I learned late this week of the death of Loren Cartwright -- a hundred-and-something year old member of First Christian Church. His is a noteworthy passing, for more reasons than his advanced age. Loren, whatever his other accomplishments, was a blunt straight-shooter.
A retired banker, Loren always presented himself as a businessman with a clear grasp of the numbers. Numbers, he would argue, don't lie. What I hadn't known about him until a year or so ago, at his last birthday gathering in the private dining room of Scottish Rite Park, was that he had started out as a musician of some talent who had even played one night as a fill-in with the Lawrence Welk Orchestra. "Playing in a band," he recalled, "was the hardest work in the world, and after that night I decided to go back to school and get a regular job."
But it wasn't his resume that impressed me. It was his aliveness and forthrightness. Widowed several years ago, Loren kept connected with family and the world through the internet. I don't know how many computers he went through while at Scottish Rite, but I remember him showing me his new laptop years ago. He wasn't one to coast. Knowing that he was thusly "connected" despite being homebound, I emailed him my Christmas sermon a couple of years ago as we were headed out of town, thinking he might appreciate the token. He emailed me back the next day, thanking me for the thought, but taking issue with the content of the sermon itself. "I just can't imagine what relevance Al Capone has to the Christmas story," he wrote referring to my opening illustration. I dutifully wrote back, trying to better explain my thought process. He, in turn, wrote back; thanking me for my consideration but confessing -- or muttering -- that he "still didn't get it." The truth, I suspect, was that he "got it," he just didn't approve.
What will always endear Loren to me, however, was his relationship to the sanctuary renovation project the church undertook several years ago. In short, Loren was against it. Vigorously. Noisily. It was foolishness, he said often and to whomever would listen. "A total waste of money." I no longer recall what it was about the project that offended him. Maybe it was simply the expenditure of money on a room that, as far as he was concerned, was perfectly fine. Maybe -- and this is likelier -- Loren was pessimistic about the future viability of the congregation and he saw it all as throwing good money after bad. I don't know. All I know is that Loren continued to vote against the project at every possible opportunity, even after the workers were well underway.
It isn't his negativity, however, that marks this particular congregational episode. It is his public repentance. After the project was completed and the congregation, after the six or eight months of worshiping in Fellowship Hall, had moved back into the "new" space, Loren stood up during the sharing of joys and concerns one Sunday during the service and confessed his mistake. "I was wholeheartedly against this renovation project," he acknowledged before the congregation, "but I am here to say that I was WRONG" (emphasis his). "This," he concluded with an arm sweeping around the room, "is WONDERFUL."
I'll never forget that moment. Loren didn't suffer fools, was a verbal curmudgeon, and he was never short on certainty. We often disagreed on what was "certainly" right, and I still think he was wrong about the Al Capone story, but it takes a large person to stand up in a crowd and admit his error. Despite his rather diminutive stature, at that moment Loren became one of the biggest men I know.
Loren loved life, but I have no doubt he was ready to go. He never ceased to miss his beloved Ethel, and the world, as far as he was concerned, was getting crazier and crazier. "Enough," I can almost hear him declare, "with all that."
Rest, then, you signal centenarian, in peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment