Joe Verkley
My uncle Joe Verkley passed away today.
You can’t sum up a life in a blog post. You can’t tell all of the stories and explain to others what someone was like in a bit of text. This will certainly not do him justice, but I feel compelled to write it anyway.
Joe was more than an uncle to me.
An uncle, in this case, is my father’s brother. That implies that you see him for Christmas and birthdays a few times a year. It implies that you know who they are, but by relation. That isn’t how I know Joe.
I’m lucky to have a lot of aunts and uncles, but Joe was one of the few who I saw essentially every day as a kid. He lived right next door at first, and then just down the road later on. He was in my house reading the paper every day, and always puttering around the farm, feeding the cows, putting milk out for the barn cats, or moving something from one place to another.
Joe took a genuine interest in my life. And not in the way one does for someone else's kid. He taught me checkers and chess and cribbage. He loved spending time, just one on one, teaching me. Playing with me. Investing time in me. He’d see me tossing a ball against the house as I used to do for hours, and he’d come over to play catch, or hit some pop flies for me to track down. Which was impressive because he only had one hand.
That never slowed him down though, having only one hand. He’d catch the ball in his glove, quickly take the glove off, by trapping the glove and ball under his arm, grab the ball and throw it back. He could shoot a slap shot harder than anyone I knew too. He’d never complain about it and absolutely never wanted anyone to make any special accommodations for him. Don’t lower the bar. Don’t compliment him for doing something others can do, but you know, considering….. He wasn’t a person with a disability, he was Joe. And Joe did not want or need extra help.
I think this is generically a Verkley trait, but “hard” was never an excuse.
Joe lost all of the fingers on his right hand, which I assume was his dominant hand, as a kid. A farming accident. If I had to throw a ball with my left hand, or write with my left hand, it would not be pretty. But Joe had no choice, and so, no reason to complain.
The world is not kind to people without a right hand. I remember hopping into his big blue pickup truck as a kid, and watching him reach around the steering column to turn the key to start the car. The way he had to contort his body to even reach it was awkward. There was no way he could even see the key he was reaching for. But he’d start it up just as quickly and efficiently as anybody else. When cars started appearing with a push button start, I thought, “Oh, I bet Joe would love that!” and then I instantly knew, “no, he wouldn’t” I mean, of course he would, but it isn’t something he’d ever ask for. He could turn a key. He could push a button. It didn’t matter how it started. Either was fine. “Hard” is not an excuse.
That attitude has always stuck with me. I’ve seen it first hand on a day to day basis. Lot’s of other people say, “how hard can it be?” as a way to imagine a difficult task as easy or manageable. I have done so too, but more often I think, “yeah, it’s going to be hard. So?” Look, lots of things are hard. Most things worth doing are hard. Doing hard things fills me with much more joy and sense of accomplishment than doing easy things. Joe embodied that. But as I say, it is reflected in lots of my aunts and uncles, so, I think it really comes from my grandparents. Having to play baseball with one hand kind of pales in comparison to living through World War 2 in the Netherlands, and then moving to a new world to start a family just after. “Hard” is a matter of perspective.
Joe smoked a pipe when I was young, just like my Grandpa Verkley did. He quit a long time ago, but if I ever smell pipe smoke as I’m travelling around the world, I’m instantly taken back to a checkers board, or the family gathered around the table, just talking.
My grandfather got really into woodworking after his kids took over the farm, and Joe also poured hours into woodworking after retirement. His basement is legendary for all the custom trim, wainscotting, tables, and more. I’m lucky to have a few pieces. He made a games table for Leanne and I on our wedding day. It has checker/chess boards built into the table design, and a small hidden drawer underneath for pieces and cards. We’ve used it as our dinner table for over 20 years now.
Thanks to Leanne, we have a few more pieces too. She had him make a custom picture frame display, in the shape of a school bus, to hold all of the kids' school photos. And after a trip to Holland where we got to visit the old family farm, and play a very Dutch game called Sjoelbak, she had Joe make a Sjoelbak board for us. I’ll treasure these always.
He was my God Father, and seeing as how neither of us are religious, is absolutely perfect. But that’s just one more thing connecting us. And the list goes on. I loved computers as a kid, and he loved them too. We’d both read this huge magazine talking about all the different advancements and new hardware we could get, and we’d talk about it. He’d play some games, or scan photos to digital, or make spreadsheets and we’d talk about how and with what software and why.
He had such a curiosity about the world, and he’d attack it with his scientific mind. He tracked the temperature, precipitation, and even heat units every single day, all recorded in some giant spreadsheet. He’d talk about what to expect or in the shifts he’d seen over time. Not for some greater purpose, but just because he was curious. He was a farmer, and knowing the weather and what to expect was helpful. Some people would think that compiling decades of weather stats was hard, but you already know that isn’t how Joe saw it. He’d find and print out weather stats from other places around the world and compare them to his. He’d show off his information if you were at all curious to see it.
One day he found on the internet that you can get well flow information for any drilled well in Ontario. He then tracked down the information for everyone he knew that had a well, including me, printed out their sheet, framed it, and gave it to them. That’s the kind of person he was. Curious. Very interested in information. And overly generous with it.
He was a quiet man. He’d never call or write. Never just stop by. He hardly traveled anywhere. But if you took the time to sit next to him at a family party, he’d light up and tell you all about the things he was learning. He’d want to hear all about me and my life too. We got the chance to do that just a few weeks ago when he started showing me photos of his sunflower and the amazing number of heads it had. He counted, and compared it to the number of heads from the sunflower he had last year. I’m betting he had started a spreadsheet.
To say we had a special relationship is an understatement. The uncles I grew up with were more like parents than uncles to me. They were teachers and role models throughout my whole life. They were there for everything. From simply playing catch to talking about the universe. From weddings to funerals. From playing with kittens to holding my children.
Joe never married and never had kids. Only he did raise kids, and I was one of those lucky kids. I am forever the better for that relationship.
My uncle Phil once told me a story that his father told him about how we are all connected. We are who we are because of the interactions we’ve had with people. Especially those interactions when we were young, that had even more of an impact on shaping us as people. I am who I am, in part, because of Joe. My kids are who they are because of me, and so, in part, because of Joe. His impact on this world will never leave us, and that makes me happy.