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Hazel's 94th Birthday Party July 2, 2010

Our family has gathered in our ancestral home land of Southern Illinois. Karen was reared in Pinckneyville and we will have Hazel's funeral service there tomorrow at Pyatt's Funeral Home.

For those of you that have forgotten your American history or never learned it in the first place, Colonel Pinckney was a hero that was in the Revolutionary War. In Southern Illinois, being heroic along with General Washington is enough to name your city for.

I come from Ina, a village of some 300 souls when I was a child. I attended Mt. Vernon High School located in the county seat a few miles from Pinckneyville.

Down here in the coal country, the culture has a particular bent to it that makes us unique in all the world. That is one of the things that gives us so much pleasure as we gather at weddings and funerals because we can regale each other with stories about our past that seem hilarious now but were dead serious then.

Hazel pretty much outlived everyone else she knew and loved back here, including four or five of her pastors that she had asked to do her funeral service. When she asked Chaplain Dick Sedgwick to officiate at her funerals we warned him that he was six or seven Ministers who died before Hazel. He asked for our prayers.

A funeral is a combination of a party, family reunion and a nostalgically sad time of remembering the dearly departed. Hazel was a fascinating interaction of faith, fun and flippancy. In fact, she was the queen bee of about every community in which she ever lived.

The service tomorrow will be a great time of telling Hazel stories, God stories and family stories. It will be a blast.