Today will be tiring. Visitation is at 2-4 and then at 6-8. I was up late last night trying to get together a few pictures and label them + put together a timeline story of his oil company from '58 to about '84. He was the Gulf oil distributor here in Grand Rapids. My dad was working during the winters hauling fuel oil to homes. During the rest of the year he worked with his father on the farm. Around '58, our barn burned. It was more of a storage type barn with no cattle stalls. But was full to the ceiling on one side with second cutting (the better of the two cuttings) hay and then on the other side was an elevated straw mow with tools underneath. At the end was a three segmented grainery full of oats and wheat. On the barn floor was the large tools like the combine, corn picker and elevator. A neighbor down the road and down the hill saw a bolt of lightning split and hit both ends of the barn at the beginning of a storm. Oddly no rain had even fallen. As we were so far from the nearest fire station, they were only able to save the chicken coop that was maybe 15' away. The burning beams under the grain smoldered for weeks and stunk something awful, like burnt oatmeal. Finally my dad put on his high boots, took a grain shovel and began shoveling the grain over while I soaked it with water. We finally put out the fire.
Anyway with the insurance check, he for the first time in his life had a chunk of money. So when Gulf offered the business to him, he took up the offer. He and my mom had never worked in an office in their life and had little knowledge of what it took to run a business. Fortunately one man already in the office for Gulf, accepted my dad's proposal to become his partner for free. Between them all, the business thrived and grew. My dad was a "working fool", it has been said. He would take the tanker home at night and get up at 3AM and drive an hour to Muskegon where the various fuels were stored and fill up the tanker and come back to Grand Rapids to be ready to "start work" at 8. My mom and I would leave home at 7 and go to the office where I took a bus to work at the bank at 8:30. I didn't want to work for my dad as I knew what he'd expect. Maybe if I had made different choices, I'd be retired from an oil company instead of a bank.
Around '83, mother and daddy retired to Florida and the business was eventually sold to a local fuel company named Crystal Flash. The rest of his life was spent volunteering at Christian camps, churches, and helping missionaries as much as he could. In fact many of you will remember when he was run over by a truck in 2005 while working at a kid's camp. He never really regained his strength after that and couldn't drive. That was the beginning of the end for him I think.
He was a man who served God, family, and mankind. He lived a long, hardworking, productive life.
