The Funeral

Sunday afternoon, October 24, 2004, found us seeking a place to park at the little Valdasta Baptist Church on a delightfully warm, yet breezy day. We were attending the celebration of William Leeper Templin’s life. We knew him simply as "Jake". The small crowd of family and friends were gathering even though the funeral was not published in the local papers yet due to Jake passing from this earth before the papers came out. Jake passed on Friday, October 22, at 10:30 a.m. Word of mouth has a way of traveling throughout a small town and Anna, Texas is no exception. Jake resided there for so many, many years with his wife and children.

We filed into the small, cramped church until the church pews were filled and then the metal folding chairs came out for the overflow of people who just kept coming. The funeral director came over and collected all of Jake’s family together and asked us to meet in the little building by the church to walk in with the new widow, Joyce Templin and hers and Jake’s daughter, Cynthia and Jake and Joyce's grandchildren. I asked Janelle Florence to hold a place for my parents when they arrived, knowing they couldn’t stand throughout the funeral. My mom had known Joyce and her mom and dad and sister since she was a small child and they all lived at Val Dasta in the 30‘s. We sat on the same pew with my parents and Janelle Florence and some of the other family members.

Music was special by a female friend who sang soprano, and a male friend with a deep baritone voice. I can’t even remember what they sang, but keeping in line with a little familiar country church, there was no embarrassment when the piano player was on a different key than the lady who was singing could hit. She stopped after one stanza (maybe not that long) of the song and held her hand up for the pianist to stop. She said play in the key of C, then the pianist started out just like she did before and the lady began to belt out her song, but still in the wrong key not in tune with the pianist, so again, once more, she held up her hand for the pianist to go no further. The pianist looked up at Jim Jake, who was preaching his father’s funeral that day, and asked him to come down and play. Jim Jake, wiped his forehead with a big, big, handkerchief and stepped down and began to play. The lady sung and the funeral went on.

Apparently the 1st singer, the lady, knocked the music of the second singer on the floor. The male singer, asked someone from the audience to come forward and pick it up for him because he needed it to sing. He was an older gent with a large middle (like most of us older folks) and he was up on the stage with the podium in front of him minus his music. A child stepped forward from below the podium, bent down and picked up the music and handed it up to the gentleman who then sung a beautiful song, and the funeral and remembrances went forward.

Jim Jake preached his father’s funeral. He kept saying, "This is a hard job", but he was terrific at it. He told how his father was a loving, kind, strict father, and told some of the stories from his and his sister, Cynthia’s past with their parents. He brought us from when Jake was born, growing up in Prosper, the Korean war, marriage, births of the children up to the present and how Jake would always be singing "Precious Memories" whenever he had heard of one of his siblings becoming ill. The family would come in and say "Who’s sick dad?" because they knew he had heard bad news that day. Jake had asked his family to sing that song for him before he went to surgery, but they poo pooed the idea and just knew this was a typical by-pass surgery. He said to his family as they wheeled him away, "If I don’t see you after the surgery, I’ll see you on the other side." How true that statement would become.

According to Jim Jake, his father Jake, still liked to mow the yard but they said he could tear up a mower faster than they could keep it repaired. He would insist on mowing in the heat on the hottest day and they tried to remedy that by attaching a tarp on the mower, but said he didn’t even notice the tarp had torn into pieces when he hit a low hanging branch with the top of the tarpaulin. He went on to describe how his mom longed for a house for many years after living in the old home places so finally they were going to move into a new double wide on their property, but Jake never got to move in. Instead he moved into a mansion leaving behind his loving family and joining his family who had gone on to heaven before him.

Jim Jake concluded the funeral by challenging his sister, Cindy, to come forward and sing "Precious Memories" in honor of their father. She stood up and went to the podium and began to sing. Jim Jake accompanied her on the piano, and we all began to sing with them. The tears flowed as we all had our own remembrances of a beloved brother, brother-in-law, friend, grandpa, uncle, husband, and just a good human being. What a day of remembrance for William Leeper Templin whom we will always love and miss until we meet again. Keep the tractor purring for us Jake, because we all want to mow heaven’s green, green, grass of home.