Words for Charles
Good morning.
On behalf of our family, I want to thank you all for being here. Losing a patriarch can be a watershed time for a family and we appreciate the support of our family and friends. The last few months were not easy, but we have a lot to be grateful for: that Daddy was not in pain, that his mind was intact until the very end, and that we were able to be together and say all the things we needed to say. We are also grateful for all of those who were there to support us with prayers and acts of kindness. Special thanks go to Paige Procell and Mrs. Mary Farmer for their help with Daddy’s care.
One unexpected benefit of the last 7 months is that Karla, Cade and I have spent more time together and with Mama and Daddy than since we were kids. We’ve told a lot of stories – plenty that can’t be repeated – and gone through old pictures and we’ve had time to visit with folks who shared stories about Daddy. Like Dolly Parton said, “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” Daddy didn’t want this service to be sad. He wanted us to talk about the good times.
Daddy was born in Rodessa, where Papaw was working in the north Caddo Parish oilfield, on Aug. 26, 1937. He was named Charles after the doctor who delivered him. Daddy was the oldest of seven children and his brothers and sisters always looked up to him. They grew up playing around Lanan Creek, riding horses and hunting squirrels. Mamaw and Papaw Pilcher came from big families so there were always lots of cousins to play with. Daddy remembered the Eisenhower Military Maneuvers and watching what seemed like a thousand horses and cavalry pass in front of his Grandpa Lopez’s house. It was quite a sight for a bunch of country kids.
Daddy always liked music, country music and old time rock and roll, and outlaw country. When he was 14, he bought a guitar at Horn’s Drug Store in Many for $35. He earned the money doing farm work and jobs for his uncles. His friends taught him some chords, but he was mostly self-taught. Daddy and Uncle Wayne used to play music at Mr. Willie Anderson’s place with their friends Kenneth and R.H. Sometimes Daddy would wake us up on Saturday mornings playing ‘Folsom Prison Blues.’ But Daddy lost part of his ring finger in an oilfield mishap and he didn’t play as much after that. I’ll get to that story in a minute.
Daddy went to school at Alliance until the schools consolidated and he went to Negreet where he played right field on the boys softball team and graduated in 1955. He did not have a stellar academic record, but that was no reflection of his intellect. Clay said one time he wondered what Daddy would have done if he had studied business or engineering or both because of his aptitude in those areas. But Daddy didn’t take school seriously as a kid. He was the class clown. Still, he read all the time and was self-educated on a lot of topics. He could figure stuff in his head and seldom forgot facts.
As soon as they finished high school, Daddy and several of his friends went to work on the pipeline, and that work took them all over the U.S. from the Gulf coast to the Midwest, the northeast and western states. He was in Kingman, Arizona, when he joined the Army National Guard and he served with the Guard till after he and Mama were married.
As a young man, Daddy affiliated with the Masonic Lodge at Little Flock and was a 50-year member. His grandfather and great-grandfather on the Pilcher side were also Masons. He was Worshipful Master of the Lodge and president of the Sabine Shrine Club in the year 2000. Mama and Daddy helped organize and volunteered at the annual Shriners Classic basketball tournament and several other events to raise funds for Shriners Children’s Hospital in Shreveport. He also really enjoyed riding in the parades.
Daddy liked cars and his first car was a 1956 Ford Fairlane Victoria, black and white. Bonnie and Connie said Daddy would get them to wash his car and pay them a quarter each. You can imagine Charles as a young man, a good-looking guy cruising around in a cool car. He was probably pretty freewheeling in those days. And then he started dating Sarah Walker.
On July 1, 1961, Mama and Daddy eloped to Jasper, Texas. They were married over 60 years. To celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, they had a ceremony to renew their vows, and we celebrated their 50th anniversary with a big family gathering.
Speaking of gatherings, Mama and Daddy hosted a lot of big get-togethers, the Lopez reunion and the Pilcher reunion for many years. One year they threw a big Christmas party and folks from all sides of the family were there. That’s the year Daddy bought himself a karaoke machine and entertained the crowd with Elvis songs.
Y’all know my Mama and Daddy are two of the hardest working people around. During his long career in the oilfield, Daddy worked all over Louisiana and Texas, in the Middle East, the North Sea, South America and the Gulf of Mexico. As a young man supporting a wife and child, Daddy worked as many shifts as he could. He was working on a land rig out of Many when his hand got caught in a chain that took off part of his finger. Trying to drive himself to town, Daddy’s truck got stuck, so he had to get the come-alongs and pull his truck out of the mud to get himself to the doctor.
Aunt Bobbie asked me to share something. In 1974, she and Uncle Tommy were living in Abu Dhabi where he was working, when Uncle Tommy had a heart attack and died. Daddy was also working in the United Arab Emirates. He left his job and went to help Aunt Bobbie and accompanied her back to the U.S. with Uncle Tommy’s remains and my cousin Tom Tom, who was about 11 years old at the time.
Back in the gulf, Daddy was a senior toolpusher / OIM for Penrod for many years and experienced more than one well blowout offshore. On March 1, 1979, a blowout on a production platform took the lives of eight workers. Daddy and the rest of the crew escaped in a survival capsule. Like all oilfield families, we had to adjust our holidays so we could celebrate when he was at home. He missed a lot of Christmases, graduations and birthdays.
Daddy also raised cattle on the side and spent most of his off time off occupied with the farm, messing with the cows, cutting hay and fixing fence. It gave us a great childhood. Daddy was a strong man who stayed fit doing manual labor, tinkered on cars, trucks and tractors and he could fix just about anything. He always figured out how to do things for himself.
I mentioned our large family. Our generation has lots of cousins, too, and they loved to come to our house in Zwolle. Laura and Colleen told about how when they lived in Franklin, Daddy would pick them up on his way home from work to come stay with us. Laura, who was in about 8th grade at the time, would drive home -- in the company car -- while Daddy slept in the back seat. Uncle Charles taught several of his nieces and nephews how to drive, swim, ride motorcycles and shoot guns.
After Daddy retired from the oilfield, he and Mama had a lot more time for leisure. They got in with a local RV group and took several trips to different parts of the country. Daddy was not much of a dancer, but Mama got him to join a square dancing group for a while. After they had the camp they got involved with the Toledo Bend Lake Association and they made many, many friends with other retirees on the lake. Daddy was a board member of TBLA and was instrumental in establishing the annual Bass Unlimited program, their biggest fundraiser. He also looked after his brothers Jerry and Stan when they became unable to take care of themselves.
Mama and Daddy bought their camp at Lanan in the 90s and it’s actually located where Grandma and Grandpa Lopez’s place was before the lake came in. In 2006, the state of Louisiana paid Mama and Daddy for their house in Zwolle, where they had lived since 1970, and it was torn down to make way for the four-laning of Hwy. 171. That’s when Mama and Daddy built their house at Lanan. The joke at the time was that Mama was going to live in the new house and Daddy was going to live in the camp.
Mama Sarah and Papa Charles enjoyed their grandkids and kept them all pretty often. They took the kids out to the farm, out on the lake, took them to airshows, to movies, to the sale barn. Last Christmas Claire compiled a book of memories called “Tales from the Grandkids.” Some of the common memories are of Pop’s crazy antics and silly pranks he would play to get Mama Sarah’s goat. They wrote about swimming, camping, fishing, flying kites, playing dominoes and Papa Charles teaching them to drive in the pasture. They talked about one time when Pop jumped in the pool with all his clothes on. They thought it was hilarious! They never forgot it. When Karla and her family lived in Coteau, Daddy would stop at their house and surprise Claire and Joey with donuts and one time they met him in Amelia and he let them on the rig.
Gracyn wrote about going out on the barge with Pop in the evenings, looking up at the sky, looking for the North Star and the constellations, some that were real and some that were made up.
Cale said “as we got older, our fun outings turned into work outings: working cows, working in the hayfield, working on equipment and helping Mama Sarah move things in her house.”
Chas had an interesting conversation with Pop about the creation of Toledo Bend. He told Chas about the farmland, now underwater, in front of their house that had belonged to the Pilchers, the gas station in Sabine Town where he used to get gas because it was the cheapest, ferries that went across the Sabine River and how the water just seemed to creep up and it didn’t take long for the land he grew up on to be completely under water. Chas said, “I felt this was the reason they built the house where they did, so he’d be able to look out on what was once his childhood.”
The boys also wrote about how much it meant for Mama Sarah and Pop to attend all their ballgames. Mama and Daddy went to see three of their grandsons play football in the Super Dome.
Then, the great-grands came along. Karly and Joseph best remember Pop cracking jokes, playing pranks to drive Mama Sarah crazy and Pop slipping them some cash on the sly. Olivia and Lily Kate obviously have fewer memories but Claire said Olivia was in Walmart one day and started yelling at a man with gray hair and a plaid shirt that she thought was Papa Charles. She said “Come back! I hold you!” I hope that Olivia and Lily Kate will remember Papa Charles before he got sick, our last Easter and the last Father’s Day. And our family keeps growing. A couple of weeks ago, Joey and Katie Facetimed Pop to tell him he was going to be great grandpa again.
One other little about Daddy is he had a sweet tooth. He loved ice cream, Hershey bars, M&Ms and he often used the grandkids as an excuse to go get a blizzard from Dairy Queen. Walker Roe said that one time Pop ordered a blueberry blizzard for Clayton, knowing he wouldn’t like it, so Pop conveniently ate the whole thing.
In recent days, Mama and Daddy lived quietly. Daddy enjoyed watching NASCAR, football and basketball. They watched Jeopardy every day. In the last seven months, Mama hardly left Daddy’s side and he received the best care possible because of her. She said it was the closest time of their marriage.
Daddy was a character. Anything he said was completely unvarnished. He never sugarcoated anything. Uncle Jim said Daddy got his smark-alecky nature from our Papaw Pilcher and that gene is quite persistent in our family. We’ve shared a lot of laughs telling hilarious stories about Pop. He wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t a regular churchgoer until his retirement years. When he was working in Brazil, he had a life endangering experience that precipitated his profession of faith. Gracyn said he often told her that she should always go to church and tithe faithfully. During his illness Mama and Daddy read a prayer card and said a special prayer every night.
There’s about a dozen other stories we wanted to tell today, but time runs short. However he was referred to, Charles, Bubba, C.L. (whenever anybody was mad at him), Daddy, Papa Charles, Uncle Charles or Pop, he was one of a kind.
The last few weeks were agonizing. But we looked for the blessings. This past Sunday was a beautiful sunny day. Daddy took his last breath surrounded by his wife, his children and his brother and sisters. We prayed over him and he slipped away, surrounded by love. And this is how God works: Brother Tony showed up about 10 minutes later. He was stopping by to check on us after church and his timing was perfect. He prayed with us and he said, “Death is not always a tragedy.” I’m not sad that Daddy left that old body. That’s not how I will remember him anyway. I’ll remember the guy who would walk on his hands up and down the hall to entertain the kids.
I’ll close with a passage of scripture that a friend shared with me recently. It’s also printed on the back of your bulletin.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
God rest your soul, Daddy. We love you.