Cindy Swanson
A Tribute to My Father, Pepper Garrett
In a few weeks,I'll be going to Texas to visit my family. There will be a heavy weight of sadness when I see my dad. It seems like just a few short months ago that he was healthy and fine...approaching seventy with a few health problems that were manageable, but mentally healthy and as funny as ever. It will be hard to see him suffering from the effects of liver disease,frail,hallucinating and confused much of the time. Yet my sister tells me that he has still retained much of the wit that has cracked his family up for years...that he's still essentially the same "Daddy" that we've always known.
My father has always been a very special person...flawed and imperfect, as we all are, but loving and generous.
One of my earliest memories of my dad is when I had the croupe as a very little girl...I think I was maybe five or six at the time. I used to get croupe really bad, and my mom would make a little oxygen tent for me out of a sheet so I could breathe. I remember being very ill, and my dad sitting on my bed and praying for me...and I remember my shock when I saw that he was crying. Daddy crying? I didn't think daddies cried...but I remember, sick as I was,being impressed that my big,strong dad was crying for *me*. I can still summon a fairly clear picture of how young and handsome he looked, sitting there weeping for his sick little girl...he was probably only about 30 years old at the time.
There was another time he cried that made a big impression on me. My parents were missionaries to Beirut,Lebanon. I remember going to the big post office in downtown Beirut, and my dad getting a telegram from West Texas. Instead of getting the telegram immediately as he should have, some sort of foreign red tape had held it up. I clearly remember him opening the telegram in our car, and reading that his own father--a kind,gentle man--had suddenly died. My father sobbed. He always said that when our plane had left West Texas for New York City, and he had waved goodbye to his dad, that he had a premonition it would be the last time he ever saw him.
My dad has always loved to sing, has always had a beautiful voice. I can remember inviting friends of mine to church and hoping Daddy would sing, because I was so proud of his singing. He used to sing a beautiful song called "Submission," that to mewill always be my father's song:
"Not what I wish to be...nor where I wish to go For who am I that I should chose my way? The Lord shall choose for me... 'Tis better far, I know... So let Him bid me go, or stay."
My dad,until just recently, spent much of his time singing and playing the piano. He had his own unique way of playing the piano by ear, but somehow it worked, and sounded great! It makes me so sad that he never plays the piano now, and hardly ever sings.
I can remember getting annoyed as a teen-ager when Daddy would want us to practice singing. We traveled around and sang as a family quite a bit, and sometimes in my selfish little teen-age way, I just couldn't be bothered to practice.
Another thing that used to annoy me...but that I now realize was a wonderful teaching tool...was the way my dad would scrutinize the lyrics to Christian songs. If they weren't scriptural, out they went. Or he might just change them...like one of his favorites, "I Wouldn't Take Nothin' for My Journey Now." "I'm gonna make it to heaven somehow" became "I'm gonna make it to heaven I KNOW!"
He did the same thing with TV shows. He would watch them with us and point out the liberal bias or the anti-God philosophy and subtle innuendos. Now, I can hardly watch a TV show without doing the same thing!
But to be honest, my dad never annoyed me much! He has always been one of the funniest people I know. He has always been generous to a fault...one of the most giving people I know. He has always had a great sense of fun, has never been a "pious gas-bag."
My dad was a great athlete, and loved sports. He was an award winning football player in high school, and even as a little girl I used to like to watch him pitch in baseball. He had these huge,powerful arms... I think guys I dated were actually scared of him!
He got the name "Pepper" from his own father, who was a St. Louis Cardinals fan in the days when one of the Cardinals' stars was a player named Pepper Martin. Grandpa Garrett wanted to name my dad Pepper Martin Garrett after his hero, and Grandma put her foot down. Daddy was named Thomas V. Garrett,Jr, but Grandpa got the last laugh...he has never been known as anything but Pepper!
My dad has always been a prayer warrior. I can't count the number of family crises that would prompt my dad to say "Let's just go to the Lord in prayer right now." We would all drop to our knees and each one of us would pray.
I remember once when my dad was praying out loud about something in particular that was just developing into a potential problem. My dad prayed that the Lord would "nip it in the bud." My little brother laughed out loud...he thought my dad had asked the Lord to "kick it in the butt"!
There were many nights, as I was growing up, that I would hear my dad praying out loud. Agonizing before the Lord..."getting ahold of the horns of the altar," as he called it.
As I grew up, got married, moved away...I never stopped feeling the protective warmth of my parents' prayers. Always could rest in the assurance that they were praying for me.
I love my father. I could never give him a Father's Day gift good enough to match what he gave to me...a loving,caring father, and the example of a life lived in service to Christ.
But maybe this tribute is one small way of honoring him.
I love you,Daddy.--written March 2002
