In memoriam: Mary Hartman

Tonight I raise a glass to my old friend, Mary Hartman. She died last Friday, alone, which is a shame on us all. Her neighbors took her to the hospital and Mary, independent to the end, ordered them to take her home. They did, and that's where she died, home, alone.

There will be no memorial service. Mary was not religious. Still, her friends need to remember her in some way.

Words will have to suffice. Mary was a writer. Words will have to suffice.

Here is what I know. Mary left her Nebraska home as a teen and took the train to Los Angeles. Stars in her eyes. She was a looker, that Mary. Beautiful voice, too. She sang at the USO during the war years. L.A. was hopping. Here's what the California Military Museum web site says about L.A. during that time:

During World War II, Los Angeles was the boom town of boom towns. The Los Angeles metropolitan area grew faster than any other major metropolitan area in the U.S. and experienced more of the traumas of war while doing so. By 1943 the population of metropolitan L.A. was larger than 37 states, and was home to one in every 40 U.S. citizens. By the end of the war, the L.A. area had produced 17% of all of America's war production.

Pretty heady stuff for a Nebraska kid. Mary sang with a number of lounge singers and someone along the way, met up with a U.S. Marine named Jack Lummus, all-America athlete from Ennis, Texas. Soon they were engaged. He shipped out and was killed on the sands of Iwo Jima and was awarded the Medal of Honor for the sacrifices he made that day. He has a U.S. Navy ship and an intermediate school named after him.

Mary never got over it. She wrote a memoir about it and later a children's book. "Texas Granite: Story of a World War II Hero" (see photo). She was married, briefly, long enough to have a boy whom she raised alone. She was a newspaper reporter and free-lance writer in Nebraska and Arkansas. In the early 1990s, she moved to Cheyenne, Wyo., to be near her son and grandkids. As a writer, she was drawn to other writers, and that's how we met. Mary was the age of my parents, Great Depression and World War II babies. I was drawn to her for that reason and because we both wrote fiction, loved history and Liberal politics.

Mary and I and another writer formed Southeast Wyoming Writers (SEWW)  in 1992. We also were in the same writing critique group for awhile. Mary shepherded a World War II oral history project through budgets through script through filmed interviews. This video is now part of the U.S. Library of Congress World War II collection. On Veteran's Day 2002, barely a year after the beginning of yet another American war,  Mary was interviewed on National Public Radio. It was almost impossible not to be moved by her decades-old memories, still fresh after all of these years.

Mary and I had lunch together fairly often but not often enough. A few years ago, she tumbled down the back steps of her apartment building and broke both of her wrists. I visited her in the hospital. She dearly wanted to get out. She did, not quite healed but ready to move on with her life.

How do you say good-bye to some who has already departed? I'm not sure. I can see Mary, though, singing with a big band in some smoky L.A. club. The world is her oyster. Her life is ahead of her. She is a loving spirit who gets her heart broken in a big way.

Words will have to suffice, Mary. It's all we have in the end.

Farewell, my friend.

Merwin poem fitting close to Arizona memorial

University of Arizona President Robert Shelton at Wednesday’s memorial for the Tucson shooting victims:

SHELTON: I know conclude the program tonight by reading a poem that was written by W.S. Merwin who is the current poet laureate of the United States of America. Mister Merwin has a long history with the Poetry Center here at the University of Arizona.

To the New Year

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible

W.S. Merwin
from Present Company, Copper Canyon Press

Thanks to Joshua Robbins for posting the poem at http://againstoblivion.blogspot.com

Final word on the subject

I have delivered eulogies in churches and funeral homes. I've attended too many services and burials, a hazard of aging.

I have never officiated at a memorial service on a softball field. As I think of it now, almost a week later, I realize it may have been one of the most spiritual memorials I've ever attended.

My brother Pat was remembered at a memorial at home plate of softball field number three in Fred Lee Park in Palm Bay, Fla. It was Monday, Dec. 13. The park was deserted when we arrived. Not much softball is played in December, not even in central Florida.

Pat's wishes were clear. Cremate his body. No church service. No ministers or priests. No prayers. This former altar boy and product of Catholic schools had soured on religion. He and I had many talks over the years about fundamentalist Christian crazies. We also discussed the depredations of the Catholic Church. He was tougher on the church than I was. I stayed in it longer than he did. In the end, we both agreed that it wasn't worth it.

The congregation, if you choose to call it that, sat in the metal softball stands. Pat was a coach so he was in the dugout most of the time. When attending a game, he crouched in the grass outside the fence on the third base line. He didn't like the behavior of some parents. They yelled at the refs and kids on the opposing teams. Pat hated this kind of low-rent behavior. He had a temper, and he wasn't above contesting a bad call. But he loved his daughters and he liked the girls they played with. He didn't think it was right for big burly men to yell at skinny twelve-year-old girls playing a game.

On this day at the softball field, the only voice for awhile was my own. And then Pat's daughters Maggie and Erin read their own eulogies, the cool north wind attempting to snatch their words away. Pat's friend, Coach Bill, spoke about their days on ball diamonds all over Florida. Coach Bill's daughter, one of Pat's former players, spoke. Then Roger Ross spoke. Roger was our neighbor in Daytona Beach. Pat helped him land a job as engineer at the Harris Corp. Rounding out the speakers was Pat's nephew, Ryan Shay. Ryan's a communications major at University of North Florida and it was clear he knows how to communicate.

Pat's four years in the Air Force led to his long career at the Harris Corp. The memorial ended with the folding of the flag and Taps, performed by the honor guard from nearby Patrick AFB. The bugler's notes lingered in the air as the folded flag was handed over to Pat's widow, Jean.

We then traveled to Pat and Jean's house for the wake with family and friends. We told stories around the bonfire.

These remembrances that I've posted over the past week are my way of mourning. I'm a writer. How will I know how I feel if I don't write it down? Someone famous once said that.  

Photos: Pat Shay's wake

The ceremonial tossing of the Cheerios onto the bonfire. My brother Pat was a Cheerios fan. When he was a kid, that's all he ate.

Family members at bonfire. I had to come to Florida to attend a bonfire on a freezing night.

Me and my sister Eileen at the wake.

My brothers Dan (left) and Tommy. 

Pat's daughters Katie (left) and Maggie toss the Cheerios.

My brother Tim (left) and his son Finn who rides on my nephew Ryan's Shay's shoulders.

My brother Tom shares a memory of Pat at the wake. Pat's widow, Jean, is sitting at the table on Tommy's left. Photos by Mary Shay Powell.

Photos: Pat Shay memorial

Site of the memorial service, Fred Lee Park softball fields, Palm Bay

The assembled congregation. Most of these people are family members. The woman with red hair in the front row is my youngest sister, Mary. She shot most of these fine photos.

Patrick Kevin Shay, 1954-2010

My first time serving as emcee of a memorial service at a softball field.

Honor guard from Patrick AFB. Pat served in the Air Force from 1977-81.

Poem as eulogy and celebration of family ties

My Tucson son, Kevin Michael Patrick Shay, the poet and theatre guy, wrote the following poem for his godfather, Patrick Kevin Shay. I read it as part of the memorial service for my brother on Dec. 13.

[Untitled]

We are Shay
We are surfers and fishermen
Captains and sand flea enthusiasts
We are collegiate
We are Navy
We are doctors and nurses
We are bandages in one hand
That covers the wound made by the knife in the other
Sometimes

We aren't always the best
At saying no or goodbye
Pushing whatever it may be
Back across the table and into
The back of our minds
Away with us never means forgotten
Shimmering delicately on the edges
Of our overactive subconscious minds

But we remain warriors
Women and men with blood thick
Like hot pitch cascading over the sides
Of castles
Onto enemies mostly defeated
Some remain
Edging their way in and laying siege
They seem overly capable of finding
The most sensitive parts
And sword-plunging through tearing

We are multitude
Thousands of bright candles floating
Across a crystal pond
Water moccasins shivering away from the heat
Gators meandering to some safer bank
Manatees gliding soft
Edging and urging along our lights
With silent swoops of blue-grey tails

We are singular and stand out
Bellowing pride
In politics and sports and intellect
The young and old cohesive
In family's stalwart and commanding glue

We are one

Dec. 8 a sad day in so many ways

Rarely do I go more than a few days without posting to this site. Now here it is, a week later, and nothing from the writer, editor and sole proprietor of hummingbirdminds.

A week ago I was in Florida zooming down a rainy highway. My sister Molly, brother-in-law Jamie and I were on our way from Tallahassee back to Palm Bay for my brother Pat’s memorial service. Right behind us was my sister Mary, husband Neill and their son Morgan. Along the way, we all stopped in Orlando to have lunch with my sister Eileen and her husband Brian.

That’s what made my week a spiritual one – time with my family. Funerals bring us together when vacations and weddings and graduations cannot. Grieving unites. That’s when you most need the support.

I’ve made many such trips from the Rockies to Florida. A mad dash to Denver’s Stapleton in April 1986. Trying to get a flight out to be at my dying mother’s side in Daytona. Approaching spring storm caused cancellation of one flight after another. Before my flight finally left at midnight, I called my brother and he told me that Mom had passed. I phoned my wife Chris, at home with our toddler son, and choked on the bad news.

Before we took off, the plane had to be de-iced twice. Once airborne, the cabin began to fill with smoke. Tendrils of smoke drifted through the beams of overhead reading lights. At first, I thought it was cigarette smoke (yes, children, you could smoke on airplanes back then). But the smoking lamp wasn’t lit. The plane was still climbing. A flight attendant rushed down the aisle to the cockpit. The smoke thickened. A few minutes later, the captain got on the horn and told us no to worry, that ice had clogged some intake or outtake and that had caused a gizmo to overheat, thus the smoke. We’ll get the air cleared in a jiffy, he promised.

I wasn’t comforted. Smoke was now as thick as it was in my favorite bar. My thoughts turned to gruesome thoughts of death by smoke at 30,000 feet. Mike Shay, 35, Denver, Colo., died while flying to his mother’s funeral in Daytona Beach. We are aware of the irony so don’t go pointing it out.

The cabin air cleared, but not before I contemplated an array of death scenarios. Rosy-fingered dawn crept in from the east as we landed in Atlanta. I was in Daytona by 9 a.m.

For this trip, I made it to my brother’s bedside 24 hours before he passed. We spoke, even though he was in a coma and machines breathed for him. He was surrounded by machines. But we spoke. I put my son Kevin on speaker and he spoke to Pat, his godfather. My daughter Annie did the same. Chris didn’t get a chance because the room began to fill with people again and she felt uncomfortable. She got her chance later.

The following afternoon, the family heard the grim assessment from the ICU physician. Massive infection. Organs failing. Brain damage. 90 percent chance he won’t recover and, if he did, on life support or in a coma.

Pat’s wife Jean and daughters Katie, Maggie and Erin decided. Take Pat off life support and let him go.

We all said our farewells privately. Chris said farewell via cell phone. I bawled out my goodbyes. Family members moved into the vacuum created by the silenced machines. We were all with Pat at 10 that night when he slipped away.

That was Dec. 8. The same day that John Lennon died 30 years before. Someone pointed that out to me, wondering if that had been the inspiration for the header on my Dec. 12 post, “Sunflower fields forever.” Not Strawberry fields, but I heard that song in my head as I contemplated my eulogy. Here’s to you, Pat. Sunflower & strawberry fields. Forever.

On Monday, Dec. 13, we held Pat’s memorial on softball field number three at Fred Lee Park in Palm Bay. More on that next time (with photos).

Sunflower fields forever

We awoke to sunflowers.

Millions of them. The rising sun lit up their golds and bronzes and greens.

Pat and I were in Oklahoma, a few exits south of the Kansas border. We had reached the spot late at night after hitchhiking from Houston the day before.

Now it was time to get our gear and get on our way to the Colorado Rockies.

The sunflowers dazzled the eyes. Trucks roared by, tall flower stalks bowed in their wakes.

On this day when we celebrate Pat's life, I remember that summer day 35 years ago. Two brothers on an adventure. We left behind hot and muggy Florida for a high-country jaunt.

But on this Oklahoma morning, the mountains seemed far away. Someone finally had mercy on us and gave us a ride. Later that day outside Salina, Kansas, we almost were arrested. "Go 50 miles per hour or go to jail," said the burly state patrolman. Pat always liked that quote.

No way we were going 50 miles an hour. So we went into town and found the bus station. The bus we took to Denver barely broke the 50 m.p.h barrier But we did arrive in Denver and eventually the mountains.

Backpacking into wild country. In the evening, I cooked freeze-dried meals on my tiny stove. As night fell, Pat built a fire and I read poems from Gary Snyder's "Turtle Island." As a rule, Pat wasn't into poetry. But Snyder wrote of wide-open skies and wild, unconquered nature. It seemed fitting.

A month passed quickly. Too soon I was back in Gainesville and Pat back in Daytona Beach. In a few months he was off to the Air Force.

We talked many times over the years. Once, two years passed in which we didn't speak. I said some harsh things that he didn't like. We each were too stubborn to make the first call. Pat broke the ice and called me when he became a grandpa for the first time. We talked more when he was in treatment for a month. We wrote letters for the first time in decades.

Pat and I talked about our Colorado trip many times. I wish now that we could have done it again. That we could have spent more time together.

But the 1975 trip was a moment in time. Two brothers waking up in a field of sunflowers.

We saw nothing but a bright future spread out before us.

We saw it together, as brothers.

So I say this to my dear departed backpacking brother Pat, to my Air Force brother, to my Gator-loving brother, to my brother the softball coach, my brother the gardener, the planter of trees and flowers and tomatoes....

Pat, may you always be surrounded by fields of flowers.

Update: This is the eulogy I delivered as part of my brother Pat's memorial service on Monday, Dec. 13, at the Fred Lee Park softball field in Palm Bay, Fla. I will share the full text of the memorial in later posts...

In memoriam: My younger brother, Pat

Obituary for my younger brother, Patrick Kevin Shay...

Patrick Kevin Shay passed away Dec. 8 at Palm Bay (Fla.) Hospital. He was 54.

Pat was born in Denver, Colo., on Nov. 18, 1956. After his family moved to Daytona Beach in 1964, he attended our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School and graduated in 1974 from Seabreeze High School.

He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1977-81, stationed overseas for two years in the Republic of South Korea. He was an avionics senior system specialist.

He married the former Jean Weikel on May 1, 1982, in Daytona Beach. They moved to Palm Bay and he joined the Harris Corp. as an engineering specialist, and worked there for more than 25 years.

Pat was a dedicated husband, father and softball coach. He coached for 15 years in the Palm Bay Little League, winning county championships and traveling to tournaments all over Florida. He never missed a single game or school function.

He is survived by his wife, Jean, his three daughters -- Katie, Palm Bay (Jeremy), Maggie, Davenport, and Erin, Palm Bay; one granddaughter -- Riley Ames of Palm Bay. He is also survived by eight siblings -- Michael Shay, Cheyenne, Wyo. (Chris); Dan Shay, Ormond Beach, (Nancy); Molly Shakar, Tallahassee (Jaime); Eileen Casey, Winter Park (Brian); Tommy Shay, Palm Bay; Tim Shay, Daytona Beach (Jen); Maureen Martinez, Tallahassee (Ralph); and Mary Powell, Tallahassee (Neill); and numerous nieces and nephews. He leaves behind a multitude of friends.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Tom and Anna Shay, Daytona Beach.

A celebration of life will be held at 2 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 13, at Fred Lee Park in Palm Bay. Family invites you to a reception at the Shay home immediately following the ceremony. You are encouraged to wear orange and blue, the colors of Pat's favorite sports team, the Florida Gators.

I lieu of flowers, plant a tree in Pat's honor or contribute to the Arbor Day Foundation.

This is the obit I wrote for official announcements. The personal remembrance will come later.