My father died on August 31. He had a long and good life, passing at 94. We held his funeral service this past Saturday, September 20. My brothers and sister read several passages from the liturgy. I delivered the eulogy. 

The photograph above, taken by my father of my mother holding me my first day home from the hospital is central to the eulogy. Perhaps this is a bit TMI, maybe too personal for some. I hope not. 
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Provocantes: Eulogy for a Teacher

September 20, 2025

How does one sum up a man?  We cannot sum up an ordinary man, let alone an extraordinary one. And while there are many things written about the measure of a man, for me the answer is simple: we are the measure, the sum of this man. We and all he touched are the sum of him. We are blessed to be able to remember him, we can tell his tales, and in the telling, and the sharing, and the re-telling, and the remembering, we keep the man and his life alive.

But where to start? My wife Mary, who cannot be with us today, asked “what do you think your Dad would want to be said?” I thought about that, a lot, but the answer was not at all obvious, and in the end, I decided you don’t get a vote, Dad. So, I begin with how he saw himself, as Teacher, with concepts he abstracted from the Romantics Blake and Wordsworth, and that he described when he delivered the 1999 Baccalaureate Address here:

“Two thoughts, two ideas here, then. First, the role of the teacher is to vex. Second, the point of vexing is to alter the eye, to change the persuasions that determine what we see as the world.”

Implicit in this rubric is that we are confounded by our perceptions,

by the lens we are unaware we employ. The teacher exists to vex—the more modern term might be to “provoke”—to disabuse us of this lens, that we might see the world differently, and be newly persuaded by “cleansing Blake’s doors of perception.” This is more than just lesson-learning; it is about altering the thinking process.

All fathers teach, some with greater intention than others, fewer though with unremitting positivity. Such was my Teacher.

It started early. I did not know it at the time, or at least was not consciously aware of it for many years, but there is a photograph, well-known in our family, of my mother on the front porch of a rental house in Birmingham, holding me in her arms the day she brought me home from the hospital. It’s summer, the sun is bright, her white sundress brilliant, the joy on her face luminous. Unseen is the photographer who captured the love, who expressed that love in saving the moment for generations he did not yet know. He was just 24, with such a long way to go, with much difficulty to surmount, much pain to endure, but so much more joy in living.

Among the many lessons my father taught me was love. Unconditional and expressive. Unexpressed love is mere emotion, but love revealed and shared is a force of nature, the stuff of which the greatest of art, music, and poetry is made. If you knew him, you knew his love of the Romantics. The Romantic poets were not only his profession; they were his passion. As was music. He encouraged all of us to explore music, my brother Philip became a 1st chair concert cellist, and Saturdays at the Met on the Texaco Radio Network were a regular listening experience growing up. Though I never acquired the taste for opera my brother Stephen did, my father’s love of Beethoven and large scale chorale work set the stage for me; when I read Wagner’s quote in the Golden Book Encyclopedia that Beethoven was a “Titan, wrestling with the gods,” I was hooked. And when he introduced me to Verdi’s Requiem, I think I finally began to understand how music made him feel.

Every time I hear the trumpets of the Dies Irae, I hear Blake calling for his chariot of fire, and I see my Anglophile father, typewriter in tow, walking across England’s green and pleasant land, at the Richmond prospect, at Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage in the Lake District, across the Salisbury Plain. He taught me to revel in the beauty of human expressions of yearning, spirituality, love, and anguish, to see and feel the world around us as others shared. His love of those arts, the stroke of brush and pen, music summoned from silence, were how he saw the world.

Among the many lessons he taught me, albeit inferentially and all too slowly, was fidelity, and not just fidelity to one’s partner, but also to one’s self and one’s ideals. Soaring rhetoric and florid prose are just words, if not anchored in fidelity, constancy, and proof. Proof. People may not always believe what you say, but they will always believe what you do.

Faithfulness, like faith, is binary. One is. Or one is not. My father was. He understood fidelity and was faithful to two women, each for decades. Many of you here have known them both, Each extraordinary, they remind us of how my dad loved, openly and unabashedly. Beth, thank you for being Dad’s partner, his wife, his comfort at the end of his days, the mother of our sister Jane. After mom died, I’m not sure we could have imagined, let alone hoped, for such a delight in our father’s life. Brothers and sister, thank you for sharing this life with our dad, this loving man of deep thought, wise word and good deed. I could not imagine better than you. To his grandchildren, my daughters and their families, my nephews, know where you come from, what a deep and dazzling wellspring you enjoy. His great-grandchildren may not remember him, but you can ensure they know him.

Among the many lessons my father taught was the pursuit of excellence, the perseverance through trial, and not to be afraid of failure. It was not obvious to me for a long time that excellence requires failure, that failure is a much better teacher than success. Being frail, humans often fall short in deed and in character, but I learned from my father that for every error, every shortcoming, every failure, there is a path toward redemption. But in order to see that path and follow it, one must choose to do the next right thing. Of all the lessons, for me, this simple mantra would be the most indelible. When consumed by doubt, uncertainty, guilt, or any of the many ways we impede our own redemption, the thing we must do is the next right thing. From my father, it was lesson, recommendation, admonition, and road map to redemption, all rolled into one simple phrase. My daughters have heard it a thousand times.

His lessons in constancy were even more profound. Whenever I needed him, he was there. When my daughters’ mother was stricken by cancer, I turned to him first. And he was there. When I faced my own health battles, he was there. And even more importantly, when I floundered, made grievous errors and hurt people I loved, he was there, rarely judgmental—though it was obvious what he thought of my mistakes—but always guiding, prodding, vexing and altering, and reminding me to do the next right thing. He did this out of love. I don’t know a person my father did not strive to vex and alter. He did that out of love. Love for family, friends, students, colleagues, fellow music lovers, fellow parishioners.

And he was always engaged, always in the moment. When my Dad spoke to you, he gave you his full attention, and he expected it in return. He looked at you and continued to do so when you replied. He was always present in the relationship, loving, with intention and attention.

Now, my Dad was no saint. He could be driven to exasperation, loss of temper and, when necessary, he did what was necessary to discipline any or all of his children. He did not shrink from this, but he did not exceed what was necessary either. We live in profoundly uncivil times, perhaps not unprecedented, but remarkably and transparently uncivil. My father stood for something gentler. He saw differences, disappointments, and disagreements as opportunities, as learning moments. Among the many lessons I learned, though not as quickly as I, or he, would have liked, was patience, temperance, balance, and restraint. Moderation in all things, save moderation.

One of my maternal cousins reached out to me after learning of Dad’s passing and shared:

“Your Dad was a kind, thoughtful, beautiful soul.  I admired his intellect, his calm manner and how well-spoken he was.

“He always seemed to me the best kind of man, almost like a fictional Ward Cleaver type, always knowing just the right thing to say and do.  His legacy lives on in you and your brothers and sister and your children (and grand-children). 

"Even though I don't think we're ever 'ready' to lose our parents, whether through old age, a prolonged illness or any other manner, it should bring peace knowing Kenneth had a long, full life. His memory will live on in all of us, and others, who knew and loved him.”

70 years. That’s how long I had my dad, how long he had to try to hammer some sense into me, to teach me. I’m afraid he ran short of time. Though never of effort. It was what he was. Still is in here. Father. And Teacher.

My loss of my father does not lessen my life, because he remains in my life. But I do miss him. Though that sense of separation is not new. Our parents encouraged us to seek our happiness, wherever that journey might lead. Each of us has wandered far at different times. And so, before he died, I already missed my father.

Before I said goodbye last month, before the diagnosis of his illness two years ago, I missed him. Before Jane was born, I missed him. Before we lost Mom, before he married Beth, I missed him. Before I went west, I missed him. Before we watched the sun rise at the Grand Canyon, before I left for law school, I missed him. Before he looked into my lens on a Nantucket shore, I already missed him. It is in the nature of existence, in birth and in death, to be alone. And though I did not yet know it when he took that photograph of my mother and me that warm July day, I already missed him.

From the very start, we diverge, carving our own river through life. What we carry forth is more than what we merely choose, more than the DNA in which we had no choice; it is the sum of all the ways in which he touched, guided, taught, and loved us. To borrow a metaphor from Richard Dawkins, we are his immortality, his River Out of Eden.

Never forgotten,

Always missed,

And never gone.

But now, he has set down his chalk, dusted off his hands, and taken his leave. He is now defined by what he left in us.

I love you Dad. And I miss you.

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1.    Ergo, the Latin term provocantes for the title of this eulogy.