For those of you who don’t know, my Dad died on September 29, 2025. Today is my first Father’s Day without him. I think about him every day, but for obvious reasons, moving toward this weekend, I’ve been thinking about him even more this week. Thinking about how much I miss him, for sure, but thinking about how lucky I was to have had him. Thinking about his laugh and his sense of humor. His huge heart and how much he loved all of us. Thinking about the myriad ways that he enriched my life and thinking about how sorry I am that friends I haven’t met yet will never get to meet him. So, I thought today I’d share the eulogy that I gave at my Dad’s funeral. And yes, that may seem a bit morbid, but it’s Father’s Day, so, today I’d love for you all to get to meet my Dad and this is the best way that I can share him with you.
“I’m assuming by now, you’ve all read my Dad’s obituary, and if you haven’t, you should. It’s a good read. My Dad was an incredibly accomplished man, and the amount of people who reached out and said they hadn’t realized the extent of his education or career, was vast. And while his education and his career is what brought him into the lives of many of you here today, it’s not why we, his family, loved him. So, let me tell you some things about my Dad, and some stories about what shaped my Dad, that maybe you didn’t know, or at least, didn’t know all of.
Most of you know that my Dad grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio. Ashtabula is a small, blue collar town up near Cleveland. He lived in an adorable little home that his parents took great pride in maintaining and making beautiful. Many of you know my Dad to be an avid Cleveland Browns football fan. And that is absolutely the case. The man had season tickets and for years would drive out to Cleveland, from NJ, at least two times a month to see the games. However, baseball was my father’s first love. My Dad’s father, Pete, whose actual name was Richard Humphrey…no idea where “Pete” came from, worked on the docks in the harbor and later in a factory, but he also played semi-professional baseball. My Dad spent many hours watching my grandpa pitch, and he frequently told the story of being in the stands, with my grandma, one warm, summer evening, and suddenly, there was a gunshot and everyone in the stands ducked. When they all refocused their attention on the field, they realized that Pete had thrown his pitch so hard, that he had broken his humerus, and that break had echoed through the stands, sounding like a gun. That was the end of Pete’s baseball career, but he continued to instill a great love of the game to my Dad, analyzing plays and explaining the choices that the coaches and players would make.
When I was a kid, we didn’t have a lot of money, but there were some things that my Dad would save for and splurge on: Twice weekly trips to the Morris County Mall to spend an hour with me in the arcade (his favorite game was Burgertime), buying books for the three of us at the Happy Booker, and tickets to baseball games, particularly Cleveland Indians, now Guardians. When we would go to the stadium, my Dad wouldn’t just watch the game. He always bought the program. And then we’d go to our seats, and inside that program, there was this graph that looked like a spreadsheet, and he would keep track, with his gold Cross pen that lived in his pocket, of every single pitch and hit and walk and steal and run. And later, at home, he’d go back over the game, looking at the stats, joy in his voice asking if I remembered this pitch or that play. Or, sometimes sorrow, because, let’s be real…Cleveland sports…but always with wonder. To my Dad, baseball wasn’t just a game…it was a puzzle to be analyzed and understood. Baseball, was life.
I think my grandma, Doris, had a lot to do with who my Dad became, as well. Doris grew up on a farm in Orwell, Ohio. She was brilliant and the story goes that she was her class valedictorian, but time and circumstance held her back from going to college. So, she went to beauty school and became a beautician. Eventually, she married Pete, and he built for her a small beauty shop in the front room of their home. So, my Dad spent hours, as a boy, listening to all of the neighborhood gossip as the women would come and sit in my Grandma’s shop and pour out their hearts as she curled and set their perms, colored their grays, and kept their secrets. I like to think that this is part of what drew my Dad to psychotherapy in the second half of his career. His mom was a great listener and didn’t often give advice, but knew how to lead you to your own conclusions about what would be best, and although it used to frustrate the heck out of me, something he would frequently say to me when I was struggling with something was “I think you already know what you need to do here.”
My Grandma Lawrence struggled with varicose veins and the pain became such that she couldn’t be on her feet all day, and so she downsized the shop to one chair, one sink, and one dryer, and moved the operation to the basement. And then, the woman who always had a book in her hand went back and became certified as a librarian, and if you knew anything about my Dad, I don’t really need to take this part of the story any further, as this is the origin story of Dave Lawrence, reader extraordinaire. His parents definitely shaped the man he would become and I find it no small coincidence that he died on the 38th anniversary of his mother’s death.
Baseball and books weren’t my Dad’s only passions, though. My Dad lived for music. When I was a child, my Dad would have the car radio consistently tuned to 101.1, CBS FM and we’d listen to Cousin Brucie playing hits from the 50’s and 60’s and he’d blast the music and yell to me “Amy! Listen to those trumpets!” or “Oh my god, that bass line!” And we’d sing at the top of our lungs as we drove. When my kids were little, my Dad would often help us out with getting the kids on the bus in the mornings, or picking them up after school, and they would always know when Grandpa had entered the neighborhood because they could hear the car coming up the hill far before they could see him. Julia was remembering recently, one day after dropping the kids off, as he drove away, he rolled down the windows, music blaring, yelling “Trumpets! Listen to the trumpets!” He always loved his DooWop, but his tastes evolved as music evolved. Records were always played in our home, from Broadway shows, Godspell and Shenandoah being two of his favorites, to his musical idols, Paul Simon, Linda Rondstadt, and Aaron Neville. “Kodachrome,” by Paul Simon was his absolute favorite, became my favorite, and became a song that my kids would dance and sing to when they were little. And listening to my Dad sing “I Don’t Know Much, but I Know I Love You,” a duet between Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville, is something that everyone should have been able to witness at least once in their lives.
Another little known fact about Dad is that he stole my Mom away from another man. His roommate in seminary, as a matter of fact. Ken played for the Princeton tennis team, and while he was away on a tournament, there were riots in Trenton where my Mom was getting her Master’s in Education, and my Dad went over to make sure she and her roommate were safe. And by the time Ken got back from the tournament a week later, Dave and Ellin had to have a chat with him. But considering they were married for 57 years, apparently, they were meant to be.
My Dad was a riot. He loved to laugh and he loved to make others laugh. As a small child, my Dad would carry me to bed at night, raise me high above his head, and throw me down on the mattress. I’d laugh and laugh and say “Again!” and he’d do it over and over again. He introduced me to comedy and between my Dad, my Mom, and I, we loved some good, ridiculous humor. My Dad loved a good practical joke. One time when I was in high school, Kim and Michaela and I were hanging out in my room while my parents were at the Shakespeare Festival, to which they were season ticket holders. All of the sudden, the lights went out in the house and Keebler, our black Lab, started barking. And then the barking stopped, and we heard these slow, plodding footsteps coming across the house. Terrified, we raced into my parent’s room and hid in the closet, me in the front, armed with my mother’s perfume. Slowly, the footsteps came up the stairs, creaking across the bedroom floor, and then the door flew open to my parents, standing there, laughing hysterically.
My Dad was a storyteller, which is probably why he was such a good preacher. Except, every story he told always seemed to fall in his favor. When the kids were little, my Dad was at the house one day and a bear walked by the sliding glass doors. That’s it. That’s what happened in reality. The bear walked by the sliding glass doors. However, every time my Dad told the story, the bear walked by the doors, my husband, Rob, screamed like a girl, ran and hid under the bed while my Dad went outside and wrestled the bear to the ground.
My Dad also had a dry sense of humor and was quick with a comeback. About 30 years ago, my Dad was driving Rob and I somewhere in the car and we were making a left off of Speedwell onto West Hanover at the St Virgil’s intersection. I don’t remember exactly what my Dad did, but another driver honked at him and put up two fingers. I said, “Hey Dad, he just gave you the peace sign!” My Dad very drily said, “Amer, I’m pretty sure he was saying ‘It’s two lanes, asshole.’” And THAT was my dad. And now I’ve said “asshole” in church…twice…but I think that, too, is fitting in a speech about things my Dad would have said and done. As far as ministers go, my Dad was a bit of a rebel. He liked to shake things up. Try something new. Say something unexpected, and make people think about their faith, God, and the church in non-traditional ways. He didn’t always tow the party line and wasn’t afraid to push back if he thought that perhaps what had always been done wasn’t necessarily the best way for something to be done. He was a creative, outside the box thinker, and I think that’s part of what kept ministry so fresh for him.
I’m pretty sure that none of you would guess my Dad’s two favorite television shows. I’ll let you think for a moment. Do you have your guess in your mind? Did any of you guess that it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the spin-off, Angel? Yeah, I didn’t think so. He owned both complete sets on DVD, and last winter, my Dad and I were in the process of rewatching Buffy. Last year, during one of his stints at rehab, my Dad found a channel on the tv that just played Buffy re-runs all day and I literally had to say to him, “I don’t care if Buffy is on…when they come to get you for physical therapy, you HAVE to go.”
I think my Dad loved Buffy because my Dad loved strong, empowered women. And Buffy fights for the underdog, as did my Dad. My Dad believed in standing up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves, something that I, again, believe stemmed from his childhood. He told the story of being in line with his Dad at the Dairy Queen that was at the end of their street. It was a hot, summer day, and in front of them was a woman with a small child. The child was obviously hot and tired and hungry and impatient to get their ice cream. The mom kept dragging the child along by the wrist, occasionally jerking him along and yelling at him. Suddenly, my Dad said, his father stepped forward, gently put his hand on the woman’s shoulder and said “I think that’s enough now.” And that’s how my Dad lived his life.
I told you that my Dad went to make sure my Mom and her roommate were safe during the riots after the assassination of MLK, Jr, but what I didn’t tell you was that to express your sympathy for the family and your outrage at the assassination, people were driving with their headlights on during the day. As he drove from Princeton to Trenton, he suddenly realized he was being tailed, and then the two men following him began to actually bump the back of his car with the front of theirs. After they did it twice, my Dad, unafraid, pulled over, as did they. They got out of their car, one of them holding a crowbar, which they used to smash one of his taillights and they proceeded to call him all sorts of names that you can imagine coward racists with a crowbar would call an unarmed man expressing sympathy for the Kings and support for the civil rights movement. My Dad stood his ground, and likely would have received a beating had a police car not driven by, then stopped, and the men got back in their car and drove away.
He practiced what he preached. My Dad put the blood in “bleeding heart liberal,” a trait that I proudly carry on today. Beginning when he worked with the Onondaga Tribe in upstate NY during he and my mom’s time in LaFayette in the late 60’s and early 70’s, my Dad became committed to Native American causes, something he would continue throughout his life to support. His concern and care for the oppressed, the hurt, the lonely, the lost, the poor, the sick, and the wayward lasted his entire life. I took over paying my parent’s bills a few years ago, and I was overwhelmed by the causes that my father supported financially. Wounded Warriors. The ACLU. Oxfam. Feed the Children. Habitat for Humanity. Global Refuge. Parkinson’s Foundation. Native American Veteran’s Assistance. March of Dimes. American Indian Education Fund. United Farm Workers. The United States Holocaust Museum. Planned Parenthood. International Fund for Animal Welfare. PBS. Friends of the Smithsonian. The Union of Concerned Scientists. Feeding America. Veterans of Foreign Wars. Soaring Eagle. Library of America. The American Diabetes Association. Mt Pleasant Animal Shelter. Alice Lloyd College. Susan G. Komen. Pancreatic Cancer Research. World Food Program. St. Labre Indian School. St. Joseph’s Indian School. The American Heart Association. UNICEF. St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. And I’m going to stop here, but you need to understand, this list goes on and on. These are all charities that my father supported for years and years. And when I sat him down and said “Perhaps we could start making choices about who to support, because you and Mom also need your money,” his response was always “There are people who need things far more than we do. What good is it to have it if you aren’t using it to help someone who needs it?”
So, forgive me the length of this discussion, but if you ever heard my Dad preach, you’ll realize I inherited my Dad’s lack of knowing when to wrap it up. The night before he passed, the Guardians completed the biggest comeback in regular season league history, and as I made sure the hospital had the MLB channel on in his room 24-7, he got to hear it. I hope you learned something new about my Dad today. And when you go home, turn your music up, roll down your windows…and listen to those trumpets.”
Leave a Reply