(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.
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