The River Will Find Its Way

January 20, 2019

Eulogy for James R. Gregory

May 9, 1938 – December 29, 2018

First United Methodist Church

Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio

One of the consoling things about a sad time like this, is remembering old stories.

Jessie, Tim, and I never knew my Dad’s Dad, he died a few years before we were born. But a few years ago, I asked my Dad to tell me about his Dad, and the very first anecdote he told seems fitting in today’s weather.

My Grandfather’s name was Judge Belle Gregory. (Judge was his first name, not a title.) Everyone called him Jay. Jay, like legions of Akronites, came up from Kentucky, by himself, to work in the rubber mills. So we know very little about the Gregory side of the family.

The very first story my Dad told me, was that my grandfather Jay was a hard worker. When it snowed in Akron, and the streetcars were not, and the High Level bridge was inaccessible, my grandfather walked all the way from my Dad’s house in the River Estates in Cuyahoga Falls to the family business, the Hosfield Shoe Store on the North Hill of Akron, at Temple Square. That’s about 13 miles.

That seems to be an apt story for today. I think my Dad, and his Dad, would appreciate your efforts to be here today in this inclement weather. And so do we.

Eulogy: The River Finds its Way

My Dad relished growing up along the Cuyahoga River.

It was a newly built neighborhood called The River Estates, where he lived with his father Jay, his Mom Hildegarde, his sister Sue, and his brothers Grover, Mickey, and Jeff. His grandmother Caroline also came to live with them, bringing all of her many books, and her dictionary stand, which held the family Bible.

During my Dad’s childhood, The River Estates consisted of just a few dozen brick houses, constructed in the 1920s.

The Great Depression and the Great War brought a stop to further construction. The rest was oak trees and wilderness, and half shells of unfinished houses. A pickle factory at Hudson Drive and Gaylord Grove scented the entire woods and neighborhood with the aroma of brine, which considering the state of the river at the time, was probably a good thing. All of this was my Dad’s fascinating playground, practically his backyard, and he loved every inch of it.

My Dad and his friends played in the ruins of those unfinished houses. They canoed to Goose Egg Island, swam in the swimming hole at Kelsey Creek, and dove from the high dive into the newly constructed Olympic size pool at Water Works Park.

And, oh, that house on Oak Park Boulevard.

In a family history my Great Aunt Miriam wrote, the house on Oak Park Boulevard "was big and elegant compared to any house I had known, and the Gregories opened their home on holidays and we all ate and had such a good time." (My grandma Hildegarde was an amazing cook.)

There were photo Christmas cards with my Dad’s older Sister, Sue, playing then baby grand piano my grandfather Jay had bought her.

My grandfather ran the prosperous shoe store my great grandfather Henry Louis Hosfield founded. It was said that the Hosfield Shoe Store on North Hill was not only a purveyor of fine footwear for the entire family, but also the sort of place neighbors used to like to just stop in just to say hello.

There was always a pot of coffee in the back storeroom, a warm stove, and usually a card game going on.

My Dad helped out in the shoe store as a teenager, and I have to think that experience of being helpful to customers, of keeping the shelves well-stocked, and making the store a home away from home for both customers and employees was one of the reasons he loved his “retirement” job at the Home Depot so much.

That, and he got to perform his legendary cheerleading skills. (He is somewhat Youtube famous for his Home Depot cheer.)

But those good times on Oak Park Boulevard could not last forever.

The pressures of running the family business, took toll on my grandfather Jay.

He had a debilitating stroke at 40.

The Gregorys lost the store.

The Gregorys lost the house.

By 1954, the world of my Dad’s family had shattered.

But you would never know it from my Dad’s High School yearbook.

The entire inside back and front covers were devoted to a day in the life of Jim Gregory.

There is Jimmy in the cafeteria line.

There is Jim in the school play.

There is James presiding over the student council. There is Jim Gregory in his letterman jacket, with letters from three varsity sports.

These were not empty resume building activities. Jim put his entire heart into every thing he ever did.

In the fall of 1954, above a big picture of my Dad with full game face on, the Falls News posted a preview of the Black Tiger football season:

They wrote, “Crashing the line tomorrow evening when the Black Tigers meet Akron Central in the Greater Akron Preview will be halfback Jim Gregory. Now in his second year of varsity football, Gregory is known as a fine competitor on both offense and defense. A junior at Falls High, he is oftentimes called the “spark-plug” of the team.”

That was my Dad. Never do anything halfway. Play offense as well as defense.

His freshman year, before he made the varsity team, he changed his uniform quickly and also played the trombone (badly) at halftime in the marching band.

Forgive me for just a moment if I brag just a little bit on my Dad.

And my dad was so resilient.

He had the strength of a large and loving extended family. The Hosfield, Gregory and Phillips cousins have a closeness that is inspiring to those of us from later, more dispersed generations. They continue to hold each other up through difficult times.

Taking time off to help his family, and earn tuition money, my Dad worked hard to put himself through college. But he did, twelve years after his high school graduation, graduate, with honors, from Ohio State University.

And what a great Dad he was.

Dropping one of my friends off after a weekend at Camp Manatoc, when my Dad was the Cubmaster, my friend turned to me and said, “You are SO lucky. Mr.Gregory gets to be your Dad every day.”

I wish you could hear him read a story. My brother and sister and I would pile on his lap. To hear him read the Tale of Benjamin Bunny was to be transported to another world.

But that was just the start of it. Our house was so full of books. Wall to ceiling with them.

And such good, and difficult books they were.

My Dad had a complete set of 1954 Encyclopedia Britannica. Onion skin paper, small print, smelled of must.

He always preferred that we do our school reports from them, rather than the more mundane World Book encyclopedias they had in the school library.

Learn the hard words first. That was my Dad’s mantra.

When I was in the second grade, our Sunday school teacher asked us to bring a bible to class every week. The church would give us a bible in third grade, up until then we had to fend for ourselves.

My Dad offered me his King James Bible, from North Hill Church of Christ. I loved the arcane language, and the fact that it was my Dad’s.

He said it was better to learn the hard words first, and that they were more poetic. My Dad absolutely loved poetry.

Likewise, he made my brother, my sister and I take our drivers test on a stick shift.

He said, someday in life you might be required to drive a tractor.

My Dad’s boyhood in the wilds of the River Estates made an impression on him. He wanted my brother and I to have a similar experience.

He drove us down to a used lumberyard near the airport. We bought sheets of pre-used plywood and recycled 2 X 4’s. We brought them home, treated them with Thompson’s Water Seal and redwood stain from Clarkins. My Dad instructed us to dig the footers, two feet deep. That was the extent of his involvement. The subsequent design and construction was entirely up to Tim and I.

That clubhouse stood, probably to the chagrin of our 7^th Street neighbors, for well over two decades.

Many in this room have probably attended a sporting event with my Dad. It could be his beloved Ohio State Buckeyes. It could be the Black Tigers. It could be any of the sporting events featuring any of his six grandsons.

My Dad was an exuberant cheerleader.

He was not an obnoxious sports fan. Never dissed the referees, never criticized the opposing team. He merely shouted his encouragement. His LOUD encouragement. And the nicknames he made up for all of his favorite players. (Many of whom were his six grandsons.)

One of my earliest memories is getting to go to Friday night football games at Clifford Stadium. My Dad was a volunteer ticket taker in the reserved seating section. I was a very small child, and so excited that I would get to help my Dad tear ticket. I didn’t understand anything that was happening on the field.

But I remember my Dad’s unbridled enthusiasm.

He hollered for the hometown players by name when one of them made a good play.

He cheered for the marching band. He cheered for the cheerleaders.

He sang the Alma Mater with full throated gusto, loudly and off key: "As we stand with heads uncovered, on this hollowed ground...."

In retrospect absolutely nothing was at stake. The Black Tigers were rarely in contention for anything, we didn't know any of the players personally. What mattered was that my Dad was fully present, in that moment, with his son.

So much of my childhood was like that: epic, important, memorable, because my Dad was there, and he made it seem that way.

I am sure most everyone in this room has had one of those magic Jimmy moments, when he cheered you on, and made you feel like the most important person in the world. He made everything seem so epic.

My Mom’s birthday is December 21^st, and December 20^th was always an epic journey. In my memory it was always a blinding snowstorm, and the second longest night of the year. But there we were, braving slippery Smith Road Hill, on the way to Summit Mall, so he could get my Mom a gift at Polsky’s. He loved my Mom so much. And wanted her to know it. And she had such enduring love for him. Rarely does a love story in real life look anything like a Disney fable. My Mom and Dad’s 56 years of marriage is a love story in real life.

It sounds like a parody of a Barbara Walters interview question:

If you were a river, what river would you be?

Most of us would probably choose a big river, or an important river, or a wild and scenic river.

But at the end of the day, most of us are probably more like my Dad’s beloved Cuyahoga: a small river, a twisted river, a river not always entirely sure of its course. A river sometimes prone to catch on fire.

That’s the risk of growing up in a river town: you fall in love with the river that is, not the river as you think it should be.

That my Dad could find so much beauty in such a flawed and damaged river is one of the great enduring lessons of my life.

When my Dad fell in love with the Cuyahoga River the 1940s, there were pipes of sewage flowing directly into it.When he taught us to love it in the 1970s, it was full of toxic chemicals.  

A poet once told us: We must try to praise this mutilated world.

My Dad most certainly did.

Today the river is cleaner than it has been in any of our lifetimes.

It is looking increasingly likely that some of us will live to see the big concrete dam come down, the natural cascading falls the Native Americans called “Coppicaw” restored. That is something my Dad would have loved to see.

We all miss Jim so much.

It’s like going down to the river, and seeing that your favorite landmark boulder is suddenly  gone.

In in the boulders absence, the river has changed its course. But the river finds its way.

And so will we, better people because we were lucky enough to know Jim, and feel the warm embrace of his exuberant love for us all.