Dad

Dad was a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a mentor, and a friend.


He was a teacher and not just a jack of all trades, but a “master” of all trades. He was knowledgeable about everything that is practical because he had many people who taught him how to do things early on, and the rest he read about. To that end, he has over 500 books he read just on the topic of war on his bookshelf he built in his shop.

Two of his philosophies that he spoke of quite often was, “Do it right the first time, or don’t do it at all.” And “The process to learning is to watch it, do it, then teach it.” He spent his life teaching his kids how to do things. Towards the end of his life he enjoyed teaching his grandsons how things worked.

Whenever we kids needed help with anything, we would call him up and he would walk us through it. If we still couldn’t figure it out, he would come over on the weekend to help us out. He found his greatest satisfaction in helping out his children. He always had answers because his kids always had questions. Auto mechanics, plumbing, electricity, carpentry, algebra, and how to turn on a fastball. We watched the Super Bowl together every year until just a few years ago, but he was sure to talk with me before the game anyways, give me his insights on who was going to win.

Dad didn’t enjoy art much, but he loved the art of playing the guitar. He never had a single lesson in his life, but taught himself to play by sounding out the melody of a particular song and playing it note-by-note until he could play the whole song. When I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, the first two songs he taught me to play were “Taps” and “Amazing Grace”.

He swore he wasn’t going to coach our little league teams because he didn’t want to be the one to explain to parents why certain kids played more than others, yet when they needed a coach, he couldn’t resist. He was by far the best coach Chris and I ever had, high school and college included.

He was an expert in:
-Football, and especially what the Kansas City Chiefs could do to be a better football team.
-Guns- he knew everything there was to know about every known make of gun and every type of ammunition.
-Warfare
-Politics
-Tying knots
- How to throw any kind of ball

He was a Master Inventor:
They say that “necessity is the mother of invention.” Whenever he faced a problem, he invented a tool to fix the problem. He would just see the solution in his head and go create it. A perfect case in point: in the week leading up to his last dove hunt a few weeks ago, he needed a way to sit down and be comfortable since he couldn’t stand very well anymore. He welded some angle iron together, bolted a piece of plywood to it, then ran a few long bolts through the back end. Everybody looked at it from every angle and couldn’t figure it out until he put it on the ball hitch of his vehicle and sucked the nuts down on the bolts. It worked perfectly and he was able to sit on his “ball hitch seat” and comfortably enjoy his last hunt.

He was by far the most dependable man I have ever known.
-Every town has a Gary Shelton. He was always there for anyone who needed him. He might work a 10 hour day, come home and receive a phone call from someone who needed his help and he would be out the door until after sunset. I honestly don’t know what the town is going to do without him.
-He would drive around on snowy days in “Old Blue” his dependable ’74 Chevy pickup and rescue motorists who had slid off the road.
-He never missed his kids’ games. Whether it was football, baseball, wrestling, volleyball, or softball, he would always be there and be proud of his kids’ efforts.
-He never missed work. He never took sick days. When he took his two weeks of vacation in the summer, it was to go to the Cline’s farms to help out with harvest.
-He never missed birthdays or anniversaries and though he wasn’t the best shopper, he always seemed to put so much thought into his gifts that oftentimes the receiver would cry.

Dad had many hobbies.
-Flying remote-controlled airplanes- loved WWII war birds, especially corsairs.
-Flying- he used to take his family up in the air every Sunday afternoon for a “Sunday Fly” which was also good for scouting deer.
-reloading rifle cartridges
-teaching his kids to enjoy the great outdoors
-deer hunting. Archery in his younger years and rifles in his later years.
-dove hunting. Taught Chris and me a lesson we will never forget on Chris’ first dove hunt when, with one shot, he sawed a small tree in half to introduce the concept that “guns are not toys.”
-pheasant hunting with his brothers, boys, and friends. Opening Saturday of pheasant season was a holiday to dad and something we looked forward to every year.
- On snowy days, he would tie a rope to his hitch and a saucer to the other end of the rope and pull his kids down snowy back roads.

Dad had a love for the outdoors.
-It was like a little slice of heaven going fishing for bass out at Tammen’s Ponds in the last 15 years of his life. He got the biggest kick out of the little touches God would show him in nature. For example, a few weeks ago he threw a lure in the water and a large grey heron must have thought it was a frog and went after it. Dad reeled it in as fast as he could and the large bird barely pulled up before flying right into him.
-He found God in the view of a sunrise from a deer stand. When he was in the process of hearing and acting upon God’s call in his life, he explained that nature was his church and that he could experience God’s grandeur through something as simple as the leaves rattling in the trees, frost on the grass, or a graceful deer walking down a path. Those were the times he felt closest to God.

Dad was compassionate.
He was the ultimate conservationist. Even as a hunter, he couldn’t stand to see nature take its natural course and sometimes felt the need to intervene.
-In the early nineties as he was driving through the country while working, he noticed a baby fawn in the ditch. His mother had been run over by a car. He couldn’t fathom the idea of the fawn dying from starvation or at the hands of coyotes so he rescued it, and brought it home to teach his kids a lesson in compassion. The Great Bend Zoo took in the deer, and rebuked him, telling him to let nature take its course next time. He listened by next rescuing a kitten from the coyotes and just making it his pet. Maddie “The Wildcat” still lives in his house.

Dad was nostalgic.
He loved reminiscing about his younger years.
-football games he played in high school.
-growing up on Lena and Clarence’s farm and learning life lessons from them
-past deer hunts
-catching catfish on the Arkansas River
-having one of his brothers bury him in a hole while he used a garden hose to breathe.
- Whenever we got into a car, he would relive his passions for being out of doors. For example, when we would go to Great Bend or Hutchinson to go shopping on a Saturday, Dad would drive us down the county roads so that we could enjoy taking in the nature he so loved, not driving by it as fast as we could go on a highway just to get to our destination. To dad, the journey was always more important.

Dad was tough.
He never complained about pain, and he was never without it. The only things he ever complained about were food and the government.

God had a plan for His salvation.
Dad is a poster child for the beauty of how God works in mysterious ways. I believe Dad always felt a strange tugging on his life, but being tough, he seldom gave his thoughts on faith. Mom spoke with him and Lori would try to get him to open up about it, but it was always tough for him. One day in the fall of ’07, Chris and I were home playing catch with the football in the yard and somehow God had placed Dad on both of our hearts. We sat down and decided we needed to gather our courage and talk with him about the need for baptism for the forgiveness of his sins. We had an open and honest discussion and the message was fairly-well received. Between all our efforts, a seed was planted.

That next summer he had a back surgery that went awry. Half paralyzed and in a weakened state, he woke in the middle of the night in his hospital room and saw his late-grandma Lena Unruh and his late-mother-in-law Frances Gasser sitting on the side of his bed. They told him that he would be alright. Sobbing, he woke his wife Mary who was sleeping in a cot next to him and told her he had a need to be baptized. This is a great example of God’s perfect will.

God had a great plan for Dad’s life. As tough as it is to let him go, I am assured by my faith that he is in heaven this very minute and all his pain is gone. He is with Lena, and Grandma Gasser and everyone else who loved him and left this world before him, including Jesus. I thank God for allowing our lives to intersect and I look forward to seeing him again some day.

Remembering 9/11

I've tried five times to find the right words to start this blog, and nothing seems good enough to fit the situation so I went to my lesson plan book, to the entry from September 12th, 2001 to look for inspiration.  I have no idea what I taught that day, partly because I was in a fog, but mostly because I only had seven little words written in the block for that day:

"The day prayer came back to school."

Mr. Jerry Winkle, the principal at Ponca City High School at the time, came over the intercom and forgot all about political correctness.  He forgot all about political lines in the sand.  Our nation had been bored for way too long and in that boredom decided to overthink everything, including in what ways we can ban God.  Seeing as our nation needed God at that, our weakest moment, Mr. Winkle got on the intercom and prayed for peace and understanding. 

And we wept. 

A few days later, President George W. Bush stood on top of the rubble that was a great building and promised America that we would seek justice for those who perished in the worst terrorist attack on American soil ever. "The people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon!"   His approval rating that day was 94%.  Firefighters and police officers were heroes, not taken for granted or sneered at.  America was united.

And we wept.

It's so hard to believe that it's been 10 years since that tragic day that has shaped part of who I am today.  Nearly 1/3 of my life has been affected by that horrible day when America lost its innocence.  Sadly my students have never truly known an America at peace, and I weep for their loss of innocence as well.

I have many lasting memories from Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, but the one that sticks out in my mind is where I was at 9:15 CST.  One of my students had come back from the library 45 minutes late and when I questioned him, he said he was busy "in the library watching the plane hit the building."  I had in my mind that if indeed he was telling the truth, a single-engined Cesna was sticking out of some building somewhere, but then the bell rang and I walked out into the hallway. 

It was like being part of a zombie movie.  All the students had the "deer-in-the-headlights" look.  Nobody talked, and the sound of a high-school hallway without noise except for the shuffling of feet on a worn-down carpet is an eerie one.  Two cheerleaders came up the stairway from the right, both crying and holding each other.  I was totally bewieldered.  The bell rang then the strangest thing happened.

One girl came skipping down the hallway like a child in a field of daisies, singing, "It's the end of the world as we know it!"  I'm quite certain the look on my face was one of incredulity.

My second period students helped me fill in the gaps, and my mind turned to the unsuccessful attack on the WTC in '93.  I then knew that I was living in the midst of history.  The lesson plan for that day was scrapped and my classes walked to the auditorium where a projector was set up with a live feed of the smoldering Lower Manhattan.  It was then that I lost my innocence.

The details of the rest of my day aren't as important.  I, like every other American family, sat on the couch, glued to the TV, trying to make any sense out of what was going on. 

In one day our world had changed.  In one day we went from seeing the violence of war on television bouncing off a satellite from across an ocean to seeing it in our own backyard.  Ten years removed from that fateful day, I pray that our world is safer.  I pray that good will win out over evil  And I pray that we can look back to the lessons of that day, come together as a country, and for at least one day, not concentrate on what separates Americans, but on one word that unites us.  That word I leave up to you.