There's a metaphor here. Somewhere.
Randy Rabenold. The original, ever complex, he was enigmatic until the end.
One once said of him, "May your light forever shine."
Another said, "You can argue which was the greatest athlete and the greatest teacher, but you can never argue which athlete and which teacher was the greatest man."
I don't know.
He was just my Dad.
~20 June 2020 Times News Biography
Kutztown State College - 1956 |
Dad's childhood comic book circa 1938. |
Dad with his dad Zach, a welder at the Packerton Yard - 1934. |
Always impeccable handwriting. Always faithful to his mother. He visited her every evening without fail to watch the evening news together, often taking a snooze on her chair. Listen here to one of their conversations, which often sounded like arguments (1981). |
Korean War trench art - Spring 1951 For a complete look at his trench art, click here. |
Above, getting into his glider at the original Lehighton airport at the southern end of the fairgrounds between Ninth St and Gypsy Hill, and here below in his Korea War enlistment photo, is Joel Heintzelman, cousin to David, their fathers were the founders of Lehighton's Heintzelman's Meat Market from over 100 years ago (story here). Though Joel was the same age as my Dad, he always seemed like he belonged to some previous generation. He'd come to my grandmother's house once a week with her meat order, almost always on a Thursday night. Mamie, the daughter of a butcher, would take a slice of their home cured and smoked bacon and eat it raw, sucking it into her mouth like an old-fashioned piece shoe-string licorice. You can listen to Joel and his home-spun way here after delivering some meats and Hershey's Ice Cream to my Mamie and Dad back in 1981, when Sandra Day O'Connor had just been appointed by President Reagan at the same time that Joel's niece Holly was passing the bar. And at the same time Cristy Lane's "One Day at a Time" was popular, a tune Dad kept whistling and singing despite Mamie's dismay. This conversation, at times sounding a little like a real Archie Bunker, speaks of the prevalent attitudes toward women, while my Mamie, born in 1889 and who was 31 until she finally got the right to vote, sounded surprisingly forward thinking as compared to the two men. It's not fair judge them with the lens of the current thinking of this day as it is now 40 years old. I remember Joel always wearing work denim, as if he just stepped away from the set of a Western, but his smell was more authentic, a pungent earth from the slaughter house, the sweet of the maple wood from the smoke of the smokehouse, as if those smells were forever encased within the accumulated fat stuck to him and could be seen as a smooth dull finish stuck between those cotton fibers of his work wear, from the years of rubbing against cattle fallow in the weekly grinding of beef trimmings into bologna and in the curing of the hogback slabs into bacon. He once told me of tales of his work as a freelance cattle drover, working cattle from the cars of the LVRR spur that ran along the Mahoning Creek, walking them from small butcher to small butcher from here to Nesquehoning. How he'd have to get the switch after a steer who decided to check into the open doorway along Race Street in Mauch Chunk of a housewife's kitchen who was cooking the evening supper. I was visiting Joel, the life-long bachelor, in his final years, struggling with his with diabetes, always the sage. He too was a gloomy optimist like my Dad. But he for me was a part of some bygone era that somehow arrived from a back edge of time. This picture caption has become the blog post I always intended to write for him. Of course there's much more that he deserves to have written here. For now, I'll leave you with this, my other favorite unresolved memory of Joel. Spanning back to my childhood, there was this continuous invite to me to go up with him in his glider. Of course I'd say yes, when could we go? But there was no way they were going to let me go. He'd leave and Mamie and Dad would talk of the many crash landings he survived, at least three. Even once he was beyond his gliding days, with that grin that wrinkled his entire forehead, he'd joke about how I never went with him and that the offer still stood. And then I'd feel the weight of that regret. Looking at these pictures of him, the heft of it is no less. (Here again is the link to the 1981 conversation between Joel, Mamie, and Dad.) |
Self portrait - 1955 |
Lino cut print - 1970s |
Watercolor and pen - 1970s |
Watercolor - 1960s |
"Dog fight" Watercolor - Early 1970s |
Acrylic on canvas, 16" x 20" -Early 1970s |
Acrylic on canvas, 16" x 12" - Late 1960s |
Oil on canvas, 20" x 16" - Early 1970s |
"Golgotha," oil on canvas, 16" x 20" - 1970s |
Christmas card lino print - 1970s |
Water color, 12" x 14" - 1950s |
"The Astronaut" - 1969 |
Trinity Lutheran Church before the rebuild. Note the mother with son in tow. Randy was raised a devout Lutheran. |
Mamie was tall, about 5' 10". All the Strauchs were too. Zach was often embarrassed by the height difference. He was seldom seen walking next to her. |
The "Star Ball" was used in every warm-up for Jim Thorpe Boys Basketball from the 1960s into the 1980s. |
My Mamie - 1889-1983 Her parents were both born in Germany. She was widowed from 1950. |
Watercolor - 2018 (Perhaps his last) |
Lino cut |
"Yellow Bird" - Pencil sketch, 1983 |
1976 & 1986 Centennial League Champs with their coach, Mr. Jim Smith at Randy's 2014 art show, Mauch Chunk Opera House. |
Among the many notes left by fans of Randy at the show. Doug paid homage with his own stencil lettered initials. Doug a well-respected commercial artist and former student |
County Officials of the time - Bob Crampsie, Bill O'Gurek, Randy, and Emmit McCall - Art Show 2014 |
Randy's grandson, sculptor Daniel Finsel |
Randy's daughter-in-law Lisa with his self-portrait |
Dad and Ken Kline started the JT Summer League back in the 1960s. Dad ran it for over 50 years. Here in 1990s with Aaron Sebelin and Mike Berger (Steelers hat) . |
"Let the mind create what it will..." |
Kevin Binder, one of Dad's best friends. |
This is my preaching to the choir sermon.
I do not need to tell you how great our
father, grandfather Double R was.
He was the Greatest of Humble Men.
When
we were children, we had our mother Ruth, and our father Double R to allay our
worries.
He is
gone. And we are alone.
He
lived a long and happy life.
The
blessing of a long life is also a curse to have to bury all your friends and
your wife.
He
lived twelve years without Mom.
The
many dichotomies of Dad.
He
could be gruff.
He
was known for his kind words.
He
cared.
He
was aloof.
He created
order out of the tangles of his mind with index cards.
He
let his mind create what it will.
Outside
of care for his family, he had two main modes – Working and procrastinating
about work.
He
thrived on action, He thrived on doing for others – Summer League, Sports Hall
of Fame, AmVets.
He
cherished his alone time, sequestering himself from the voices of the outside
world.
He
gave us gentle pats on the head and talking mouse holes.
No
one here needs to be reminded of his greatness because all of us carry his
greatness within us, that we cherish and cultivate as a little seed of kindness
in our own hearts.
He
was a child of the Great Depression. He
was a difficult child at times for his mother.
Yet Dad knew the austere joys of a good onion sandwich.
As a
child, Dad and his friends built a refuge from the outside world in a little
club house in the woods at the edge of the Grove.
He
landed in Pusan under artillery fire. He survived, but later, clubhouse buddy Bobby Kipp was killed in action.
Then
they made another landing, this time at Inchon, again under enemy fire.
Then
the war became a test of wills, on which side could control the hilltops. Many times, dad was stationed on lonely outcrops. There was safety during the
day. But at night, they feared the blood
curdling war screams and drums of the Chinese.
It terrorized the men.
Then
one day his C.O. called him in to tell him his father died. They shipped Dad home to be with his mother.
By
the time they sent him back in December, the First Marine Division was
completely trapped by the Chinese at the Chosin Reservoir. It was a blood bath. His buddies were in there, his cousin Nuny
Rabenold too.
He
was crossing the Sea of Japan for another landing. It was mixed company of Cooks and Bakers as
Dad like to say. They were told to fight
their way in, to save the Division.
But a miracle happened.
The Division fought its way out.
Dad’s buddy Gene Holland
was killed there. Nuny came
out with saucers for eyes and the thousand-yard stare, forever changed.
Dad
always said his father’s death, saved his life.
More dichotomies –
He
was the Greatest of Humble Men.
He
was forever the gloomy optimist, forever finding the good in bad situations and
people.
He
never gave up on us.
He
had many friends. Men like Doug Rontz, Randy Smith, Aaron Sebelin, Jailhouse Artist Tracey
Everett, Dennis Tredinnick, Kevin Binder, Chuck Hanna, Roger Aroyo, idolized our dad so much that they looked to him as a second father, sometimes the father they never had.
It was hard to grow up in the shadow of him.
It hurt to know that we shared had to share him with so many.
But that was among his gifts to the world.
Looking back, at all those that loved him like a father is a joy and blessing, a tremendous comfort now,
To know that he was so loved, by so many, so deeply.
Dad
wrote these three quotes on the back on an index card EVERYDAY from 2014 and
2016 –
“One
in a Billion”– I’d like to think it was for me, but I think it was about our
mother.
“Whatever
you do, do it well.” He lived that.
And
lastly, he wrote – “What more do you want?”
I
ask all of you gathered here, what MORE do YOU want?
You
will never get another Double R pat on the head.
He
will never ever draw you another mouse hole.
He
will never snarl at you like a gruff and cagy dog ever again.
But
you do carry his seed of kindness,
the
one you have been cultivating in your soul since the day he made you.
The
seed has nourished us all
Like
the seed that nourishes the cardinal in the dead of winter,
Dad sung a special kindness from his soul,
Honor him,
Let
the energy of that seed seep into your soul,
And like that song of the cardinal,
Let it continue to flow into the world, out of you.
The
moon comes up.
The
moon goes down.
This
is to inform you
That
I didn’t die young.
Age
swept past me
But I
caught up.
Spring
has begun here and each day
Brings
new thoughts to the tangles of my mind.
On
Monday, I got a call from the outside world
But I
said no in thunder.
I was
a dog on a short chain
And
now there is no chain.
(Slightly revised from Jim Harrison’s
“Barking”)