Victor W. Jansen
Our hymnals, LSB and ELW among others, have a listing of commemorations in the front. The LSB contains a quote from Augsburg Confession 21, “Our churches teach that the remembrance of the saints is to be commended in order that we may imitate their faith and good works according to our calling.”
There is no one listed for March 24th; therefore, I am inserting my father Victor W. Jansen who died yesterday at the age of 97+ years. He was born April 28, 1912 and died March 24, 2010. If he had been an Old Testament king, it would have been said of him, “he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and slept with his fathers,” and they buried him in the Christ Lutheran, Pipe Lake, cemetery. If anyone was able to go back through his life and interview those who had known him, one would be hard pressed to find anyone who could speak ill of him. He was a patient, kind and gentle person and gives his three sons and the rest of the family a pattern to imitate.
Dad came of age during the depression at a time few men went beyond the eighth grade. He attended the same country one room school that my brothers and I attended. He and my mother married in 1935 and really began with nothing. After their little house burned down they somehow bought the farm on which he lived and we sons were raised.
Dad had inherited the skill of woodworking and carpentry that is prevalent in the Jansen line and is the reason his great grandparents came over from Holland in 1848. He was also skilled at counseling people. He was perfect for the job of township assessor that he held for more than two decades. My mother would get upset that he might only make three calls in a day. I went with him a few times and those long conversations with people served both him and those upon whom he called well. Since he was the one government official who encountered people on their turf, he needed to deal with their upsetness about taxes etc. One time he was parked along the road eating his lunch when a farmer came down the driveway with rifle in hand. The neighbor thought Dad was spying on him.
Even when he went into the nursing home he could counsel new arrivals telling them that the care was good and the food wasn’t too bad.
My wife reminded me of the time he accompanied us to Washington DC in 2002, when I was to open the House of Representatives with prayer. We arrived early and had to stand around for quite a while in a rotunda area. A black woman who worked as a welcome and watcher, put her arm around Dad and said, “If you’re that important, then you make them give you to thing to eat.”
Psalm 118, a psalm used for both Palm Sunday and Easter, is appropriate.
“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!”
I could have saved all the words I wrote above and simply said, “My brothers and I know what it is to have had a father.”
'Well done, good and faithful servant!'
Posted by: LarryR | Thursday, April 01, 2010 at 09:12 PM