My last post was the eulogy I gave at Bill Wade's Celebration Of Life Service at the Living Hope Baptist Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky on October 16,2022.
I had been working on the eulogy for a couple of months. Bill asked me to take part in the service when he learned the prognosis was dire, at best.
He planned his service and had six other speakers. We were given around seven minutes to speak. I had to cut some of my eulogy down to size. Here's what I had planned to say.
I have some parenthetical comments in this one, too.
Before I begin, I want to express how deeply honored I am to speak to you about Bill Wade. We had an unspoken pact that he would speak at my service if I went first and I would speak at his if he went first. (While I was speaking, I realized I was one of the few in the building that knew Bill for more than eleven years. His sisters, his wife, and his brothers in law knew him longer than me)
Bill loved "The Far Side" and used to have a Far Side mug in his office that showed two men sitting on a bench and they are in Hell. You see the flames, the Devil and his pitchfork, etc. One man says to the other man: "I hate this place". I ran across the cartoon some time ago and I texted it to Bill saying "I remember you had this on a mug". He said, "Yes, it reminds me of First Baptist". Bill has served with several First Baptists, so I'm not going to tell you which one he meant. But, I will tell you that loved Living Hope and he loved Bowling Green.
Twenty some odd years ago, Bill used me as a reference for a para-church ministry he wanted to do part time. The man at the ministry called me. He asked "What can you tell me about Bill Wade?" I said, "He drove three and a half hours to help me move from one house to another that were only 6 miles away."
To me, that sums up Bill Wade. But there's more I would like to say.
I'm from Marietta, Georgia and I grew up with a lot of people whose fathers were engineers at Lockheed and became engineers themselves. Bill was one of the smartest people I've ever known. As my dad would say, he had good old fashioned horse sense. (My dad really thought that horse sense was the best sense.)
He considered college a challenge-a challenge to see if he could out wit the professors and he usually did. For example, he would check the syllabus when it was handed out to see how many classes you could miss before it effected your grade. Bill called those "free days" because you didn't pay for them.
The only time I saw him sweat in college was his last semester. He was going to graduate in December and start seminary in January. However, before that, he had to pass a Greek class taught by a Russian immigrant who was fluent in several languages. English was not one of them. (This professor had a real interesting life. He was a Russian solider in World War II that was captured by the Germans and was imprisoned in a Stalag. After the War ended, he could not go back to Russia because he was supposed to have committed suicide when he was captured. So, he went to the United States. One thing led to another and soon he was teaching Bill Wade the Greek language)
Like most sane individuals, Bill did not do well in Greek and was worried he wouldn't pass. He went to the professor, "Dr.Nick" and said "Dr. Nick, is there anything I can do to pass your class?" Dr. Nick said, "It's okay, Wade, I pass you anyway". There have always been angels among us.
I don't know what Bill's IQ was, but his emotional intelligence was off the charts. Bill could empathize with people and that's what made him such a good counselor. One time, we were at the Fourth of July celebration in Marietta and Bill noticed my then five year old son trying to see around people. "All he can see are legs".
Bill's love for Dianne was authentic. I think Bill stopped thinking about other girls when he met Dianne. I never heard him say a negative word about Dianne. He was as smitten with her in 2022 as when he met her at Hinds Junior College in 1976.
Let's just admit Bill was a Hall Of Fame husband and sometimes that made it rough on those mortal husbands among us. One time the Wades came to visit us and we went to the mall (this was the 90s!). Di and my wife went one direction and Bill and I went the other. We stopped at a kiosk and Bill said, "I'm going to get this for Dianne as a happy". I've lived in the South all my life and I never heard of a "happy". He bought it and gave it to Dianne when we met back up with the girls. My wife said, "Where's my happy?" Oops. I quickly learned what a "happy" was
Of course, Bill was thrilled with his children. Joey "The Wonderful Wade" and Katy Bug. Joey is the world traveler and lives in Thailand. Incidentally, Joey ran for a class office when he was in high school and came up with my favorite political slogan: "Give Me What I Want And I Will Go Away".
Once I mentioned to Bill that my twelve year old son was playing football. If you know anything about youth sports you know it is dedicated to make things as expensive and inconvenient for the parents as possible. His football program had a summer camp from 9-12 in the morning during the weekdays. I didn't know how we were going to make it work. Being the problem solver that he was, Bill called with Katy the next day. Katy offered to be our "au pair" and take our son to the football camps in the mornings. Coincidentally, there was a boy that lived up the road in Cartersville that Katy liked. So we had two "au pairs" for the price of one that summer. That boy was Brian Owen. One time I came home from work and Brian was playing kickball with Ben and his buddies in the yard while Katy was inside the house watching TV. He married Katy on an October night in 2007 which featured the only time I've ever saw Bill dance-the Father and Daughter dance at the reception.
Bill was a very creative person. When he was at Murfreesboro, he called the high school ministry "Nuke Proof Ministries" and designed a ball cap with the nuclear sign on it. The next year he came out with "Vicious Circle Ministries" and designed a t-shirt that had a dog chasing its tail.
Bill Wade was one of the funniest people I have met in my life. Being around Bill meant you were guaranteed to have at least one belly laugh an hour.
Back when he was starting out, churches had building programs and they used the moniker "Together We Build". You may remember the offering envelope with this on them. Bill came up with an idea: "Pools For The Pastor" in which the church would build an in ground pool for the pastor. The slogan: "Together We Swim".
He also had this idea for causal Christian wear. His idea was to sell Christian polo shirts. He wanted to have an alligator on it like the Izod shirt, except his would be on bended knee in prayer. He also wanted to have one like the Ralph Lauren shirt, except the polo player would be holding up a Bible instead of a mallet.
You always hear people say that they tease someone they like and that has never been more true than in the case of Bill Wade. If he didn't like you, he would leave you alone. However, if he did, he would tease and kid you.
He called me "Poo". (A long story) Not "P-O-O-H" like Winnie the, but P-O-O, like....When our son was dating our daughter in law, she asked him why he called his dad "Poo". He gave a two word answer: Bill Wade
One thing he could do was the "put on". He could say the most outlandish things but with such sincerity that you sort of believed him. Then you would see him grin and you knew you were had one more time by Bill Wade. He used to tell people that the dorm we lived in had a swimming pool. (Bill had a thing about pools)
One thing about Bill: he loved dogs. He adored "Preacher" and all of the dogs they've had. (Preacher was a rescue and Bill was his human. To watch Preacher during this time was heart breaking. He knew something was wrong, but he didn't know what. He thought, "Maybe if I sit as close to Bill as possible, he'll feel better. After Bill died, Preacher was looking for him, holding out hope that Bill would come back.) However, he wasn't fond cats. He called Dianne's cat Lillie Bell "Lillie Hell".
Lori and I had a cat named Gracie. Gracie and Bill were enemies. Gracie used to swat at Bill. We had Gracie for a long, long time. She lived to be almost 22 years old. When Gracie died, I called Bill and told him we had Gracie put down. Bill's response: "Do you want another cat? You can have Lillie Hell! You'd be doing both of us a favor! I can put her in the mail tomorrow!" When I told him he can't mail a cat through the US Postal service, he told me he would poke holes in the box.
One day, Bill got his. In the department Bill worked in at Lifeway, everybody shared an admin. One day Bill was talking to this lady and he went into his "I hate cats" routine. The lady bursts out into tears. She explained her and her husband never had any children and her cats were her babies. Now, Bill would never set out to be insensitive to anyone He told me, "I wasn't trying to hurt her feelings, I just hate cats". I just said, "Some people can't take a joke". Bill said, "Oh, I wasn't joking."
Bill was my best man when I married Lori. He and Di accepted Lori just as they accepted me. We would go to see Bill and Di on our vacations I think we've seen just about every house they've lived in. One of our favorite memories is arriving at Bill and Di's and just sitting around the kitchen table eating chocolate chip cookie dough
We had a lot of adventures with Bill and Di.
One time, we met them in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. One day after doing Gatlinburg stuff (walking around), we went to Ruby Tuesday for supper. We are walking upstairs to our table when a guy comes barrelling down the stairs. He's shorter than me, has a scraggly beard and is wearing a "Beaucephus" t-shirt.(Note Young People: Beaucephus was the nickname of country singer Hank Williams, Jr. Hank, Jr was real popular back then and he has some pretty good songs. Like "I Like Girls" in which he says, "I like them small, I like them tall, I like them all" ) He looks straight at Bill and says, "Hey,y'all wanna come drankin' with me?" Bill said, "No, we haven't seen each other for a while and we want to visit. But thank you for the invitation". I often wonder about that poor guy, who just wanted to go "drankin" and the person he asks is an ordained Baptist minister.
Bill was also a great practical joker. One time, he and Joey were coming to our house. The Braves were in the World Series for first time in forever and he wanted to look at all of the neat merchandise. We were standing outside our house when we saw Bill's truck coming down the street. He drove right past the house. Then he drove back-right past the house. He did this several times and soon we were waving our hands yelling "Bill, Bill, right here!" This went on for several minutes before he drove up in the driveway.
My mother said Bill and I reminder her of the old cartoon strip Mutt and Jeff. Even though we did not share similar heights, we did have a lot in common. We were both suburb kids with hard working parents. We both shared a faith in Christ. We both had good taste in women.
We both had similar tastes in music. Over the years, I can count on one hand the number of people who had same taste in music that I have. Bill is one of them. He liked Jimmy Buffett and explained to me the meaning behind the song "Life Is A Tire Swing". (For the record, he also explained the song "Dallas" to me. Both are on Buffett's "A1A" album, the best Jimmy Buffett album) Once, we went to see the Wades when they lived in Mississippi, Bill pointed to a tire swing he put up for the kids. "Life is just a tire swing, Poo", he said.
He was also a big fan of John Prine. We spent a lot of time talking about John Prine. When he came to Bowling Green and Living Hope, Bill told me that he was near Muhlenburg County. The last time we were up here, I asked Bill to take me to Muhlenburg
County. He did and I saw the Green River where Paradise lay. It may not
seem like a big deal, but it was to me
I could go on and on about Bill. And I will. If anyone ever asks me about him, I will tell them that he is the best person I ever known in the my life. I was thrilled to see Senator Paul stop by Bill's house to give him what was placed in The Congressional Record. It was very deserved.
Bill was a great listener. Whenever we were confronted with a situation, Lori always told me to call Bill Wade, I would, and he always gave me good advice. Recently, we've asked ourselves more than once "who are we going to call for advice? Because everyone we know is stupid". It speaks well of Living Hope that you saw this talent and allowed him to open the counseling center.
With the exceptions of my wife, son, and parents nobody has loved me more unconditionally than Bill Wade. Like you, there's a six foot six hole in my heart.
We all have an expiration date. I just didn't expect Bill's to be so soon. However, these past few months have taught me that God's will, while perfect, is not painless. Even though it has been painful, Bill's response was joyful. When our time comes, may we meet it with the same grace and dignity as Bill Wade.
Even though I am very sad, it does bring me great joy to say that I was a friend of Bill's and he was a friend of mine. I will never forget him.
What can I tell you about Bill Wade? He was the best. The best son. The best brother The best husband. The best father. The best uncle. The best staff member. The best counselor. The best friend.
