretending to play non-existent instruments, reminiscent of the days of “air bands.”
As for “Carry On Wayward Son,” her first reaction to the video was “Those guys have a lot of hair.” Her second was that she liked her show choir’s version better.
It turned out that song was a hit when I was 15, the same age Corinne is now. After the shocking realization that the song was 30 years old – and that I had seen Kansas in concert 27 years ago – I began to put things into perspective. “Carry On Wayward Son” is as far-removed from her era as “For Sentimental Reasons” by Nat King Cole was to mine in 1977. I want my daughter to think classic rock songs from the ‘70s are cool, but at 15, did I think Dinah Shore songs from the ‘40s were cool? Um...no.
To put it even further in perspective, 30 years before I was 15, rock and roll did not even exist as a form of music. Heck, it wasn’t even a twinkle in Chuck Berry’s eye.
So I guess I should be happy that my daughter’s age group is paying attention to the songs I loved as a teenager, even if they are now considered safe enough for show choir. Maybe I’ll invite Reggie Jackson to their next event and offer to buy his senior citizen discount ticket.
A couple of months ago, I wrote in this space about how my latest birthday jolted me into a midlife crisis. Well, I’m pleased to say that I’ve moved on. I’ve now accepted my advancing age and the fact that things that seem like they happened yesterday are in reality ancient history.
Exhibit A to this self-realization occurred recently when I peeled a day off the daily sports calendar on my desk. Besides featuring a “This Day in Sports History” event, the calendar also lists the day’s sports birthdays. My eyes popped out of my head when the calendar said that Brooks Robinson, one of my childhood baseball heroes, was turning 70. I had to do the math to believe it. As a kid, I had a poster of Brooks on my bedroom wall, making one of his patented diving stops at third base. I watched Baltimore Orioles games on TV just to see him play. He is 70??
To add insult to injury, Reggie Jackson, one of my personal baseball villains, turned 61 the same day. I used to go to Milwaukee County Stadium when the New York Yankees were in town just to boo Reggie. But now he’s gone from the AL to the AARP.
Exhibit B occurred the following week when I attended my daughter Corinne’s final show choir concert of the year at Milton High School. Corinne plays trombone in the band, which means she’s relegated to the back, behind the singers and dancers. However, for this final performance, some extra numbers were added. In one, the horn section of the band got to take the stage for its own choreographed performance. So what songs did the horn section perform for their big debut? A medley of songs by the band Journey.
For those of you not familiar with Journey – like my daughter – they were big stars in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, in the genre now known as “classic rock.” Hearing them as part of a show choir performance was as jolting as the first time I heard a David Bowie song redone as elevator music. Of course, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised since this choir has been doing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” all year long, and for good measure, added “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas to their final show. Also not surprising was Corinne’s admission after the show that she had never heard any of the original versions of the songs she was performing.
When we got home, I looked up some old Journey videos on YouTube so she could get the full experience. I struck gold, finding the priceless old MTV video of their song “Separate Ways.” It’s priceless because it is hysterically bad. The over-dramatized expressions are unintentionally funny, and their apparent stab at intended humor consisted of pretending to play non-existent instruments, reminiscent of the days of “air bands.”
As for “Carry On Wayward Son,” her first reaction to the video was “Those guys have a lot of hair.” Her second was that she liked her show choir’s version better.
It turned out that song was a hit when I was 15, the same age Corinne is now. After the shocking realization that the song was 30 years old – and that I had seen Kansas in concert 27 years ago – I began to put things into perspective. “Carry On Wayward Son” is as far-removed from her era as “For Sentimental Reasons” by Nat King Cole was to mine in 1977. I want my daughter to think classic rock songs from the ‘70s are cool, but at 15, did I think Dinah Shore songs from the ‘40s were cool? Um...no.
To put it even further in perspective, 30 years before I was 15, rock and roll did not even exist as a form of music. Heck, it wasn’t even a twinkle in Chuck Berry’s eye.
So I guess I should be happy that my daughter’s age group is paying attention to the songs I loved as a teenager, even if they are now considered safe enough for show choir. Maybe I’ll invite Reggie Jackson to their next event and offer to buy his senior citizen discount ticket.
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