Our Father

By Tom Wales

Seattle, October 20, 2001

Human relationships are not built in a day. For many of us this is a lonely world, and the people we encounter in it are ciphers: our experiences with them provide fragmentary glimpses of the ephemeral thing some call the soul, and we rely on faith to guess what they keep hidden in their hearts. But in some rare cases, we come much closer to knowing the human essence of a man. A lifetime of shared feeling - a strong arm to help us up from a fall, a warm hug when all else has grown cold, a furtive kiss on the forehead to keep the cruelties of existence at bay - can teach us all something reassuring about an individual, and about the potential of mankind as a whole. This is the lesson that Tom Wales taught his children, and that his children wish to share with you today.

Fear is part of life. Through fear we learn to respect our own limitations. But fear itself is a hollow emotion: one brave man is a match for a legion of cowards.

I learned the nature of fear high on the slopes of Mount Adams at the age of 15. It was on a climbing trip with Pop and his brother, uncle Rick Wales. The route we took did not require any technical mountaineering skills, just grit and determination. There were a few exposed sections, though, and weather in the high peaks is always a fickle ally. So it was that late summer day in 1992. As the afternoon wore on a brilliant blue sky faded to a slate gray, and within a quarter hour swirling snow had reduced our window on the world to about five feet in any direction. Perched on a ridge of volcanic rock at 8500 feet, we were much too high to descend and the route was too treacherous to continue. Forced to camp in a narrow, partially built rock shelter near the apex of the spur, we pitched our dome tent and hunkered down together against the gathering storm.

As darkness fell, the snow became more intense and the night took on an almost malevolent quality - a thick inky-blackness that seemed to press into our small shelter. Then a terrible wind began. It arose with a whispered moan thousands of feet below where the trees had given out, mounted toward us with dreadful inevitability, and burst upon our flimsy shelter with a savage roar. I thought I heard the sound of our deaths in its voice; as each gust buffeted the tent, the roof collapsed against our faces, creating a feeling of suffocation. At any moment we were liable to be ripped from our precarious hold and hurled over the precipice. I hugged the frozen ground, hands shaking, and succumbed to fear.

Our father did not. He crawled out into the teeth of the 70 mile-per-hour tempest, belayed onto something in total darkness, and set about heaving small boulders around the perimeter of our camp. As chunks of ice and volcanic scree scoured his face, he built a rock wall to protect us with his bare hands. With amazing strength, he somehow managed to wedge our ice axes through the tent loops into the iron-hard mountainside, which saved us from disaster. We learned the extent of his labours in the morning. At the time, all I knew was that Pop had been swallowed by the storm, with no chance of return. But eventually he crawled back inside: nails broken and bloody, legs bruised. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it hard. Fear fell away, the snaking stopped, and I felt a quiet inner peace amidst the ear-splitting bedlam. -This is courage. This was the courage of our father.

Yet for a strong man, he could be remarkably tender. He always let us know how he felt. As kids, the last thing he would say to us at bedtime every evening was, "your mother and I love you, and will always love you, very much." As adults he called us every Sunday evening without fail, wherever we were in the world. He took an intense interest in all that we did. I recently began publishing rather esoteric articles in some extremely obscure scholarly journals; he made a point of reading every single one of them. He remarked that it gave him a strange thrill to see his name - our name - at the beginning of each piece. "It's a good name, T," he said, "you wear it well." It's still a good name, Pop. -This is love. This was the love of our father.

Yet he did not confine his love to a few, nor did he limit it to his family and friends. He believed that each human being possesses a latent potential for goodness, and that through reasoned debate we can help each other mine this hidden vein. This is what he devoted his public life to. It will come as no secret to many of you here that Pop aspired to public office - the trouble was that his principals often got in the way. During the Community College graduation address last summer, he told the audience that in his view no one was beyond redemption and thus it was a mistake for the government to execute anyone - even Tim McVeigh. He then challenged the graduates: "if you disagree with me," he said, "that's fine. Take on my beliefs, enter the public debate, help us confront these difficult moral questions."

When he sent me the text of his speech, I was appalled. "Pop, you won't get elected assistant deputy dogcatcher if you say things like this," I told him. "You'll make yourself the most unpopular man in the state." "But T," he replied, "it's true - and it's what I believe." For Pop, open, an honest exchange of views was vitally important in the public sphere. The best test of truth was Oliver Wendell Holmes' "marketplace of ideas," and informed debate would bring forth the best in our fellow man. -This is wisdom. This was the wisdom of our father.

The courage he had in his convictions made him enemies. T.E. Lawrence wrote that -
"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."

Pop was a dangerous man. He was dangerous to ignorance, folly, and hate. He had the will to contend with these darker human traits when others would not. He was a paladin whose only weapons were truth, reason and compassion, whose only armour was courage. They served him well, though they could not protect him in the end. He was stolen from us: the hand that had held us, the arm that had steadied us, the lips that had kissed away our tears - heart of our hearts… our father.

Words are a worthless balm for the loss we feel. Words cannot restore the man. But beliefs may endure where the flesh has failed. Remember the ethos Tom Wales fought for. Remember his kindness. Remember his faith in mankind. Remember the love he bore for each of you. If we sound the depths of our souls, we will discover the essential goodness, decency and courage he knew we possessed. Even in grief, we are strong. Let us honor his memory by striving to make the world the better place he believed in. Tennyson said it best:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.

Pop, as we love you, we will carry on. We are not afraid.

Thank you.