My father-in-law, Lloyd Esmon passed away in the early morning hours of April 27, 2018 at the age of 89.  He was ready. We are sad, of course, that he is no longer with us, but truly …. he was ready.  I believe that he had some time ago come to terms with the fact that his life was near its end.  While he certainly loved those of us he left behind, including June, his wife of 70 years, and his son Dwight and daughter Janet … and our entire family …. he was ready.  He would not have wanted us to mourn his passing for long, and he knew that his was a life well-lived.  Not only well-lived, but lived on his own terms.  That phrase “on his own terms” gets tossed about a lot.  For Lloyd, it was more than just a phrase.  In so many ways he was a force of nature.  You ALWAYS knew where you stood with Lloyd, and you knew how he felt about things.  Even when expressing those things got him in trouble.   I have never for one second had anything but respect and admiration for Lloyd, and count myself so very fortunate indeed to have been part of his family.  What follows are the remarks I made at his memorial service. 

In 2003, after my own father passed away I spoke at his funeral. Lloyd and June had of course gone to Missouri with us to attend his service. Afterward, Lloyd came up, and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You did a fine job, son. Your dad would have been so proud to hear the things you said about him. I’m proud of you too. In fact, I want you to speak at MY funeral.”

I told him, “Well, I’d be honored to speak at your funeral. But just so you know. I’m not going to have a lot of nice things to say about you!”. He laughed and said, “Well, that’s good. If you did, anyone who knew me would know that was a bunch of horse-manure!”. Only he didn’t use the word “manure”.

Any of you who knew Lloyd can probably hear him saying that now, and you know that story is absolutely true. So, I guess my being up here now is a gig 15 years in the making.

Despite my ribbing him that day, you can also probably guess that I WILL have some nice things to say about Lloyd. I won’t even have to make most of them up.  But I don’t intend to sugar-coat it….. because Lloyd would NOT have wanted me to do so.

Lloyd was a complicated man. He could be kind and generous and extraordinarily thoughtful. But he could also be volatile and had a temper … particularly when he thought some injustice or disservice had been done.

As a high school principal, he was thrown out of basketball games on more than one occasion for protesting a ref’s call a little too vigorously. The students at that small high school in Southern Illinois loved “Mr. Esmon” though, and even dedicated the yearbook to him in 1959.

So yes, he was complicated. Looked at another way though, he was not so hard to figure out. Not hard to figure out, because above all he valued honesty, and integrity, and ethical behavior. He demanded it in himself, and he expected it from others. Acting honorably and being truthful was a big part of his Christian walk, and part of what he believed God expects from us. Much of Lloyd’s way of being in the world boiled down simply to his idea of doing the right thing as often as you can. Janet remembers one of his most important and most consistent pieces of advice to her was “As long as YOU are doing the right thing, don’t worry about what other people think.” As someone who knew him from his work days at The Tennessean and Banner said recently when talking about Lloyd, “He was truly one of the good guys”.

The first time I met Lloyd was not long after I’d started dating Janet at the University of Missouri. Lloyd and June had come to Columbia for her graduation, and they invited me out to dinner. The four of us went to probably the finest restaurant in town, Jack’s Gourmet Restaurant and Lounge. Jack’s was well known for one of their signature dishes, steak with green peppercorn sauce. Lloyd ordered the steak, medium rare, and I ordered the same. I’d never really been to a very fancy restaurant, and when they brought the meals out, it was one of the biggest, thickest steaks I’d ever seen. As we ate, I matched him bite for bite and we talked. He asked me about my family,  why I’d chosen engineering, what I hoped to do in the future. We talked about my small-town upbringing, and he told me about he and June having grown up in an even smaller hometown in Southern Illinois. By the time we finished, I felt like I had not only “passed muster” with “Janet’s father”, but also that I’d made a friend with a man who was genuinely interested in what I had to say.

Janet and I dated long distance for a time as she was in Nashville, and I was still living in Missouri. Whenever I would come to Nashville for a visit, Lloyd and June would eagerly welcome me into their home. When time came for me to move to Nashville, find a job, and begin preparing to start a life with their daughter, Lloyd and June opened up their home and let me move in with them until I got my feet on the ground, got a job, and was able to get settled into an apartment of my own. I lived with them for probably about 3 months.  And because Janet was working evenings, I ended up spending a great deal of time with Lloyd. Going out to eat, going to Nashville Sounds baseball games or church-league softball games, meeting their friends. I got to see first hand the kind of man he was, and how those who knew him best respected him and valued his friendship.

I mentioned softball. Back in those days, Lloyd pitched on the church-league softball team for the Bellevue Church of Christ where he and June were longtime members. He would have been in his mid-to-late 50’s. Most all of the young men on the team were about half his age. Yet, Lloyd was the pitcher, because he could sling that softball harder, faster, and more accurately than any of them. Always with a large wad of Levi Garrett in his jaw when he was on the mound. He had a pretty good bat too.

I remember the time several years later when one of those young men from that team approached me at a church golf tournament. He asked, “How’s your daddy-in-law?” I replied that he was doing great. He said, “Let me tell you something about Lloyd that you may not know. There was a time back when I was 18 or 19 years old and was pretty much living like a knucklehead. Really not in a good place. Lloyd called me and invited me out to Sperry’s for a steak, said he had some things he wanted to talk about. We went out to dinner just the two of us. He looked me in the eye, talked to me man-to-man, and told me I was really in danger of messing up my whole life. He told me about his life, and where he’d come from. Basically, told me it was time to ‘man-up’. He was really the one more than anybody who helped me get my act together.”

I thanked him for sharing that with me and walked away with a renewed appreciation for the man who was by then my father-in-law.

But here’s the thing. That’s not the only time that happened. It happened again, with other young men, at least a couple more times with similar versions of the same story. And for all I know there may be many others who never took the time to reach out and share their stories about the influence Lloyd had on their lives. That’s the kind of man he was, and the kind of feelings he brought about in those whose lives he touched.

As our wedding approached, Lloyd told Janet and I several times…. just figure out how much this thing is going to cost me and give me the number. I’ll cut you a check, and you can elope. Use the money as a nest egg or blow it all on a trip to Hawaii. I think he was serious. That was Lloyd. Of course, Janet would just look at him and say, “Pop!”    As for me, I kind of thought taking the cash wasn’t such a bad plan. But I can attest, and Emma will confirm, daughters have a way with their fathers, and we did indeed have a wedding ceremony.

On the day of our wedding, as my groomsmen and I were preparing for the service, getting our tuxes on, Lloyd came up and called me aside. He put his hand on my shoulder, gave it a little squeeze, and looked me in the eye. I was expecting him to give me a word of encouragement, or to impart some wisdom about marriage, or maybe even make a joke to ease the pre-ceremony jitters.  Instead, he said something completely unexpected. “Son, you seem like a very fine young man, and I can tell you love Janet. But I can promise you this. If you ever mistreat her, I will find you, and I will hurt you.” I am sure he was serious. That was Lloyd.

As I stood at the front of the front of the church a short while later and saw Janet and her dad begin to walk arm in arm down the aisle, I was filled with love and a sense of peace and calm about the path upon which Janet and I were embarking. What I did NOT know, however, was that as Janet and Lloyd walked towards the altar, he was talking quietly to her the entire way. “Are you sure he’s the one? Are you sure you want to do this? We can turn around and walk out if you want to. Don’t worry about disappointing these people or what they will think, we can just turn around and leave and call the whole thing off if you’re not 100% sure.“ That is vintage Lloyd.

But Janet was already by then a strong and very smart young woman …. And she was and IS her father’s daughter. So, she WAS 100% sure. To the best of my knowledge, Lloyd never again raised any question about our marriage. He and June have been the best in-laws I could ever imagine.

I like to think I measured up to his best expectations. Not long after my father died, Lloyd took me aside once again. He said “I know you and your dad were especially close. I know that I can never take his place, and I wouldn’t even try. But I want you to know that as far as I’m concerned, I have two sons that I love, you and Dwight. As long as I’m able, I will always be here for you.”    And he was.

When Emma came along in 1988, Lloyd and June’s life changed forever, and they became just the best grandparents. As we have gone through box after box of pictures the last few nights, reminiscing on the images of a life well lived, there were so many pictures of Lloyd and Emma together, first as a baby, then as a little girl, on family trips to the beach, to Disney World, to Alaska, to visit Dwight and Sandi in Florida, out to eat at some of Lloyd and June’s favorite restaurants, or just hanging around the house. When Emma became a big sister in 1995, Lloyd took such delight in our twin boys, Evan and Brendan.

Right from the start, Evan was always “Grandpa’s boy” … and as we began to face the challenges presented by Evan’s autism, Lloyd reached out to a trusted friend who he thought could give him some perspective on what it all meant, Dr. Bruce White. Bruce told him that “John and Janet don’t know it yet, but they will come to know that Evan is perhaps the greatest blessing in their lives.” Lloyd shared that with me then, and it simply didn’t resonate with me … yet. But, several years later, Lloyd came to a workshop that I was teaching for grandparents of children with autism, and I told that story. After I told the story, I looked at Lloyd and simply said, “Bruce was right”.  There were tears in both his eyes and mine. Of course, even up to the very end, Lloyd had only unconditional love for Evan, and needed to hear Janet and I  assure him that Evan is such a remarkable young man and that he is doing just fine. That is due in no small part to the love lavished upon him by his grandparents. The image of Lloyd reaching out and squeezing Evan’s hand on the evening before he passed away is one I will never, ever forget.

Likewise, Brendan and grandpa Lloyd have always had a very special relationship. Spending countless Friday nights with “Mimi and Grandpa”, they developed a particularly close and lasting bond of love. Knowing that Brendan has chosen to enter a helping profession, and has not only become a stellar student, but also just a remarkably interesting and engaging young man has been a huge source of pride and comfort to Lloyd.

In his later years, when Lloyd’s health began first to falter and then to fail, he handled it all with grace and dignity and peace. Even at the end, when we knew he simply did not feel good at all, he rarely complained about anything. He maintained his sense of humor right up until the very end. It’s hard to imagine that the time  would come when it seemed right to let Lloyd go. But of course, it did. The sadness that we feel at his passing is not a sadness borne out of “what might have been”, or out of a sense that there was anything left for him to accomplish, or for us to tell him. The sadness is because we know how much we will miss his laugh, his counsel, and his one-of-a-kind gift to cut right to the chase in every situation.

Being around Lloyd meant being in a perpetual “no BS” zone. It meant you better be ready to be authentic and honest and real. Maybe that is the greatest gift he gave us. The gift of making us want to be our best selves. Not only for him, but because it’s the right way to live. And for that (and for his daughter) I am eternally grateful.