Categories: All Articles, Family, That Ye May Learn Wisdom
Mac Kerns Memorial Service
I am grateful for this opportunity to speak and to be the family representative at my brother's memorial service. But I'm a poor choice. As I've searched around in my mind for memories of ever living with my brother, I can't find a thing. Mac is 13 years older than I am, and he left home and got married before my memory kicked in.
Which is probably a good thing for me, because he wouldn't have had many memories of living with me, either. Our sister, Jean, was two years older than he, and didn't get off so easily. She became the object of his most satisfying pun.
Mac loved a good pun, a play on words. We'd be passing a cemetery and he'd comment matter-of-factly, “People are just dying to get in there.”
Jean served for a time as a Methodist minister to a congregation in Montana. Mac wanted to hear her preach, so he and Joyce made a trip so as to be there on Sunday. Following the sermon everyone gathered in the fellowship hall. One of the regular attendees recognized Mac as a stranger to the group, and asked if he'd met their pastor.
“Oh, yeah,” Mac replied, “I lived with her for 18 years.” A hush fell over the group with that comment, whereupon Jean said, “All right, little brother, you'd better shut up or I'll take you down and sit on you.”
It was one of Mac's prouder moments. I know because I heard the story several times. People like him look for such opportunities, and never miss the chance to score.
I was out in the field with little Wesley. He was no more than a toddler. At one point I stumbled. That little tyke said, “Have a good trip?—Next time pack your bags before you go.” That came out of the mouth of a baby! Where in the world did he get that? It's probably the best joke I've ever heard, because I've been laughing about it now for 60 years.
Several generations of us had Alan McCullough as our physics and chemistry teacher at Baker High School. Mr. McCullough needs to be mentioned here because he it was who assigned Mac Kerns and Joyce Avon Cole to be chemistry lab partners. They graduated from high school and were married the very next month. It was the best decision either one of them ever made. Mac was still 18. Joyce turned 18 just three days before their marriage.
He went off to college that fall. Mac was one of only three in his class to do so. Our mutual friend, Lyle Defrees, would have been one of the other two. Our father, and our brother, Tim, also went to that same school, and all three graduated in agricultural engineering. Interestingly, they all went to the same institution, but it had a different name when each of them were there. Dad graduated from Oregon State Agricultural College, Mac from Oregon State College, and Tim from Oregon State University. I went there for a short time, too, and dutifully enrolled in a calculus class (because that's what Kernses were supposed to do), but I couldn't understand a thing the professor was saying. I didn't become an engineer.
Mac says that he had to enroll in bonehead math when he began his college career. After a term or two the dean of the college of engineering had him come to his office for a visit. The dean said, “Do you know how many students who had to begin with bonehead math actually ever became engineers?” He then made a big zero with his fingers. “Why don't you look for another major?”
Mac replied, “I think I'll stick it out.” He eventually took calculus and two terms of differential equations, and got A's and B's in the classes. And those equations remained stuck in his mind right up until his death. Brent asked him recently to calculate the “bending moment of a beam,” and he was able to spit out the formula in the next breath. Maybe nobody here but Brent and Danny and Tim have ever even heard of the bending moment of a beam, but it's a calculation to determine how much weight a beam can hold, so that you know how thick to make the beam.
Mac's life spanned the most choice and momentous times of all history. His lifetime spanned horses to space travel. He rode a horse to school, and a jet to China. He welcomed all of the advances, and adapted to each.
I've always looked up to my brother. He was smart, but never overbearing. If you've ever been in his house, you can't help but notice the books. They used to fill the back bedroom, but then he designed and built some really clever bookcases, and moved the books to his sun deck. Woodworking was one of his hobbies. Each of his kids has a beautiful box or boxes that were generally made from cast-off pallets or other cast-off wood. He made a working dulcimer. He made a sturdy wooden chair for our father. He built and renovated houses.
The bookcases had four shelves, and were paired and hinged in the middle so that you could close them up and move them. Those closed and latched bookcases each contain eight shelves, and each shelf contains an average of 25 books. That's 200 books per bookcase. I think there are 8 or 9 of them. And then there are more books in regular bookcases in the living room. I think there are easily 2,000 books in that house—and Mac told me he had read every one of them.
I asked Brent, “What are you going to do with all the books?”
“Oh, we're going to have each grandkid choose one.”
“One book to each grandkid?! That won't even make a dent!”
“No! One bookcase to each grandchild. We'll just close and latch the bookcase, and the kid gets whatever's in there.”
Mac had heroes. His Condon and McCornack ancestors were his heroes. He revered them. Probably his biggest hero of all was our 2nd great grandmother, Maria Eakin McCornack. Many, many times he said incredulously, “She brought five little boys across the Oregon Trail, and kept them fed and healthy! How did she do that? Then she had seven more after they got to the Oregon country, and she and Andrew raised and educated all 12. They became doctors and bankers and land developers and were all prominent in their communities. It was unheard of in those days for young people to go to college, but they all got educations. Education was important. I admire what they accomplished.”
Well, Mac carried on the tradition. He was educated, too. He had a fine mind. He had an engineer's mind. I can't even imagine how his mind worked. Mine doesn't function that way.
Mac had a stroke last August 31st. He expected to die at any moment. He had his whole family come and gather around so that he could see them and give them their instructions.
Four days later he called me to come down, too. He said, “I want to write a Christmas letter. Will you help me?”
Mac's favorite poet was Robert Service. Mac memorized Robert Service's “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” Because of Mac, I memorized it, too, and recited it around many a boy scout campfire at night. One line from the poem says, “Now a friend's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail...”
Well, here was Mac with his last request: “Will you help me write a Christmas letter?”
“Now a friend's last need is a thing to heed” went through my head, so I said, “Sure.” What could be hard about that? I can take dictation, and I'm a good typist.
I got pen and paper, sat down, and asked “What do you want to say?”
“Well, I want to tell about the Condons and the McCornacks, but my thoughts are all muddled. I”d like you to write their story.”
So, this 45-page book is Mac's Christmas letter for last year.
His passing now is fortuitous in a way. He mentioned several times that we need to do a followup letter about the Kerns side. He didn't push me on that, and I never committed to do it; but if you'll be patient, Mac, we'll eventually get it done.
I miss you, dear brother. Friday mornings and the weekly sibling walk with only Tim and Ellen and I just aren't the same.