IN MEMORIAM
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Jenny Baker Jason Craft Jason Komberec Jay Minnerly |
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In Loving Memory of Our Dear Friend Chad Michael Sweeney I laid our dear friend Chad Michael Sweeney to rest on March 13th, 2009 at the Sumner, Washington Cemetery. Many of our class have expressed condolences and confusion over his passing. I hope you’ll read my words in their entirety. Those who knew Chad, many of us since kindergarten and early grade school, will not be surprised at the number of people who attended his funeral. Wherever he went he made friends and influenced people with his brightness. Well over one hundred people were there yesterday, and the sentiment was unanimous – Chad was a giver, he was a great friend, he was a very incredible person. There was a service at the LDS church in Auburn. His wife Cheryl had recently reached out to the church for comfort amid troubling times. I delivered the eulogy, and here is what I said: My first memory of Chad is from our wrestling room at Ferris High School in Spokane. I can still see this skinny kid with curly brown hair, wearing gray tights, a red singlet, and a torn black tee shirt, working really hard at taking a guy down. That guy was T.J. Gro, a very good friend of ours, with whom, we have sadly lost touch. I know how he will feel, wherever he is, when he hears of Chad’s passing. Chad and T.J. were the best of friends, inseparable for many years. After high school Chad and I became very good friends. He was, and always since has been, one of my most cherished buddies. And so it is important to focus on why I loved and respected this guy so much, because his love, his friendship to all, and his absolutely honest and hard work ethic, is his legacy. We spent the summer of 1988, our graduating year, tearing around Eastern Washington in my Toyota pickup truck, hunting, fishing, 4-wheeling. One of our favorite things to do was to take a little gas powered hibachi, get some budget steaks and a bottle of barbeque sauce from Safeway, and drive out into the pine trees and camp. He was a great guy to be with, always easy going, always positive, and always insightful in one way or the other about the outdoors. Much of his person was shaped by the time he spent in the outdoors with his Grandpa Roy, whom he greatly loved and revered, and by his time living in Alaska with his dearly departed father, Mike. He used to share stories with me about bear hunting and living among the untamed land there. I love that about him. I’d like to share with you a few stories that represent who this guy was, so you get an idea of the guy I knew. It was February or March of 1989. He and T.J. and I drove my truck up to Cusik, WA to try and snag a few brown trout out of this mountain lake. There was still snow in the mountains and he and T.J. had been up there the week before and were unable to climb some of the hills. So they had me pumped up to really hit the hills hard. We cleared the tough spots with great cheer and, as we ascended the mountain, I was really going through all the gears in 4-low around the muddy corners. We were having a blast, until we took out a tree, or rather it took out the side of my truck from the front headlight to the rear bumper. We hopped out, Chad looked at it and said, “Minor. I can fix it.” And he did. Perfectly. That was the first of a few major body jobs he did on my vehicles. Years later he had moved on from auto-body work to starting a construction business. I was home in Spokane on break, and I remember talking to him on his porch and asking him what he was going to build in this new business. He just looked at me, shrugged, and said with that trademark, easy smile, “Anything.” We all remember him for this. The other night I was sitting at the table with Don and Brian, and Don was going through some of the things he could do. Brian stopped him and said, “Dad, he could do anything.” His mother Lynda said to me yesterday, “He did the work of three men.” And this is true. He could do anything, and he could do it in record time. I’ll share another story with you, more recent. I called him one morning a few months ago, as I so often did, to find out what he was doing and where he was going. He was driving to catch a ferry to tear off and put on a new deck somewhere across the water. He had an incredible amount of work to do and still catch the ferry back so he could make Erynn’s soccer game. If he didn’t finish, he had to take the ferry back the next day and finish, a huge waste of time. There was one thing about it, though; he was going to make that soccer game. I knew even an above average person couldn’t do everything he described to me, but I was pretty confident he could do it, and with time to spare. I called him the next morning to check in, and sure enough, he’d completed the job and made the game – I heard about how many goals Erynn had scored, how fast she was, and how awesome she was, as I did regularly when we talked. Each of us probably have a handful of the same stories for each year we’ve known him. He was steady as a rock that way. Another thing that was as steady and constant as the sun in the sky, was his love for Erynn and Cheryl. He was so proud of Erynn, and she is an incredible girl, capable beyond her years, just like her father. We all know how he loved and cared for Cheryl. She was his all, his everything. His love for you two never set and it never tired. It is the deepest and most tender part of him that I knew, and it will live on in all of us forever. Chad was also extremely proud of his mother Lynda. He talked about you so fondly so many times. He respected your art and your talent, and he possessed so much of your creativity. What you gave him, now comes back to you. You receive him back into the womb and into your heart. I know from talking to Cheryl that she wants you to be a bigger part of her and Erynn’s life. I know how much Cheryl loves and respects your art, and we look forward to the rebirth of your son in it. We all do. You gave him to us, and you are the only one who can return his brilliance back to this world. I have to stop and tell you a funny story now. It was that same night we were standing on his porch talking about his new construction business. We walked across the street and he showed me a porch he had just built on to the back of his neighbor’s house. It looked great. I said, “Wow. How did you do that? Where did you get the plans?” He kind of laughed like it was a silly question and he said, “I brained it.” “You brained it?” “Yeah, I just brained it up.” Well, we laughed, and that was an inside joke we shared often. “Brained it,” and “minor,” and countless other little sayings we had in common. Lynda, I just realized yesterday where he got that fearless creativity. It was a beautiful thing. He was an artist in his own right. There are so many of us who loved his beauty, so many of us whom he touched. Most recently it was his friends Bob and Lynn LeGrand. He called me one day about a year ago and told me his dearest friends were in town and wanted me to make sure to take care of them. So I called Lynn and we went to the zoo and rode the bike around and had a nice day. We had a barbeque the next day with my family and I found out what wonderful people they are, and their friendship made sense to me. They were a perfect match for Chad, and he for them. They were his most trusted friends of all. Chad wasn’t a man to reach out and tell you how he was feeling, but especially in Lynn, he found someone in whom he could confide. Bob helped him build his house, and Bob, from what Chad told me, and from what I’ve seen, you’re about as good a friend as a guy could ever hope to have. For the past many years Chad and I would sometimes talk three times a day, three times a week, sometimes three times a month. But lately when we talked, there was always mention of Bob and Lynn. I know he was as thankful that he found you, as you are that you found him. And so another funny story about Chad as it relates to Lynn. Some time after high school, we incorporated the word Harv into our vocabulary. You were a Harv if you did something stupid or feeble. We could each call the other Harv, or Harvid, Harvis, just in greeting or general conversation, and it was a term of endearment. It turned into a few other silly things that I won’t go into. But Lynn told me the other day that once she looked on his phone when it rang and it said Harv. She asked Chad what it meant, and he told her that’s what I called him. She asked him why, and what it stood for. He said Harvard. She asked why. He said, “Because I’m so smart.” I got a good laugh out of that one. That was never what it was, but he had a good sense of humor like that. He loved to pull your leg. That was a funny one, buddy. Smart you were. There’s so much more that we all know about our friend. Like his love for hunting, the trips to Don’s sister Patty’s house for the annual buck hunt, where Chad always seemed to let the big one get away. I’d hear about these trips while I was driving around Phoenix and he Seattle. One year he stepped on a branch and made a noise right before the shot and the beast jumped right out of his sights. Another year he had a monster in his sights, but when he pulled the trigger all he got was a click of the firing pin against the round. He had his grandpa Roy’s old bullets in the gun and the powder had dried up. We had several good laughs about that one, and I never let him live it down. We laughed about everything. And that was how he was. Always in a good mood. Never a bad thing to say about anyone or anything. Except salmon. If you tried to feed him salmon or talk about it he became pretty upset. He told me once it was because of his time in Alaska. His dad would feed him salmon cakes, grilled salmon, poached salmon, salmon shish kabobs, smoked salmon. His dad could have given Bubba from Forest Gump a run for his money with salmon recipes. He never wanted to even hear the word again. Chad liked steak. Well, pal, I hope in heaven you get plenty of Rib Eyes, your favorite. So, our dear friend and son leaves us many great memories. Equally important are the tangible things he leaves behind. He worked very hard to build his home, an enterprise that he and Cheryl and Erynn took on together, and one that leaves his family with protection for their future. He always worked side jobs for extra money to get his family the things they wanted and needed, and he was a highly valued employee for over a decade at the Jorve Corporation, which provided them stability, benefits, and insurance for an assured future. Chad is also survived by two wonderful sisters, Erynn and Shannon, whom he mentioned often, and his grandparents Marjorie and Jan, both members of an American era that valued hard work and providing for your family above all else. Much of his life was the embodiment of values that his grandparents held dear, and they should be proud that they helped raise such a fine man. He was a Washingtonian. He was my lifeline to my home state, a land that I love. And I will never stop loving him. I know Cheryl will never stop loving him. “I’m his biggest fan,” she said to me the other night as we talked around the table. And neither will Erynn ever stop loving him. She’s always been her daddy’s girl. Jo and Don told me the other night, they’d ask her when she was little, “Who do you love, Erynn?” The answer was always, “I love my daddy.” And so Chad’s legacy is his art – his work and work ethic, his friendship, and his tender love. Most importantly to me, it was his tender love for his daughter Erynn. He loved you so much, Erynn, and he was so proud of you. And I always want to be your friend and be there to remind you of the wonderful man that your father was, for I was proud to know him well. After the service we drove him to his final resting place, where many gathered. The bishop delivered a prayer, and then asked if there were any final words from friends and family. I stepped forward and placed my hand on his coffin and said the following: “Chad Michael Sweeney, an avowed Catholic, we cast your remains to the Earth in the name of The Virgin Mary, whom you loved, and Jesus Christ, the only prophet and savior whom you recognized. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen” A church elder read a touching prayer written by Chad’s sisters. It was time to say goodbye, but before lowering him into his grave, I said to the gathering, “I’d like to tell you one final story about Chad. We were camping many years ago with his first wife Julie. I woke up early and started plunking away at the hill with his 9mm pistol. Julie woke up, and boy was she angry. Chad crawled out of his tent, put up his hands, and just said, “Honey, that’s just Cory.” And that’s how he was. He accepted everyone for who they were, and Chad, we accept you as you were into our hearts forever.” After that I gave the direction to lower him into the ground, and he was showered with red roses, many tears, and finally, much good cheer. People stood around and shared stories for some time, and his dear wife Cheryl was left with a heart slightly less burdened. She shared with me some of the healing that she felt. Keep close and cherish your family and friends. Love them and never let them feel alienated. Always let them know how valuable they are. Chad Sweeney died of a broken heart. Cory Joseph Sanders March 14, 2009 |