He was a theologian and pastor.\u00a0 He was a skilled communicator from the pulpit, and a caring shepherd for his flock.\u00a0 (I know, I\u2019m writing too much about wool.)\u00a0\u00a0 Speaking from personal experience, he was an absolutely safe place to store confidences.\u00a0 He genuinely loved people, all kinds of people, and saw them as opportunities to show his love for God, by loving them.<\/p>\n
Uncle Fred was just enough of a politician to survive in the world of academia.\u00a0 (Remember Henry Kissinger\u2019s comment:\u00a0 \u201cUniversity politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.\u201d)\u00a0 When I was a young professor, and in some serious political hot water at my university, he was exactly the right combination of mentor, strategist, behind-the-scenes operative, therapist and (I suspect) rhetorical hitman, to help me keep my job.\u00a0 But he loved teaching more than university politics, and when he had the chance, he moved out of higher education administration back to teaching, an exception to the Peter Principle if ever there was one.<\/p>\n
He was quite the golfer, an avocation I never understood, and still don\u2019t, though I hear he was very good.\u00a0 I had a suspicion, for a time, that he imagined the faces of philosophers with whom he disagreed to be stenciled on the golf balls.\u00a0 In retrospect, I now believe it more likely that he had in mind lazy students.\u00a0 Or maybe he was just doing ballistic research.\u00a0 Maybe he had fantasies of being a reincarnated Scottish king.\u00a0 He seemed to know an awful lot of golf jokes.\u00a0Thursday was golf day, and it didn\u2019t really matter if the Big One finally shook southern California, or the Martians landed, or the president invited him for tea; golf is very important, you know.\u00a0 And a man has to have some<\/em> principles.<\/p>\n He was pretty interesting to watch in faculty meetings.\u00a0 He\u2019d sit and listen for a time, while the various perspectives on the trivial issues of the day were aired.\u00a0 Then he\u2019d clear his throat, an utterly characteristic gesture, a sort of announcement of pronouncements to come, and as the room fell silent (they knew what was coming), in a very few incisive sentences he\u2019d explain what was wrong with all previous statements, all the while appearing to compliment the wisdom of those who\u2019d made them.\u00a0 Besides singing, this rhetorical tactic was the other thing he failed to teach me.\u00a0Not for lack of trying.\u00a0 But for me, it was like a person with a club foot watching a ballerina on a high wire.\u00a0 If I was fast, sometimes I could knock him off the wire, but I could never do the dance.\u00a0 I saw him literally end a few faculty meetings, working without a net, with no one having anything much left to say.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve ended a few in my time too, but somehow it isn\u2019t the same when the paramedics have come to save people who\u2019ve slit their wrists. \u00a0Uncle Fred\u00a0was definitely a man of words. \u00a0He used to say that I was too, but I suppose it’s possible that he may have meant something else.<\/p>\n For some reason, my Uncle Fred seemed to precede me in lots of places.\u00a0 I recall being very proud, at the age of 18, of having started a jazz band in my undergraduate college, and then seeing a 25 year old photo, in an old college annual, of Fred Shackleton directing the Anderson College Band.\u00a0 He played the trombone, too.\u00a0 Nobody\u2019s perfect.<\/p>\n Does it sound like my Uncle Fred was three or four people?\u00a0 You don\u2019t know the half of it.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t even mentioned much of his various accomplishments, speaking and conference invitations, publications (worship songs sung by hundreds of thousands or millions of people, scholarly work in theology\/philosophy, popular and curricular work in ministry), honors he received, etc.\u00a0 Actually, I used to wonder if he had a cape or something stowed away under his suit jacket.\u00a0 But it is a fact that he was simply supremely gifted in a variety of ways, such that most people would be thrilled to have one of those gifts, let alone all of them.\u00a0 And then he worked very hard in polishing those gifts, and using them in service.\u00a0 In all of that, somehow he managed to encourage people to excel, to bring out the best in them, and tended to leave the lesser mortals in his life (that would be most folks) believing they had something unique to contribute, too.<\/p>\n The last time I saw him, he asked me to rub his ankle, which still hurt from a recently cleared up skin infection, and which was hard for him to reach.\u00a0 So while we chatted about the old days, and I thought about how much he looked like my dad (who I knew was waiting for him across the great divide), I rubbed his ankle.<\/p>\n It was an honor.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?x-id=5b2e83db-d83f-82dd-a939-b0efefc13276\")
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