Eulogies

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Back in the 90s, long after we’d moved away from Wisconsin — first to Minnesota, then down to Bloomington, Illinois — Mom, Jessica and I found ourselves back in the Milwaukee area. I honestly don’t remember why we were in town. But one thing about that trip I’ll never forget is that we went to Hui’s Chinese Restaurant in Wauwatosa for lunch.

One thing you need to understand about Hui’s is that when we lived in Brookfield and Dad worked in Wauwatosa, Hui’s was a staple for our family. Any time we wanted Chinese food, it had to be Hui’s.

Dad wasn’t with us this time, and it had been at least five years since he’d been there for a work lunch or we’d stopped in for takeout. We sat down, ordered, and partway through the meal one of the employees — an older woman giving off strong restaurant-owner vibes — came over, pointed at me, and in not-great English asked, “Pete White?” I remember thinking, there’s no way she thinks I look like my dad, and there’s no way she’d even remember us at all. In any case, we said yes. The meal was free.

Now, two things could be true here. One: Dad left a lasting impression on everyone he met. Two: maybe we got the meal free because we finally showed up without him. I’ll let you decide.

He was a regular — at Hui’s, at work, in his neighborhood, in his friendships. When he decided a place was his place or a person was his person, that was it. A lot of you in this church today were his coworkers, and many of you were his coworkers forty, fifty years ago. Dad didn’t collect acquaintances; he kept people. He talked shop with you for decades. When I had an insurance question, I called him, and I got more than I ever needed to know. That was a gift — to Mom, to Jessica, to me, and to every one of you he kept in his life.

Dad loved his enthusiasms, and he brought us along for every one of them — or, in certain cases, he brought us along whether we liked it or not. Jessica and I both have a lifetime of stories about Dad asserting his restaurant preferences above and beyond the preferences of anyone else present. One great example: just over ten years ago, my wife Laura and I met Mom and Dad in Charleston. Laura was in her first trimester with Liberty, deeply nauseous, and could not even think about seafood, let alone go near it. Dad insisted — insisted — that we all had to go out for oysters at a famous oyster bar in Charleston. Needless to say, we did not join them. They went without us. And then, because of course they did, they sent us a photo of the oysters.

Here’s the kicker. That baby Laura was carrying that week in Charleston? Liberty is probably one of the few kids on the planet who absolutely loves oysters. She can’t get enough of them. I have a feeling that’s something of Dad we’ll always see in her.

Some of my most vivid memories of growing up under a roof with this guy are from high school in Bloomington — the countless summer nights, hanging out late on the deck, the grill going, music loud enough that I’m fairly certain our neighbors knew every track on every Traveling Wilburys CD. Beatles. Stones. Tom Petty. Van Morrison. Clapton. Stacks of CDs everywhere. When he upgraded his stereo — which was often — I inherited the old one. Jessica, I’m sorry about that. I did not fight it.

We were almost certainly “those neighbors.” These nights were numerous. And everyone was always invited.

He grilled year-round. Rain, snow, sleet, Midwestern winter — didn’t matter. If it was too nasty outside, he’d start a Weber charcoal fire in the garage, because obviously. I remember watching him stand out in a foot of snow on the deck, checking on a roast — if that tells you how bad it had to be before he’d move the operation into the garage.

Cars were always one of his passions. He even had strong opinions about the right way to wash a car, and he’d tell you. He also knew what it meant to go too far — and the example, every single time, was Tim. “Tim spent four hours waxing his door jambs.” He told me that story ten times. Tim, he loved you. He also thought you were out of your mind. Both things were true.

For a guy who was, let’s be honest, not the most patient man on earth — one of my earliest memories is riding my bike with training wheels in the park across from our house in Madison. I was maybe four. Dad was walking behind me on the trail. I hit an uphill section, started rolling backwards, hit the brakes, and the whole bike went over with me on top of it. Landed on my head. No helmets in 1980. I was crying, probably concussed, definitely traumatized. And Dad came jogging up the trail — laughing. Just laughing at me. That’s how 1980 worked. And that story gave him endless material for the rest of his life. “Hey Phil, remember when you crashed your bike…”

But he had bottomless patience for the things that mattered. He took Jessica and me to Noah’s Ark, to Great America, on vacations to Florida and California. When we lived in Brookfield, he’d take me to the Indy car races at Elkhart Lake.

My first real memory of that “new-car feeling” was the day he brought home his first Honda Accord, also back in Madison. I was five. He pulled into the driveway, brought me outside, and walked me around the whole thing, showing me every feature — including the little chime that reminded you your headlights were on. Forty-plus years later, I remember it like yesterday.

In fifth grade he took me to work at the State Farm regional office in Minnesota and had one of his buddies give us a tour of the datacenter. Dad didn’t understand any of it, but he knew I’d love it. I remember every detail of that day. I’m a software engineer now. Some of that started there.

He was painfully frugal, except about the things he loved. Well into the 90s, he absolutely refused to buy a cordless phone. We finally got him one for his birthday — a trick we used more than once when he needed something, and the rest of us wanted it too, but he wouldn’t buy it for himself. That frugality lasted a lifetime. When I visited him in the hospital about a year ago, he asked if I’d get him a cookie from the coffee shop. I obliged, and the first thing out of his mouth when I walked in with it was, “What’d they charge you for that?” I told him, “Don’t worry about it.”

Our family lived inside the State Farm bubble. Jessica and I went to State Farm day camp. We spent our summers at State Farm Park. I worked there flipping burgers the summer after high school. Dad gave thirty-three years to that company, and in retirement he turned the same steady showing-up toward kids in the foster system and elders in nursing homes. He helped two little girls get adopted. He didn’t brag about it. I only learned the details later.

Dad loved to make people laugh. He loved to roast people to their face — across the dinner table, while you were still chewing. His jokes didn’t always land the way he planned. He told them anyway, and we loved him for it. So Dad — consider today the favor returned.

He loved Mom for fifty-six years. He adored Liberty. He got his hole-in-one on St. Patrick’s Day. He earned every bit of joy he had, and he shared it loud — on the deck, from the grill, from the driver’s seat of that BMW convertible.

Dad, thank you for turning up the music and letting us stand next to the speakers.

We’ll miss you. We love you.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always overheard people say “Jessica looks just like her mother, but acts just like her father.” I think I first heard that when I was 6, maybe even 4. A lot of you in this room have said this, and I know who you are. But I never quite understood what that meant. What does that mean to “act like my dad?”

Because in a lot of ways, your parents can be mysteries to you.

So it never made sense to think of “being just like your dad” when we butted heads so much.

Like when I had to tell him probably the most disappointing thing he could have imagined hearing from one of his children: Dad, I’m a vegetarian. You can imagine how that conversation went.

Or when I was 19 and buying my first car. This was 1999 and all I wanted was a Volkswagen Jetta. This became a hot argument topic in our house, because apparently under no circumstances, would anyone in this family, be buying a Volkswagen. I think it was something about side airbags, I can’t remember. But as one fight about this topic ended in him yelling up the stairs, “this is proof that you don’t know anything, about anything.” That was 10 minutes before he took me to the Honda dealership, and to the surprise of no one in this room, I bought the car he wanted me to buy, a Honda Accord.

And I did love that car. For over 10 years. Until one day in Chicago, a storm ripped through my neighborhood, and I came home to see my car in the street, with a giant tree laying on top of it, and it was basically totaled. I was horrified, and called my dad crying hysterically, “I can’t pay for this, I can’t buy another car, I don’t know what to do, my car is destroyed” and he assertively interrupted me and said “Jessica. This is the greatest thing that will ever happen to you, in your entire life. You are going to get so much money from this.”

And he wasn’t wrong, I got a ton of money from that tree.

Money was always a hot topic of misunderstanding. My dad being maybe the most frugal human I’ve ever known. This is so burned into my DNA that I still think about this when my AC is on and I open a closet door. I can hear his voice saying “shut the closet door, I’m not paying to air condition your closet!”

Or when we stood at the back of this church, in 2007, for my Nana White’s funeral, standing behind her casket, to walk down the aisle at the beginning of the service, and he called me over like “jess, jess, come here. That casket cost two thousand dollars can you believe it.” And I’m like “people are looking at us right now, can you not??”

He would be pleased to know that when my mom was looking at the website to purchase an urn, Phil and I assured “yeah get the cheapest one, just basic model…”

So for me, like most kids, getting money from your parents can become sport.

Not being a football fan, I never totally understood the whole Packers thing. I get this might be the wrong audience to say that. But when I was in high school, the Packers were going to the Super Bowl, or the playoffs, I have no idea. For one Christmas a framed picture of Brett Favre appeared over the mantle of our fireplace, replacing some serene scenic painting, that was surrounded by festive garland, and Christmas lights, and then a rosary appeared hanging on the corner, and I don’t even think you’re allowed to do that.

When my parents were leaving to go out of town for this game, the only instructions I was given was “under no circumstances should the Christmas lights on the mantle be turned off, because the Packers will lose.” I don’t actually think that’s how it works, but I’m not into sports.

But it was this insight that led into when I was in college, and very quickly learning a Sunday pattern. My dad’s mood, and openness to sending extra money, was directly correlated with whether the Packers won. If they won, he would answer with “Jess!! How is everything! You need money? How much?” And the answer was yes, and all of it.

And if they lost, it was “Jessica, what are your grades, did you wash your car, have you checked the tire pressure…” So I would pay attention for the first time in my life, to the final scores, and I knew when I was calling, whether to talk to my dad, or just ask directly for mom.

As we were writing my dad’s obituary and putting together the website, (because Phil insisted we had to build it ourselves) we needed to test how comments would appear, so we had AI generate some fake obituary comments to see how they would look on the site.

So we were reading some of them to my mom, and one of them said, “I worked with Pete for many years, and I never once saw him lose his temper. In all the time I knew him, he never had a single bad word to say about anyone.”

As my mom burst into hysterical laughter, Phil and I became worried that if we left that comment up, people would be confused, and assume they had stumbled upon the wrong obituary, so we promptly deleted it.

That’s the other mystery about your parents, what do they do at work? Who are they at work? While I can say our home was filled with State Farm branded beach towels, can openers, key chains, high ball glasses, State Farm Fabric Frisbees, I went to State Farm day camp, I worked at State Farm Park, when someone asks me what my dad did at State Farm it’s like “he was in general…claims…supervising, auto… I don’t know…”

One of the times when I was visiting the Villages, one of his former co-workers from State Farm dropped by. (There is an alarmingly high population of State Farm employees from Bloomington that live in the Villages). And me, my dad, and his friend were sitting around the kitchen island, drinking Crown Royal, when his friend asked me, “do you want to know what my favorite Pete White moment of all time is?”

For the record, when anyone asks you that question, the answer is yes.

So he tells this story, about how they were always in Denver, and they were there for the week, it was Friday, they needed to come to this agreement, and everyone was ready to head to the airport and go home.

I have to censor part of this quote, because it’s illegal to say in church.

They had finally reached a decision about something, when someone at the other end of the table said “wait, I’m not sure I agree with this.”

And his friend says to me, “your dad said, you’re a bleeping idiot, and no one cares what you think.”

And the two of them fell over in their chairs laughing, remembering this moment, of peak State Farm, peak Pete White, as I’m standing there with wide eyes thinking “you can’t say that at work!!!”

So I go back to work and I’m telling my co-worker this story, like, can you believe my dad said that at work?? And she just stared at me blankly, and said

“You know, that’s where you get it from..right?”

And from then on, after a tense meeting, she would message me and say “you had a real Pete White moment in that meeting.” And this is coming from someone who never even met my dad!

So maybe that mystery of your parents isn’t so unknowable. Maybe while it’s a mystery to you, it’s visible to literally everyone else in the room.

And maybe I’ll never fully understand what it means to look like my mom and act like my dad, but if it means serving up epic “Pete White moments” in meetings, while never fully going gray, then maybe everyone was right.