EULOGY

written and delivered by Chris Van Etten, Grandson

I write for a soap opera, so if the following leans schmaltzy, well, you get what you pay for. 

When I was little, I knew my grandfather by his keys. 

Most people I know have keys to their house; their car; the office; maybe a mailbox if you live in an apartment. That’s four or five keys, tops? 

At Peak Key I believe my grandfather carried at least three times that.  

These were keys to the realm of Hobart and William Smith – and my grandfather wielded them. These keys were mated to all manner of doors. Doors to barns and dorms, stately old homes overlooking Seneca Lake; to workshops and to Bristol Gymnasium where my brother and cousin and I would tear around, screaming our heads off, or jumping off the high board into the pool. To my child’s eyes, my grandfather’s keys were magical and steeped in so much mystery. 

At that age, with that sort of imagination, it was easier to infuse an object with such potential than it was a person. I didn’t know then what I know now; that the far more intriguing mystery was that of who my grandfather was. Where he came from. How he got here. 

My grandfather was in no particular order a sailor; a cop; a Yankee fan.

He was a veteran and a Republican, but only out of habit and not so stubbornly that he’d blindly vote party first, as evidenced in the last election – when he voted for himself for president. He drove injured students to physical therapy appointments, founded a scholarship and found time to attend high school musicals, races, and Little League games; he won awards. 

He read the New York Post. So he was not without failing. 

He was an honorary member of the Hobart class of 2012; and though he never matriculated, in 2016 he was conferred by Hobart with a doctor of humane letters for his unswerving commitment to the Colleges and to its community. 

Here’s a bit of arcane knowledge about my grandfather; a little secret I’ll let you in on.

He was Irish. 

This likely comes as a surprise to you. He was pretty low-key about his heritage.

To my great awe, my grandfather made things.

With his hands; with saws and machines and tools. He could take big shapeless pieces of wood and give them form, coax symbols and meaning from them. Letters, words, numbers – simple but refined objects. He made gifts of them; gifts for students and coaches; children and grandchildren. Gifts that took on great significance to their recipients. 

He also made a family – with some assistance from my grandmother. Five daughters and a son. Among them a slew of grandchildren and the beginnings of another generation. The Collinses – and I count myself as much a Collins as a Van Etten – are not an uncomplicated people. We have our flaws. Premature gray, for one – although you wouldn’t necessarily know it to look at some of us. We squabble. We complain. We can be crabby at times and it has been rumored that we have an aptitude for the holding of beef. These foibles were not unknown to my grandfather. 

However. 

We are also generous. We are kind. We laugh easily, with and also at one another.

We pull together when it counts, and sometimes even when it doesn’t. And we are quick to open our doors and welcome strangers; to make them family. Although it can help if your name happens to be John. 

These too are not necessarily inherited qualities. They are learned. They are taught. My mother, my aunts and uncle; my cousins; my brother and I; we all had a very good teacher in my grandfather. 

Something else I think we are is tolerant.

This is not a trait I always associated with my grandfather. For most of my life I made an assumption: that because he was born in a very different time, when customs were very different than they are now, that there were people or ways of life too far removed from his experience to relate to.

I was wrong. 

I mistook discretion for narrow-mindedness. All my life I gave my grandfather credit for his gumption; for surviving and thriving as an officer with the NYPD; for his perseverance; his faith; the depth and breadth of his many adventures; his dedication to his values, to his family, to his second family at Hobart and William Smith; and for the light he cast that drew so many different people so close to him. 

But I failed to give him credit for his vision; and for his ability to evolve. Perhaps if I had, I might have enjoyed a closer relationship with him, a relationship like those he shared with my brother and my cousins. Perhaps if I had, today I’d have a better grasp of his life; of the people and experiences that made him who he was. Perhaps I’d have greater expertise with his many stories. 

But I don’t.

I only know a sliver of the person my grandfather was.

My brother Brian and I; my cousins Mike and Cathleen; Caroline, Jack and Nick; Matthew, Emma, Chloe and Tank; we all know him as Pop Pop. I know him as the man whose beat-cop swagger across the Hobart and William Smith campus was as uninhibited as it was confident. I know him as the guy who never failed to treat Mike and Brian and me to comic books and candy from Smalldone’s. I know him as the packrat; as the nock hockey master. As the brazen procurer of New York Giants season tickets. I know him as the divvier of Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association cards; as the guy who could get you out of a speeding ticket but better not to be in a position to ask – as I never was. I know him as the rabble rouser in the assisted living cafeteria; as the guy who could order things that aren’t on the menu – and get them; I know him as a guy who once liberated a barbeque from a state park, relocating it to a little corner of the Bronx where – I have it on good account – it was far more appreciated; I know him as a man whose second act in Geneva was as meaningful as his first in New York. 

For the rest – for all the things I missed out on, for all the things I don’t know – I have you. From Mark Gearan to Rick Smalldone to his mass-and-breakfast buddy Marylyn Uhnak to Maddy Buckley and her vigorous right-handed jab to the students on the Semester at Sea (those who respected his rules and those whose lip landed them an extra couple of hours in a Hanoi jail) to the police officers of foreign countries he couldn’t help but introduce himself to. Pop Pop touched so many different lives and gifted each with at least one story to tell. I want to hear all those stories. Not just because each one helps to unravel his mystery; but because telling them conjures his presence. Telling them puts him right here, right in this moment. So I hope you won’t mind if I bump into you one day and beg a few minutes of your time; I hope you won’t mind telling me a story. I can think of no better tribute to Pop Pop than for his name and his stories to pass your lips; to live on. 

Thank you.