Martin Burrus eulogy
Jan, 2005
Ten p.m. on a hot July night. Pouring rain. Mart and I carrying Finco engine. Meredosia, north of the hard road. Mosquitoes, heat, rain. Mud way beyond our ankles with every step. Orville Fanshier. Double shift. Another crew of kids coming in at 6 a.m. and we’d been working since 5 that morning. If you look up the word “miserable” in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of my face that night. Mart..pipe going… smiled. “Boy, ain’t that rain fine, Kenny?”
And that, it a very wet nutshell, was Mart. Yes, he’d sometimes show his temper…fired an entire truckload of complaining detasslers… (Todd: phone calls) Yes, he valued common sense over governmental regulations. After his boys had carefully gone over what you could and couldn’t ask in interviews, his next interview began with “Well, what church do you go to, feller?” But above all, Mart knew that life was very, very good… and that there was absolutely no excuse for wasting it, for being bored by it, or for not appreciating it.
I get to live 365 days a year, but by far my most wonderful evening of every year was my annual super with Mart and Adelle. Although Adelle is an excellent cook, food wasn’t the real purpose of the evening. Our first course would be politics….in case you didn’t know it, Mart was a Democrat, but he was fair. He’d criticize all Republicans evenly. (Even after his stroke…Bush..shake his head… “Light. Pretty light on top.” Second course: the school system. What Triopia needed, what we were best at, how much longer the superintendent should stay. (One of Mart’s many gifts was his ability to sum up a person’s character quickly, then state it briefly…. One supt: U of I ballgame. “Lightweight.”) Final course was the current Arenzville Methodist preacher. We always had preachers for dessert, and again, his preacher-summaries were classic.. “Good man. He knows God.” or “Showboat. Likes to hear himself.” or (to Patsy) “Kenny, that girl knows what she’s doin’. How’d we get her?” Then, after every course, he’d turn to Adelle. “Now what do you think, Adelle?” knowing full well…
Since Adelle is very much with us, and I would never want to embarrass her, I can’t say what I’d like to about Martin and Adelle’s generosity to members of our community…often anonymously, especially the youth. And nothing made Mart happier than to know that his children have happily inherited that trait.
Mart’s wife Jeanette died in my first year of teaching and I never got the opportunity to know her. I attended college with Tom, as Marcy and I got him through somehow, and Todd was the star of the first play I directed… Yes, Kevin, he really was the star, and a few years later I learned that Becky was a sister. Todd never mentioned it.
And of course everyone who’s known Mart for the past 24 years knows that Adelle is the main reason he was still with us until a few days ago. Not only has Adelle cared for his physical needs, but also she’s been his social and spiritual helpmate. Yes, Mart had a family that would do anything he needed but God had a very special gift for Martin and the family at the end of such a remarkable life…and that gift was Adelle. And that gift was to all of us.
If a man’s life can be measured by the family he raises and the friendships he nourishes, then we need look no further than the pews of this church today.
My job is to teach, and if I have learned anything in my years with kids, it’s that we can talk and talk and talk and children will nod, smile, take a few notes, and learn nothing….until they see the lessons lived out in the flesh. Martin’s obituary was long and wonderful, but it left out one thing…his most important job….teacher. Who in this room has not learned from Martin Burrus? Who in this room has not seen the lessons of Christ lived out in human form in his life?
Last night, after visitation, a good friend sent me this. Jeremiah 9:23-24 "This is what the LORD says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD" And more than anything else, Martin knew that. And he taught us that.
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