I delivered this eulogy for a dear friend, Mr. Wilson Price, on 1 June 2015, I believe. Some time after that I asked his son, Darrel, if I might publish it, and he enthusiastically said that I could. Finally, here it is with but a few minor touch-ups.
I am honored that Darrel Price asked me to eulogize his father, Mr. Wilson Price. And I greatly enjoyed the privilege of sitting down with Darrel and Gertrud and Angie and Roger the other evening to talk about Mr. Price and things related. I learned a good deal that I wish I had known when Mr. Price was living, as it would have made me like and love him even more than I do. To do justice to his life on earth would require a minute for every minute of the nearly eighty-two years he spent here, but I will try to make my reflection somewhat shorter than that. Please forgive me if I am a little off on some of the details. Though he went by Duke, Euk, Unc, Wilson, and Price, he was always Mr. Price to me, but for clarity, I will refer to him as Wilson.
I learned from Darrel that his dad was born Wilson Euklet Price on July 31, 1933, in New Orleans, Louisiana. And Darrel added the words that aptly describe Wilson’s life from that time forward. He said, “There’s a story there.” Part of that story involves his name. He was named after his grandmother’s boyfriend, and it was supposed to be Euklet Wilson Price, but, if I remember right, it was written down wrong on the birth certificate and became Wilson Euklet Price. His family called him “Euk.” But his younger brother, Bobby, could not pronounce Euk and called him “Duke.” So the rest of the family went along and called him “Duke.” His oldest brother, John, still calls him “Duke.” That brought to mind some Hollywood comparisons. John Wayne, whose real name was Marion Morrison, went by the name Duke from his boyhood. Darrel mentioned that people had thought his dad reminded them of the actor Fess Parker, who played Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. I remarked that he had reminded me of the actor Alan Ladd.
There was also a story in his birthday. Wilson’s mother had long maintained that he was born on July 31, 1933. But the courthouse where his records were kept had burned down, and his paperwork was reissued with a birthdate of July 30, 1933. Wilson thought the best way to settle the issue was to celebrate both days. But when he joined the Air Force, they would only accept one birth date. So his official papers all listed a birthday of July 30, to accord with his official papers from the courthouse. Yet, just recently, the funeral home found that his Social Security Number was recorded for a birthday of July 31, 1933. So, Wilson’s mother had been right all along about when she had given birth to her son.
Wilson grew up poor near Clinton, Louisiana, hunting squirrels to put food on the table. When he was older, he found a job at the state mental hospital. Being the new guy, he was given the task of taking the dead bodies to the morgue in the basement. No one told him that a dead body will often let out the air that is left in the lungs. When one of the bodies he had taken to the basement did just that, as if the corpse had just taken a breath, Wilson was done with the job, and he never went back.
Wilson’s older brother, Johnny, joined the army to be a paratrooper during the Korean War and convinced Wilson that that was the path for him too. So, Wilson went to sign up, but he entered the wrong office and signed up with the Air Force, instead, in 1952. Later, when he saw his brother’s paratrooper training, he was glad he had not joined the army paratroopers. It turns out, ironically, that Wilson was glad he had joined the Air Force, because he had a fear of heights.
So, Wilson served the United States of America in the Air Force for twenty-three years from October 9, 1952 to June 1, 1975. During that time, among other things, in Viet Nam, where he operated heavy machinery, he was exposed to shelling and Agent Orange, which later led to his developing prostate cancer. Besides the two tours he served in Viet Nam, he served in Japan, Germany, Okinawa, Greenland, and several other places, including Newfoundland.
Wilson and Diana were married on March 26, 1955 by a chaplain who said that he expected the marriage to last six months. Instead, they were married for over 56 years until Diana’s death on June 26, 2011.
Newfoundland seemed to have been a particularly unwelcome assignment and it took some severe encouragement to get Mr. Price to go there. That encouragement included the information that there was a girl behind every tree on that island. But that knowledge rang hollow when upon landing, Wilson discovered that there were no trees in Newfoundland. Nevertheless, it seems that Wilson did later discover one tree, or at least the girl behind it, because he did meet a girl in Newfoundland. And that meeting would have consequences more far-reaching than he ever could have imagined at the time.
For, unlikely as it may seem, he again spotted the girl from Newfoundland in the Jack of Diamonds Bar in Denver after he had received a permanent change of station to Lowery Air Force Base. Or at least it looked like the same girl. When he approached the girl and asked if she were the girl from Newfoundland, Diana Frances Defidini informed him that she was not. Nevertheless, the seeds of a relationship were sown in that inquiry. Still, Diana enjoyed teasing Wilson about the lame line he had used to make her acquaintance, “A girl from Newfoundland, come on.” Wilson exonerated himself when, some time later, he ran into a fellow he had served with in Newfoundland and asked him whom Diana reminded him of. He promptly replied that it was the girl from Newfoundland.
Wilson and Diana were married on March 26, 1955, by a chaplain who said that he expected the marriage to last six months. Instead, they were married for over 56 years until Diana’s death on June 26, 2011. Genesis 2:24 tells us: “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” St. Thomas Aquinas elaborates that in human relationships, the priority of love is first to one’s spouse, then children, then grandchildren, then parents, then siblings and friends. Accordingly, Darrell says that his dad’s life was Diana.
And for the next twenty years they lived out their life of service to the United States as an Air Force family in various places throughout the world. Of all the places and positions Wilson served in in his twenty-three years in the Air Force, the 49th Base Civil Engineering Squadron in Germany, where he served from 1968 to 1970, stood out. He was a staff sergeant, and the squadron became especially tight. Once back in the states, the squadron had annual reunions which the Prices thoroughly enjoyed attending.
Still something far more important occurred in Germany years before. Since Diana was unable to have children, in Germany in 1959, she stole Darrell, as he puts it, from an orphanage. Gertrud assures us though that all the paperwork was properly done and filed. It just seems that when that paperwork was taking too long, Diana dressed Darrell up and took him home. He had been born on February 14, 1958, Valentine’s Day. From the moment the Prices adopted Darrell, he was their son, unconditionally. When Darrell as a boy would go to the doctor and they would ask Diana his family medical history, she would offer hers and Wilson’s. Years later, when Diana needed blood transfusions, it was discovered that Darrell had the same blood type. Darrell makes it clear that God gave him great parents.
Wilson taught Darrel from a young age how to work, especially how to work on a car, since he believed that he needed to know cars if he was going to drive them. Darrell was changing the oil in the car when he was eight years old. Wilson had a fondness for cars. He had borrowed money from Diana to buy a 1938 Chevy in which to court her before their marriage. Diana had made it clear that she would not marry him until he paid her back. He paid the last twenty dollars a month before they were married. Some thirty-five years later, in honor of their days of courtship, Wilson bought a 1938 Chevy, tore it down, and restored it, so that he could take Diana riding in it as he had during their courtship.
I was on my way to a meeting at the kids’ school, when Mrs. Price called. She sounded upset and asked if I could come over. She said they needed some religion. So I went right over.
When Wilson retired from the Air Force in 1975, he worked with heavy machinery digging basements for a construction company. Then he went to work for the Colorado DOT for the next nineteen years until 1994, ploughing snow and painting stripes on 474 miles of highway. When he would get it all done, he would start over again. He was a supervisor and a foreman. He retired from CDOT, after nineteen years, when he needed to undergo knee surgery.
Though Wilson had grown up near Denham Springs, Louisiana, an important center for the Ku Klux Klan, he had no racial prejudice and was a life-long member of the Republican Party that had fought for over 100 years for the civil rights of African Americans before the other party got on board. He was raised Southern Baptist, and the Price family went to church every Sunday. Still he never talked politics and religion, and Mr. and Mrs. Price did not tell each other how they voted in elections.
Darrell, Gertrud, Angie, Roger and those who knew him best, knew Wilson to be a quiet, compassionate man who would give the shirt off his back and readily volunteer for those who needed his help. And he never expected repayment. Kindness is one of the terms most used in speaking of him. He became “Unk” to Angie, Jeannie, and Jimmy, who came to live with Diana and Darrell when Wilson was in Viet Nam. In one instance, when he was out on maneuvers in the woods of northern Florida, a niece found her way through, on the telephone, to the base where he was stationed, and she let them know that she needed to talk to him due to an emergency. When Mr. Price was found and brought back from maneuvers and put on the phone, he found out that she needed some money. He did not lose his patience, but sent the money, went back to maneuvers, and shortly after left for his new assignment overseas.
I came to know Wilson in 2002, when we moved into our house. The Prices’ house was, like ours, one of the few houses built in the area with a great deal of dirt and construction debris lying between our two houses. My wife and I would walk down with our son, a toddler, and visit Mr. and Mrs. Price. And Mr. Price and I would have a Coors Light or two. The Prices loved our son, and later, our second son too, and would dote on them. At Christmas time and birthdays, they would show up with presents for the boys: stuffed animals, books, cars, or trains. They were true neighbors and friends.
When I spoke to Wilson once about my Uncle Jeff who has Down Syndrome, he told me of his brother Henry, who was mentally disabled. Some years before he had been concerned about him, because he still lived with his mother, and his mother waited on him, so that he did not know how to do for himself. Once when the Prices had visited Grandmother Price, and had driven all the way back from Louisiana to Denver, Grandmother Price told them over the telephone that Henry would have liked to go to Denver with them. The Prices got back in the car and drove back to Louisiana to get him. With the help of Wilson and Diana, Henry was enrolled in Developmental Pathways. He got off many of the medications he was on. Provided with work, making wind-chimes, he went from the Prices’ house to a group home, then a four-man apartment, then a two-man apartment, to a place of his own. Wilson took care of him.
Once when my parents came to visit, my wife suggested we have the Prices over for dinner. Wilson and Diana and my parents sat and visited as if they had known each other for years. They had all grown up during The Great Depression and World War II, my mother born in 1929, my dad and Dianna in 1931, and Wilson in 1933. Both men were Christians, had served in the military, both loved their country, were patriotic, and were strong Republicans. And all of them shared the values of an earlier age, the values that recognized certain courtesies and conventions. Whenever I would mention Mr. and Mrs. Price to my parents, they would say, “I like them.” And they were quick to add them to their prayer list whenever they would hear of the various health challenges that Mrs. and Mr. Price dealt with.
Mr. Price did not need Darrell’s help. In fact, he could well have done the job quicker and better without an eight-year-old’s contribution. But, in love, the man invited the boy into his work to have a share in it, to participate in it, for the boy’s good.
Still, the most poignant memory for me of Mr. Wilson Price is drawn from a time not long before Diana passed away. I was on my way to a meeting at the kids’ school, when Mrs. Price called. She sounded upset and asked if I could come over. She said they needed some religion. So I went right over.
Mr. Price was very upset. And Mrs. Price, who was suffering, was trying to console him. She said he was just having a hard time with why she had to suffer so much. Feeling at a loss among these two people who had lived considerably longer and had accumulated more wisdom than I had, I turned to my faith tradition. And in that, I turned to the Cross. First, I said that, of course, God is not the author of evil, nor would God ever promote evil, but God allows evil in order to bring about a greater good. I quoted from the Catechism and said, “From the greatest moral evil ever committed, the murder and death of God’s own Son, comes our salvation.” In First Corinthians 1:22-25, St. Paul tells us, “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
I talked about how suffering was an aspect of sin, of how God had created the universe to be perfect, of how he had given the angels and man freedom for one grand reason, that they might join Him in love. But some angels and the man and woman had abused their freedom and had chosen against God, and had ushered sin and death and suffering into Creation. Then man was stuck. God had freely given man the opportunity to love and would have eventually brought man into God’s very self, but man had rejected that supernatural destiny. Now, in order to get it back, man would have to earn it, but that was impossible. Man could not earn God in perfection, how could he do so in sin. So, God gave us the Christ.
As St. Paul writes in Philippians 2:5-8:
Have this in mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
So the Son of God became man to bring man back to God in a perfect act of obedience in contrast to the disobedience that had caused the fall. Unlike Adam and Eve, who had counted equality with God a thing to be grasped, and had grasped for it, Jesus, who though he was the Son of God, had set aside divine privilege, though not divinity itself, to live a perfect human life of obedience. And in the fallen world, that obedience would require suffering. As we learn from Hebrews 5:8: “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.”
And St. Paul writes in Colossians 1:24 “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” But what can be lacking in Christ’s afflictions. St. Therese of Liseux helps us understand when she comments on Jesus’ words that “the harvest is great but the laborers are few.” She notes that God does not need our help, so how can the laborers be few? The answer is love. And for an example of her explanation, we go back to the scene of Wilson Price having Darrell help him work on the car when he was eight years old.
Mr. Price did not need Darrell’s help. In fact, he could well have done the job quicker and better without an eight-year-old’s contribution. But, in love, the man invited the boy into his work to have a share in it, to participate in it, for the boy’s good. So it is with God. He invited Mr. and Mrs. Price into suffering to share in the redemptive suffering of Christ, who did not need their participation, but who nevertheless invited them into it and welcomed their participation in it for their own good. As St. Paul writes in Romans 8:15-17: “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified by him.”
Now we stand before the mystery of death. We stand before the mystery of judgment. Jesus lays out the criteria for that judgment in Matthew 25:31-46: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and those in bondage. For whenever one has done these things to the least of Christ’s brethren, he has done them to Him. Considering the life of Mr. Wilson Price in light of this passage, with true hope we have good reason to commend him to “the God of mercy and love” who is “Lord of heaven and earth.”
Thank you,
P. A. Ritzer
© 2015 P. A. Ritzer
The Mystery of Suffering: A Eulogy for Mr. Wilson Price