A EULOGY FOR DAVID N. “BEAR” ROBINSON
By Mark S. Darrah
July 9, 2001
I’m going to tell you something about David Robinson I didn’t like, but I guess I better tell you about the good things first.
Every test the doctors performed on David, even after all his trauma, chemotherapy, and radiation,showed his heart wasn’t damaged. Are you surprised? You shouldn’t be. David had a big and a strong heart. In his final days when so much was a struggle for him, he would reach down somewhere and find a burst of life, a burst of energy to share with those who loved him, and especially for little children.
Throughout his life, you could see this big and strong heart through his generosity. David was the kind of man who would pick up a hitchhiker, feed him and give him ten bucks to help him get down the road.
Bear liked tall tales, too. That was another place where you could see that heart. He’d tell some story you knew just couldn’t be true, and right at the point where he had convinced you his story wasn’t a bunch of baloney, he would say “and then I woke up.” And you’d see this twinkle in his eye.
If you knew David, you knew this twinkle. It would be there when he was teasing you. It would be there when he was feeling a little onery. It would be there when he told you you’d done a good job. His mother might have been the first one to notice the twinkle. She was always having his picture made and I wonder if she did because she thought that someday she might not see that twinkle.
David’s brother, Ray, tells this story:
One day, an old man — a stranger — was filling his car up with gas. There were some kids at this service station and they were tormenting the old man. Bear saw what was going on, so all six-foot four inches and four hundred pounds of Bear lumbered over to where these kids and old man stood. Bear looked at them and said, “Boys, this is your lucky day. This is man is my grandfather.” When those boys turned and walked away, I know that twinkle was in David’s eyes.
Bear was blessed with a good sense of humor to go along with that twinkle. As many of you know, he was paralyzed below the waist the last few months of his life and he stayed at the home of his brother, Freddie, and Freddie’s wife, Kathy. When David didn’t think Freddie was — I can’t say that — When David thought Freddie wasn’t showing Kathy the loving kindness he ought to have been, David would tell Freddie, “You’re going to get us kicked out of here,” when David knew the last thing in the world Kathy Robinson would do would be to kick Bear out of her home.
There was another time when his sisters, Jackie and Carol, sang to him in his final days. I love Jackie and Carol, but they sing about as bad as I do and the cats in my neighborhood go on strike every time I sing. David hadn’t seemed too responsive when they had sung, so Carol asked him two or three days later. “Do you remember us singing to you?”
“If you can call it that,” he replied. “It was all right.”
Or, his words of advice to my wife that warm spring day we got married, “I hope you got something else to wear on your honeymoon besides that ugly flannel night gown you wore when we were kids.” You have your own stories, because like a mountain bear, David seemed bigger than life.
These were things we all liked and respected about David, but I want to talk about that one thing I didn’t like.
I first noticed it not long after he took Brice and Creed to be his sons. I called him up and asked him how it was being a father.
“It’s all right,” he said.
‘It’s all right?’ I wondered. Not great, not horrible, but only ‘it’s all right’? Was that all? I remembered the joy he, Peggy, Dwight, and I shared the day we went to court. I knew he how loved those boys and he knew what it meant to be a father, but he answered my question: “It’s all right.” Not: it’s wonderful or it’s lousy, but “It’s all right.” What did that mean?
I remember it another time. Bear Enterprises had dozers working in three different places. He had just about everyone in the family moving dirt for him and being paid well. He had work backed up for six weeks, and he was having to turn some work down.
“How’s business?” I asked, expecting him to brag a bit.
“It’s all right,” he answered.
It’s all right? Things couldn’t get much better, I thought, but he said ‘It’s all right.’ What did that mean?
The last time I got this confounded answer was two or three weeks ago. Twenty or thirty people — people he didn’t even know very well — from the River of Life Church took time from their busy lives to pack into his little room to have a church service with him. How magnificent! How kind! Two or three days later, I asked him how that church service was.
“It was all right.”
‘It’s all right?’ That’s all? What a great act of kindness, and David only said “It’s all right.”
The great leaders in our history have all had the ability to keep things in perspective. When great victories are won, great leaders don’t let it go to their heads. They aren’t overcome with giddiness because of their good fortune. When they suffer damaging losses, they aren’t overwhelmed and paralyzed with despair or anger. They pick up and keep going — level-headed without losing their balance.
That’s what David was: He was our leader. When things were going well, he didn’t brag about it. He wouldn’t attribute it to his brains or to himself in anyway. He’d say “It’s all right.” When things didn’t go well, as they didn’t in the last few months, he could say “There are worse things than dying,” and mean it. “It’s all right.”
So when David would say “It’s all right” I think it was like the story from the Book of Genesis. When God created the world, each day he would stop and the Bible says “and he saw that it was good.” God didn’t say “Gee, this is terrific!” or “Look how wonderful I am because I was able to do this,” he said, “It was good.” When David said,”It was all right,” he meant he “saw that it was good.” Keep the right perspective. Keep level-headed in victory or defeat. Keep your heart big and strong, regardless.
“It’s all right.”
It’s not suppose to be this way, though, is it? Our leader isn’t supposed to go first. The good, kind, generous, humorous — they shouldn’t ought to have to go so young, a man better perhaps than all the rest of us in this room even on our good days. We feel sorry for ourselves. We tell ourselves that maybe David had to go first to teach the rest of us how to die or that maybe the angels needed to see that twinkle in his eye, but it still hurts.
The other morning I was grieving, but then I realized: Where David is going, he’s going to get to meet my Aunt Fern, and she’s more onery than he’s ever thought about being. He will meet my grandpa and my grandpa will tell him a tall-tale or two.
There are other people he’s going to get to see: His Grandfather Dooley is going to introduce him to everyone in the place and then sit down with him to play a good game of dominoes. David is going to get to meet his Grandmother Dooley for the first time and say a prayer with her. His Grandfather Robinson will have built a big fire to make him think he has gone to the wrong place and his Grandmother Robinson will put him to work as fast as she can.
Bear and his dad will get to talk about operating bulldozers and his dad will tell him how proud he is of the business David has made and how proud he is of David for getting his brothers to work together like he has. His mother won’t waste any time getting him to heaven’s photographer for a new picture.
David will stop for just a moment, though, because he has one more thing to say to all of us this morning that he wants us to hear and know as the absolute truth:
It’s all right.
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