To be given all this -
My incredible life
Day after day of secret blessings
To be held from the beginning
In such loving, holy hands.
How can I not be lucky?
How can I not trust love?

• Sheila O'Connor

Good Morning Fellow Sojourners! We bury Dave today. It has been such a joy to know Dave and see his return to faith and friendship. While I am deeply saddened by his unexpected passing, I am so thankful I had the opportunity to know him. I am thankful for the gift he brought into my life and the gift I was able to share with him. He made so many new friends at our parish family, communion, community, it all melds together when people are brought together in love. Faith opened the door to Dave's growing hope and experience of love. It expanded the goodness in his heart and perhaps brought about a little more illumination to his thoughts.

FROM HIS OBIT: David was a proud American and was always sporting patriotic and veteran apparel. He was a devoted Catholic and when not at the range or with his family, he could be found doing something within the parish or Knights of Columbus. David was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed hunting and fishing, especially if it was with family or friends. David was a huge hockey fan! He not only followed the Saint Louis Blues, but every minor league team in the area. Not content to be a fan, he was an off-ice official for both UHL teams, the River Otters and Chill. He shared this love with family and welcomed the opportunity to teach the younger family members all about the sport. Continuing the sports theme, David attended every sporting event his children and grandchildren participated in for the past 50 years, even coaching at times.

Dave had a wide circle of friends and was loved by so many. He was not without his challanges. I have seen it so many times in ministry when one can have wonderful relationships outside of the family and have strained and constrained ones within the family. Family relationships can be so complicated and our history with them can often make it all the more difficult. I was hoping with more time I may have helped Dave with some of to complicartions in those relationships. His children are very gracious in his passing, but I knew from Dave's comments over the years that it was more of a peace treaty with some of them rather than familial reconciliation.

Authority jockeying seems to be one of the real banes of family relationships, relations trying to exercise it over other adults without any respect for the fact they are dealing with another adult. It can be parents unwilling to treat adult children as adults, older siblings convinced that more time on the clock gives them greater or unquestioned authority, sometimes even adult children towards aging parents believeing that that they "know better." It makes for such a mess that it not easily addressed.

I am not saying that Dave had issues with that, but he was a commanding personality with strong convictions. He never staopped being an Army Captain. I suspect like many, he thought any softening of the edges was a sign of weakness or a concession. I am not sure he thought that there were other paths one could walk in life and still be headed in a good direction. I think there was a dawning to that reality, but it was held in question and with a raised eyebrow. There was a gradual mellowing, the prescence of new friends, the daily polishing of edges and nudges of faith to reexamine life.

Dave knew THIS - as mentioned above in the poem. I knew THIS from my friendship with him. I will miss his hearty laugh, his love of the ideal of our Nation even if we have drifted far from that in the current chapter. I appreciated his skepticism about careerists in the government or even the church. He had great respect for people in the field, and almost none for those serving the bureaucracy, be it the army, government or church. He was proud of his involvement with the NRA, Missouri Conservation and various guns stores in the local area. In these last few years post retirement, he was a daily Mass celebrator and was part of the old man's gathering before Mass. I was a junior member. 😉 We had many laughs and much head shaking before Mass as we shared our "highly treasured opinions" and "insightful observations" about the current state of things. Poker won't be the same in his abscence and Wednesday Kuene Time will be a litttle more quiet without his booming voice and noticable laugh. BUT, and it is a big but, I am so thankful for the opportunity to know that I will miss in him rather than to have never known him at all. Peace and thanks for sticking this one out if you made it to the end. - Frair Tom