Dad's Eulogy

The following is the eulogy - or the closest approximation I could write from memory - of the eulogy I gave at my dad's funeral. Speaking at my dad's funeral is one of the most fucked up experiences I never imagined. It's still not real.

Eulogy in remembrance and celebration of the life of Steven Delivered by his son, Nicholas, in February XX, 2025 First of all, on behalf of my family, I want to thank all of you for supporting us these last couple weeks as we mourn & for coming here today to celebrate my dads life. To me, my Dad was always my hero - my superhero without a cape. My whole life, he has taught me how to live. He has done this through his words and through his actions. He has really been a leader in every sense of the word. Very few people really know and understand themselves well enough to write down their personal mission statement, write down their core values, much less print them and share them with people. But that's just who he was. He was confident and wanted to live by his values, and to share them with others. This was his personal mission statement: To be a present and loving husband, father, sibling and friend. For my words to align with my actions. To be a child of God and a spiritual leader who lays the right path for others. His core values were spirituality, truth, health, love - that's what we all think of when we think of my Dad, the love he shared - respect, effort, and growth. Dream Big! Dream. Big. Every letter or note I received from my dad, from the first to the last was signed "Dream Big -Dad". He was a visionary; he wanted me to dream the way he dreamed, he never wanted me to restrict my growth. For me and for y'all who knew my Dad, we know the theme song of his life, from the age of 17, was "Juke Box Hero." It's a song that talks about a boy who starts out with nothing, who's broke and in the rain, can't even get into the show. But he has a vision, he has a dream. He has the clarity to see the best version of himself. He can see the fruits of making the right choices, over and over again. He has that vision. Now on paper, not many people would think that the youngest of six children from the small town of Sunset, raised by a strong single mom, would be able to fill this church and touch the hearts and lives of so many people. But I'm sure my Dad did - he always had high expectations of himself. For my Dad, there was more to accomplishment than just dreaming - you had to believe in yourself. He believed he was great, he believed you are great - he wanted me to believe that I was great. One of his favorite quotes was from Pope Benedict XVI. In Dad's typical fashion he would tweak the quote a bit and change it from the second person to the first person. So my Dad's version goes like this: "While the world offers me comfort, I was not built for comfort - I was built for greatness. So be great!" And that's what he was. He never thought he was incapable of achieving his dream. He never wanted me to feel I was incapable of achieving my dream. Throughout my life, for every accomplishment of my life, he was always there. He was a fantastic Dad - he was there to celebrate me. I still remember making my first hoop in basketball, and he lifted me up afterwards and said, "You're the first Dxxxx ever to score points in a basketball game!" That's who he was - he wanted to encourage you, to lift you up. He was also there for the times when I didn't succeed. He wanted to make sure that I didn't give up on that belief in myself, that I wouldn't give up on my vision. But the dreams and the confidence are still only two pieces of the puzzle. You have to be a man of action. That what he taught me and displayed so well by the way he lived - he was always a man of action. I remember when I was young and he was studying great leaders of the past, he read this impossibly big book about Teddy Roosevelt, and it had this passage from Teddy about "the man in the arena." That struck a chord in my Dad - the man in the arena. He would always tell me about that. "Don't worry about what people say," he said. "Just be the man in the arena - experience the fight, experience the victory. It tastes better than staying on the sidelines." He loved that quote so much that he printed it, framed it, and hung it next to his bed. So when he got up every morning, that was the first thing he saw: What am I going to be in the arena fighting for today? Then he would brush his teeth, get coffee, and read the bible. So dream big, believe in yourself, be a man of action... "No fear" is the next tenant he instilled in me from a young age. He was more precise with No Fear than Dream Big. Dream Big was written all over. But No Fear was written anywhere I might be timid. When I first started playing youth football, I looked like I do now, just smaller - 50 pounds, maybe. I was nervous about getting hit, so I remember him writing "No fear!" inside my helmet. So before I would go into the game, I would look down and that's what I would see: "No fear!" When my Dad was young, he listened a lot to the motivational talks of Zig Ziglar. I'm not sure if anybody is familiar with Zig, but he had a saying that "FEAR" can stand for one of two things: "Forget Everything And Run," or "Face Everything and Rise." That's who my Dad was - he did not shy away from difficulty or fear, he would rise up. He had a way of taking a negative emotion like fear and making it an opportunity for growth. He would always find the good spin on things. A few weeks ago, the weekend before the accident, he stood where I am standing here in church. You see, Mary Queen of Peace was about to open up reservations for its Men's Retreat - which still has spots available, I believe, so I highly recommend you sign up! His job in this retreat was to recruit - to be a shepherd and bring people to this Men's Retreat to get them closer to God. He took his job seriously, so he stood up at the 4:00 pm Mass on Saturday and gave his pitch, then did the same at the 9:30, then again at 11. I was blessed to have a nice conversation with him before the 6 o'clock Mass and he said, "Man, I don't know what happened at the 11:00 ass, but I didn't get any applause - nobody clapped for me!" I said, "Dad, I don't think people clap in church, it's not a really typical thing." And he said "Nick, you don't understand - I gave a great speech! They clapped for me at 4, they clapped for me at 9:30 - I don't know what I did wrong!!" You know, a lot of people might get dismayed by not getting the response you expect, might start questioning themselves, but not my Dad. He was motivated, he was thinking about it and ready to go at the 6 o'clock Mass, to bring people to the faith to the best of his ability. And sure enough, he did get that applause - and he was just so fired up and energized afterwards. Energy... Anytime I looked to my Dad when I had to make difficult choices, when I wasn't sure what to do, he would say to me, "Nick, which choice brings you energy? What energizes you? Just do what brings you energy and, if you live by good principles, that will guide you correctly to the right choice, that will take you where you need to go." When his Mom - Honey - moved from St. Landry Parish, he told me she really wanted to bring some of the dirt from St. Landry for planting the gardens at her new home. Dad would say that St. Landry has this dirt that anything will grow in - you didn't even have to be a good gardener! Any seed that lands in this dirt will grow. If you simply existed & did nothing, beautiful flowers and trees would grow, but the weeds grew as well. My Dad would say that, if you tended to your plants, you would have a beautiful garden. He would tell me, "Nick, your mind is like that St. Landy parish soil. You need to be careful of the thoughts that you have - you tend to the good thoughts, tend to the good beliefs, and pluck the bad ones. Sometimes you may not know if it's a weed or not, and that's OK - life is messy. But once you know what's right, tend your garden - take care of your mind." I really feel he lived by those words, and he came to see all the good that came from 60 years of tending to his mind and making the right choices. He had a genius for generosity. I'll give you an example. He was a financial adviser - so he likes a good return on investment - a "fixer" - he liked to fix things and he loved to help people. One Christmas, this church was filled, packed just like it is now. My sister - he called her the producer - was pregnant with on e of her kids and had a child with her. She arrived just before Mass was going to start - its hard to get out the house with babies - and of course its packed and she can't get a place to sit. She was going to sit on the floor of the cry room until my Dad made room and gave up his seat. But that stuck with him. A few months go by, and Mary Queen of Peace has a fundraising auction to raise money for the great work they do in the community. My dad goes and sees an item that clicks in his head.. One of the auction prizes says, "Reserve any pew for Christmas Mass." So he makes a generous donation & picks the largest pew. Next Christmas comes around, and he's excited with his idea. Our family takes up half the pew, but Dad holds off the other half... he waits and waits until Mass is almost ready to start, then goes to the back and searches out a woman with kids who can't find anywhere to sit. So he invites her and escorts her up to sit with us in our pew. It was gifts like that that really defined who my Dad was. My dad said to never end meetings with homework, but I'm going to break that rule and give you all an assignment. Find someone here who you don't know, and ask them for an example of my Dad's generosity. I bet you are going to be amazed by the stories you hear, there are so many different stories of how he touched so many lives. That's really who he was. My Dad believed that there was no point in raising himself up if he didn't raise other people up with him. There was no point in joy if he didn't share it with others. And he lived by it - he lived by it. I was going through his books, and he wrote these words in one of these books: "I want to leave the world a better place than when I arrived." I believe all of us here today can agree that he achieved that mission - that this world is a little bit better, that we are all a little bit better because my Dad, Steven, touched our lives.