Eulogy for James V. Foster

James Vance Foster
28 November 1934 - 29 December 2017

Another of my heroes has passed away - this one much closer to home than those who went before.  My dad was a role model and guidepost throughout my life. This is the substance of the eulogy I delivered at his memorial service on 23 June 2018:

In thinking about what I wanted to say today, I thought that I’d call this eulogy “What I learned from my dad”.  It would probably be better to call it “What my dad tried to teach me”, since I wasn’t always the best pupil.  He did many different things in his life, but as I thought about all his various roles, jobs, and relationships, I came to the realization that what he really was, most consistently through his life, was a teacher.  Not a schoolteacher in the traditional sense, but a teacher nonetheless.  

He loved to tell us stories and reminisce about growing up in Iowa.  Sometimes they were just stories, but usually there was a lesson in there somewhere.   He loved Iowa, and was always proud of his home state and of having grown up here.  No matter where we lived throughout our lives, Iowa was always “home” to him, and he was happy to be back here in the last years of his life.  

He was born during the Depression, and they didn’t have a lot of material things growing up.  Dad used to say “We were poor, but we didn’t know it, because everybody else was poor, too.”  I think that was the root of his determination to be successful in business, which he was for many years.  He taught us a good work ethic, and gave us a good life, with many advantages.  But even at the height of his business career, working with high-powered executives in Chicago, New York, and London, he never forgot his small town Iowa roots and the values he learned here.

He always wanted us to understand what it took to get the material things we grew up taking for granted. He told about delivering milk in the winter, when the metal racks holding the milk bottles were so cold that he got frostbitten fingers.  He told about getting up at 4 AM to work in the bakery, and taking a sack of warm donuts to school for breakfast, where his locker would suddenly become a very popular place.

He grew up living by the railroad tracks, and he always loved trains. He said that during WWII, they used to watch the trains go by and try to guess what was under the canvas covers by their shapes – trucks, tanks, or airplanes.  He collected model trains, and I always knew that railroads had a special place in his heart.  A few years ago he told me a story I’d never heard before, and it helped me to understand him a little better. When he was young, he liked to walk along the railroad tracks, and at some point he was befriended by a switchman who worked in a shack by a switch someplace near their home.  Dad would go hang out in there with the switchman, who would tell him about the trains and how the railroad worked.  One winter when it was very cold, he apparently mentioned to the switchman that he liked it in the shack because it was warmer than home because they couldn’t afford enough coal.  The switchman told him that there was a curve just down the track a ways, and that the trains went around it so fast at night that sometimes coal would fall off the tenders.  He said if Dad came back in the morning, he just might find some coal there.  Sure enough, the next day when he went and looked, there was coal all over the ground by the tracks.  He ran home to get his brother and sister, and they went back and forth all day carrying coal home in their wagon.  Later on as an adult, of course, he knew that coal didn’t just fall off the train by accident.  The Foster home was warmer that winter because a railroad switchman had a kind heart, and I think that stuck with my dad all his life.  Not only did he love trains and railroads, but he understood the value of kindness and taking care of the people in your community.

He appreciated simple pleasures like hiking, camping, and looking at the stars.  He used to tell me that one of his favorite things to do as a boy was to go out to Wildcat Cave, build a fire, and sit there dreaming about the future and what he was going to do.  He loved the woods and the mountains.  We spent a lot of time together outdoors, and Lindi and I always appreciated that he taught us to love wild places and to feel at home in them.

The Boy Scouts of America had a huge influence on him. Not only did Scouting fit in with his love of the outdoors, but it helped to form his character. He did his best to live by the Scout Oath and the Scout Law.  He took these ideals seriously, and he passed the lessons and traditions of Scouting on to us in our own lives.

Dad was very proud to be an Eagle Scout, but he almost didn’t make it.  He told me about his high school principal, who called him in one day and asked how he was doing on his Eagle requirements.  Dad was one requirement short, but had just sort of gotten distracted by other things, and was almost too old to qualify.  The principal gave him a pep talk, or a kick in the pants, or maybe both, and he finished the last requirement and got his Eagle award. He was grateful all his life that that man had taken the interest and the time to give him the push he needed to finish.  He did the same for me when the time came to finish my Eagle requirements, and I did the same for my son when his time came.  I was very grateful and proud that my dad could be present when my son received his Eagle Scout award, when I couldn’t be there. 

My dad was a lifeguard and swimming instructor at Pine Lake State Beach in his hometown of Eldora, Iowa.  He taught hundreds of people to swim during the 1950’s, and he taught us to swim when we were young.  He taught people how to overcome their fear, to put their faces right down in the water and how to turn their heads to breathe.  He taught them how to float, and finally how to move forward through the water with confidence. These are skills that last a lifetime.  It struck me recently that this is an apt metaphor for his life.  Whatever he did, it usually involved teaching people skills and giving them tools that would help them develop confidence, stay afloat, and move forward through life.

He loved business – that was his true passion.  He loved the challenge, the relationships, and the processes of business.  His corporate career after the Air Force started as a salesman, and led him to the role that would most define him – as an instructor for a course called “SAI”.  This was a course in applied psychology as it related to the skills of sales, supervision, and management.  The central premise of SAI is to think about and present ideas from the other person’s point of view. He used to say that SAI saved his life, because of the ability it gave him to control his own emotions and remain calm by relating to people from their points of view, to understand and empathize with their concerns, and to help them develop the skills and confidence to solve their problems and achieve their goals.  He taught this course to thousands of people during the 1960’s and 1970’s.  I know that there are many, many people out there in the world today on whose lives he had a very positive effect, who were grateful to him for the skills he taught them, and who would mourn his passing if they knew.

As much time as he spent in the worlds of corporate finance and large banks and insurance companies, Dad really loved small businesses.  He was always involved in some kind of small business venture, and always looking for ways to help someone take their idea and make it a reality.  This passion started right here in Eldora, when he bought his first real business venture.  The summer after he went to the University of Iowa on a partial ROTC scholarship, the beach concession at Pine Lake State Park came up for sale, and he really wanted to buy it.  He needed $2,000, which was a huge sum of money for a 19 year old in 1954. No bank would loan him that kind of money, but he did find one businessman who told him that he would loan him $200, if he could find nine other men to do the same.  Dad went around town talking to everyone he knew.  He got nine other businessmen to agree to loan him $200 each, and he bought the beach concession.  He ran the beach all summer, and at the end of the season he had enough money to pay back all the loans, buy a car, and return to college.  He was hooked on business for life, and he never forgot how important those small loans were to getting him started.  

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his favorite movie was “It’s a Wonderful Life”, in which Jimmy Stewart plays George Bailey, a small town banker who helps people to finance building their homes.  In fact, I think he always saw himself as kind of a George Bailey.  After he retired from teaching SAI in the early 1980’s, he bought a small rural bank in Bay Port, Michigan, and spent the next decade or so helping to build and support the surrounding communities.  He was very happy in this work, and loved going out to walk around someone’s farm or business, talking with them about their hopes and dreams, and helping to bring them to fruition.

He also was active in charitable work.  He was an adult leader in the Boy Scouts and a deacon in the church. He spent a lot of time volunteering with a group called Con-Anon, counselling people who were about to get out of prison about how to navigate the challenges of finding and holding a job and re-establishing their place in the community.  He also spent years as a fundraiser for Teen Ranch, a privately-run system of homes for troubled youth that helped them to learn the skills and values that would get them on the right track to stay out of prison in the first place.

Dad valued freedom very highly.  He had his own ideas and charted his own course in life.  He fiercely defended his right to run his business and make his own decisions, and he really didn’t like interference, particularly from unions and government officials.  I remember something he told me once when I was very young.  Something had happened that he didn’t like, and afterwards he looked at me, shook his head, and said:  “Son, one thing there’s no shortage of in the world is people who want to tell you what to do.”  That said, he always reminded me that with freedom comes responsibility.  I can still hear him telling me, over and over, when I was being inconsiderate or self-centered, that “Everybody else has the same rights you have.”  He always thought about other people as well as himself.

He was a man of honor and integrity.  Many times growing up I heard him say “Always do the right thing” and “Your word is your bond”.  He lived by those principles, even when it didn’t work to his immediate advantage.

Dad was always good about explaining things and answering my questions about the world.  As I got older, in high school and college, his answer to my deeper, more philosophical questions was often “Read the book ‘Atlas Shrugged’, and you’ll understand”.  He read it while he was in the Air Force, and it had a profound effect on him. I don’t know how many times I heard him say “Read Atlas Shrugged”, but I was well into my 20’s before I finally took his advice and read it. It had a profound effect on me as well, and I am very grateful to him for what turned out to be one of the best pieces of advice he ever gave me.  

Dad was a patient man, but he had quite a job teaching me to be patient, especially when using tools or machinery.  I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times when I was getting frustrated with something, and he’d reach over, place his hand on mine, and say “Son, don’t force it.”  I was an impatient kid, so I heard that a lot.

My dad stayed the teacher right up to the end of his life.  I remember the moment when my wife Teresa fell in love with him herself.  We were in Iowa visiting him, and were headed out somewhere.  Just as we arrived at our destination, his cell phone rang, and it was a telemarketer.  It was really an unwelcome interruption, and I urged him to just hang up.  But he heard them out, ended the call politely, turned to me, and said “Now, Brad, it only takes a minute or two to be kind to someone.” 

That was my dad - he always remembered that there was a person on the other end of the line. 

When he moved back to Des Moines, his Iowa extended family welcomed him right into their lives. His brother Jerry and my Aunt Pat were very kind to him, including him in many of their day-to-day routines and holidays. He really enjoyed their trips to Costco! My cousins did the same, welcoming him into their homes for holidays and Iowa football games.  He loved every minute of it, and my sister and I, who lived too far away to be there all the time, will never forget it, or be able to tell them how much it meant to us.   

My sister Lindi did so much for him - she literally saved his life more than once.  I was on remote assignments in the Army and unable to do much from so far away, but she stepped up, took charge and did everything she could to keep him healthy and independent as long as possible. She was everything anyone could have hoped for in a daughter or a caregiver, and then some. I know she added ten years to his life.  All the times I was able to come and visit with him, reminisce about old times, and just enjoy his company – she gave us that time together.  She and I both especially thank the Iowa Veterans Home for the wonderful, competent, considerate, sensitive care they gave him for the last years of his life.

My dad had his flaws like all of us do, and not everything in his life turned out quite the way he had hoped for. But he was very happy and content to be back in Iowa, and very fortunate to be surrounded by so many kind people in the last years of his life. 

Dad, you really did live your life by the Scout Law – you were trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.

I’d be a better man if I could be more like you.

Mood:  Reflective
Music:  Taps