This is the eulogy that I delievered at Dana's memorial service in the fall of 2001:
Dana’s favorite author was Kurt Vonnegut. I think he owned every book that Vonnegut ever wrote. This is part of a piece by Vonnegut that appeared in a September 1996 issue of HARPER’S MAGAZINE. He’s writing about the simple act of mailing a letter. “So I go to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it's my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where I'm secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I've had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different.”
Had he been able to fulfill his dream of retirement, Dana would have farted around. He would have had time to go to a newsstand to buy a magazine and a lottery ticket, to go to the post office and secretly admire the young lady behind the counter, he might even have enjoyed that conversation with the cop after his pocket had been picked out on the wharf. I know I’m going to miss farting around with Dana when I retire. I’d really been looking forward to that.
Dana had been my best friend for 42 years and one month when he died. We met in homeroom in September 1959 at Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane, Washington. Mrs Cunningham was the home economics teacher; she had the unlucky fate of being assigned to the homeroom that had all the K’s. Tom Keigley was there (Mrs Cunningham always called him KEEGly, so when she called the roll, Tom would never answer), as was Stuart Kimball who could be mistaken for today’s Drew Carey. Harley Kolstad and Rudy Karg and I formed the nucleus of the bowling team. At least that’s the way I remember it.
Dana had an old Chevrolet--I don’t know which year--but it was faded maroon and we dubbed it the Red Bomb. Dana was the first in our group to get his license. He drove me and my friends everywhere. One night, after leaving the Triple X drive-in (the name had nothing to do with dirty movies and we went there because the Triple X had the cutest carhops--yah, as if any of us had a chance!)--anyway, one night one of us, certainly not me, exercised poor judgment and gave the finger to the guys in a car that had pulled along side us. Bad move. They returned the gesture and sped up, we thought, to move in front of us, block us, and stop us for what we assumed would be a sound beating. Somehow Dana urged the Red Bomb to give more than any of us thought possible. They chased us all the way up the south hill in Spokane to Manito Park, which had a lot of twisting, narrow, one-way roads, trails, really. At one point the road made a sharp hairpin turn. Dana “punched it” as we called it in those days, and the Red Bomb went airborne. We literally flew off the upper part of the hairpin and landed on the lower part, thereby conveniently skipping the turn--and leaving our pursuers behind for good. At least, that’s the way I remember it.
My wife Marsha and Dana’s daughter Rhea asked me if I was going to talk about any of our college pranks--pranks for which we both received letters of censure and the threat that would be expelled from our dormitory at the University of Washington. We did the usual: tying a rope between opposite doorknobs in the hallways so that the victims in both rooms could not open their doors; going into rooms to put shaving cream on the ear pieces of phone receivers, then calling the unwary residents when they returned for the evening. Our simplest, but most annoying prank involved a paddle ball, one of those things that has a small rubber ball attached to a ping pong paddle by an almost infinitely stretching rubber string. Our room was across the hall from that of the head resident. Dana and I would sit at our desks with our door open, then “knock” on Dick Simpkins door with a well-aimed flick of the paddle. [We made him suffer just because of his name, which lent itself to all sorts of ridicule.] Dick would come to the door to find no one there. We, in plain sight, would be studying, much to Dick Simpkins’ relief because he felt responsible for guiding us and we had convinced him that we would flunk out in the first term. Dicky returned to his room, a few minutes later to hear another “thwack” at his door. What really puzzled him was that the floor of our corridor was cold linoleum tiles and he never heard anyone running away from the door. We know that, because he came to us to ask us to keep an eye out for who might be teasing him. Dana and I solemnly agreed to help. Door shuts. Pause. “THWACK.” At least, that’s the way I remember it.
Dana loved what are now affectionately called “oldies”: the Supremes, the Shangri-las, the Four Seasons, the Beach Boys, Del Shannon, Mitch Ryder. So do I, to the point that one Christmas vacation that Dana spent with us one of the other faculty members on the campus of the boarding school where I teach called security because she thought that my son was having a raucous party, when in fact it was only Dana and I vocalizing and dancing in the living room. At least, that’s the way I remember it.
Dana hated inconsistency, while being the very embodiment of it sometimes. He just couldn’t understand why people did so many things that just didn’t make sense to him. Yet, one day when we were visiting him he ran out of canned tomatoes and garlic and it took him close to an hour to get back from his grocery run. “Dana, where WERE you?” “Well,” he said, “I bought the tomatoes at the Co-op but their garlic didn’t look good, so I went to Safeway for the garlic. Then I noticed that the tomatoes I bought for 69 cents were 59 cents at Safeway. So I bought two cans for 59 cents at Safeway and took the other two cans back to the Co-op.” By my reckoning, a grand total savings of 40 cents. If that’s not farting around, I don’t know what is. At least, that’s the way I remember it. I
The four happiest days of Dana’s life were the day he got married, the day that his daughter Rhea was born, the day he and Rhea and Vanessa were able to move into the new house, and the day of Dana’s installation as Kiwanis’s California-Nevada Lieutenant Governor. Rhea has always been Dana’s anchor. It is from Dana that Rhea gets her sense of humor, her total lack of pretension, her kindness. Rhea inherited her love of literature and her musical ability from her mother but I know that Dana was pleased to see that Rhea’s classical music education had equipped her to play covers of the Rolling Stones.
When his marriage ended, Dana, in his devastation, needed some confirmation of his good self. Rhea embodied Dana’s affirmation of his own self-worth. He also sought counseling and he began a quest for his roots. He developed an intense interest in his family’s genealogy, going on-line, contacting long-lost relatives, putting pieces together so that he could confirm his place in a personal world that had drastically changed. But the thing that really rescued Dana--and he needed rescuing--was Kiwanis. It was the embrace of him from that organization that gave Dana new roots, and his embrace of it that brought him to the position of Lieutenant-Governor in which, thankfully, he was able to serve, if only briefly.
Thus, four of Dana’s qualities really stick out in my mind: first, his sense of service to others and his desire to establish honest, caring, even loving relationships, with everyone to whom he offered himself--to soldiers at Hunter-Liggett to whom he taught elementary math and reading skills, to Girl Scouts, to Kiwanis, to his customers. Dana always placed people above paperwork, which annoyed some of the “suits” at Sherwin-Williams, but that philosophy is what built the downtown Monterey store and kept customers coming back in Seaside; second, his unconditional and absolute adoration and joy in all that Rhea did; third, his refusal to accept anything at face value, his ability to recognize and deflate pretense, foolishness, and ego; and fourth, rising out of that, his ability to laugh at himself.
Harriet Doerr, author of a wonderful little book called STONES FOR YBARRA, said in an interview: “I believe that when people die, they’re not transported to a cloud, or anywhere else. And the thought of repeating life again [in some sort of incarnation] sounds to me awfully exhausting....But what I do believe is that, during your life, everything you do, and everyone you meet, rubs off in some way. Some bit of everything you experience stays with everyone you have every known, and nothing is lost. That’s the eternal, these little specks of experience in a great, enormous river that has no end.”
The river of Dana’s life did flow and did touch so many. Of the billions of people who have inhabited this earth, very few have been remembered for their goodness--many for their art, for their athletic accomplishments, for their atrocities, or for their evil--but very few for their goodness. Such is the way of the world. But seeing the effects that the specks and bits of goodness in Dana’s life had on 100, maybe 200, maybe 500 of those billions comforts me. None of us can ask for more.
I didn't know Dana well but after the 30th reunion we did have a few telephone conversations. I wish I had known him better. What a loving tribute Roger wrote. Sorry I missed out on more of Dana's friendship.
Roger, your memories of Dana brought up some of mine also. Of course I remember him from band, the games, the trips - his smile and laughter. However, another memory still makes me wonder how some of us survived high school. You referred to his car, and it made me think of a night after some band event. I was driving up the hill on Grand when his car came up beside me. I don't remember who was driving it, but he was in the passenger side. He opened his window to say something, so I did the same. All of a sudden he threw himself out his window and grabbed onto the ledge of my open window - straddling the distance between the two moving cars. Somehow, we managed to slow down together and get him back into his car. I still remember my panic - and yet still see him with a big grin on his face as he laughed all the way through it.
I'm so glad he had you and your friendship in his life as he tried to fight off the demons of depression. I hope he has found his peace now.
I remember Dana as the most fun and least pretentious person I ever sat beside in an LC class. He and I were seat mates for two years in Mr. Black's journalism class and had subdued conversations about every irony and absurdity that Mr. Black missed (and there were quite a few!). The fact that I still read the newspaper and news magazines from cover to cover is due to the competition Dana and I had over Friday journalism quiz grades - not that we were that academically inclined then over the news, but it was a challenge to ferret out every little bit of back-page facts that might be thrown at us. My last big memory of Dana was senior prom night. He and I were helping to set up decorations and photography settings. The rest of the kids were going to the prom and so they asked if Dana and I (who were not going) could finish up. I remember walking out the door with him and turning out the lights. He drove me home (past Manito park) and we stopped for an Orange Julius. My senior non-prom night has caused me to smile to myself from time to time during these last fifty years. It still makes me smile but now with a twinge of sadness.
Roger Klausler
Kay Mikoski (Pihl)
I didn't know Dana well but after the 30th reunion we did have a few telephone conversations. I wish I had known him better. What a loving tribute Roger wrote. Sorry I missed out on more of Dana's friendship.
Katherine Chronic (VanOerle)
Lovely tribute, Roger.
Sharon Chapel (Wonders)
Roger, your memories of Dana brought up some of mine also. Of course I remember him from band, the games, the trips - his smile and laughter. However, another memory still makes me wonder how some of us survived high school. You referred to his car, and it made me think of a night after some band event. I was driving up the hill on Grand when his car came up beside me. I don't remember who was driving it, but he was in the passenger side. He opened his window to say something, so I did the same. All of a sudden he threw himself out his window and grabbed onto the ledge of my open window - straddling the distance between the two moving cars. Somehow, we managed to slow down together and get him back into his car. I still remember my panic - and yet still see him with a big grin on his face as he laughed all the way through it.
I'm so glad he had you and your friendship in his life as he tried to fight off the demons of depression. I hope he has found his peace now.
Rebecca Wenske (Floyd)
I remember Dana as the most fun and least pretentious person I ever sat beside in an LC class. He and I were seat mates for two years in Mr. Black's journalism class and had subdued conversations about every irony and absurdity that Mr. Black missed (and there were quite a few!). The fact that I still read the newspaper and news magazines from cover to cover is due to the competition Dana and I had over Friday journalism quiz grades - not that we were that academically inclined then over the news, but it was a challenge to ferret out every little bit of back-page facts that might be thrown at us. My last big memory of Dana was senior prom night. He and I were helping to set up decorations and photography settings. The rest of the kids were going to the prom and so they asked if Dana and I (who were not going) could finish up. I remember walking out the door with him and turning out the lights. He drove me home (past Manito park) and we stopped for an Orange Julius. My senior non-prom night has caused me to smile to myself from time to time during these last fifty years. It still makes me smile but now with a twinge of sadness.