-- Eulogy delivered at Truman's funeral on June 18, 2014

Good afternoon,

My name is Cary Fitzgerald. I am Truman and Madelle's grandson – one of six grandchildren – and I'd like to begin by thanking all of you for coming today. I would enjoy the opportunity to meet and visit with all of you later, especially those of you who I do not know.

I have to confess: I am terrified of public speaking! I don't like speaking in front of large groups – and if you know me, you know that I don't even like to speak that often when I'm not in public. But my Granddaddy's last request of me – and it's a request that he had made before – was that I speak at his funeral. And I'm honored to do so today.

I have always had an interest in the history of my family –in my genealogy. In 2010, that interest really took off, and since then I've been able to trace my family back to before the Revolutionary War. Here is where I need to confess to another weakness. When it comes to my genealogy – to my ancestors – I have a habit of taking those people, and in my mind making them into heroic, almost perfect people. For example:

o Bartlett Fitzgerald was bayoneted by British troops during the Revolutionary War, but managed to survive and to serve until the end of the war
o William Fitzgerald shared a personal correspondence with Abraham Lincoln
o Benjamin Smith came to Coleman County, Texas without a penny in his pocket, and became the most successful farmer the area had ever known.
o James Moore – Steve Moore – was the best mail carrier in Robert Lee, and then the best carpenter and contractor in San Angelo.

These examples all have a grain of truth, but there's some stretching of that truth here, also. But, you see, that's my weakness. I take regular, everyday people – "my" people – who were doing the best they could in whatever circumstances they found themselves, and I subconsciously elevate them to hero status in my mind. Well, today, let me tell you about a real hero. A man who just went through life, doing what he was supposed to do, doing whatever he could with what he had. A man who was never afraid of a hard day's work, and never afraid to tell his family that he loved them.

My granddaddy told me once that, when he was young, he wanted to grow up to be two things – a cowboy and a Marine. He had accomplished both of these goals before his twentieth birthday, but the fun was just starting. Eighty-eight years, seven months, and seventeen days. . . . Let me tell you about what a great life one man can have in that amount of time. To begin, let's all go back to the year 1925:

o The world was seven years removed from the Great War – the "War to End All Wars" – the war which we remember today as World War I.
o In Europe in 1925, Benito Mussolini declared himself dictator over Italy, and Adolf Hitler published his autobiographical manifesto, "Mein Kamph."
o In America in 1925, it would not have been at all unusual to meet and to know a living, breathing veteran of the Civil War.
o A Vermont lawyer named Calvin Coolidge was the President of the United States in 1925. His inauguration in March was the first to be broadcasted on radio.
o Baseball was the most popular sport in America in 1925, and it was ruled by Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. And in June, a 21-year-old bench player named Lou Gehrig made his debut at first base for the New York Yankees.
o The most popular entertainer in the country in 1925 was a Hungarian Jew by the name of Erik Weisz. You remember him by his stage name – Harry Houdini.
o In 1925, Congress granted permission for a sculptor to begin work carving the images of four Presidents into the face of South Dakota's Mount Rushmore.
o Our money was different in 1925, too. Nickels still had a buffalo on them, George Washington wasn't yet on our quarters, and a silver dollar was made out of, well, silver. Oh, and a first class postage stamp would set you back two cents.
o In October of 1925, the month my Granddaddy was born, the world also welcomed Margaret Thatcher, Angela Lansbury, and Johnny Carson.

And three days after Johnny Carson took the stage, and just 44 years to the day after the Gunfight at the OK Corral, on Monday, October 26, 1925, in Big Spring, Texas, David Lee Smith and Callie Mae Bogard Smith welcomed their own baby boy, and they named him Truman Elwood Smith. After leaving the hospital, mom and baby spent a few weeks recovering in the home of her parents, George and Martha Bogard, in Garden City, Texas.

Truman was born into a large family. In addition to his mom and dad, he had three older brothers – Marshall, Olin, and Oran. They had been hoping for a girl, but they instead got Truman. So they settled on the next best thing – they began calling him "little sister." Truman's grandparents – his mom's parents – lived nearby, and he had many aunts, uncles, and cousins also living nearby while he was growing up. On June 4, 1929, Truman's mom and dad had another baby boy, Bennie Logan. But, as was all too common back then, the baby did not survive infancy.

However, it was what happened two and a half years later, at the end of 1931, which had a much more profound effect on the family. You see, when Truman was just six years old, his mother died. One of Truman's most vivid memories of her was of the two of them working together in the kitchen, baking a birthday cake for his sixth birthday. Two months after that birthday, on the day after Christmas, she was gone. Truman told me that when his momma died, everything changed for his family. In many ways, I believe this marked the end of Truman's childhood – almost before it had begun.

But, altered as it may have been, life went on. A few days before Truman's eighth birthday, his dad left the boys at home alone for a few days. When he returned, he brought along a new stepmother, Mary Boatwright, or "Miss Mary." And a few years later, the Smith boys had another baby brother, Kenneth.

Although, like so much of the country, times were rough for the Smith family, they had their share of fun, too. A trip to San Antonio with his dad and brothers to see the Alamo and visit the zoo stood out in Truman's mind. Truman would return to that zoo 70 years later – I'll tell you about that later. The family lived in Coleman County for a while, and behind the church in Valera, still there today, the name Truman Smith remains, etched into some wet cement by an unknown finger some eighty years ago. Now, I say "unknown" because when we visited there in 2009, Truman told me he didn't actually remember writing the name himself, and that he still suspected to that day that his oldest brother, Marshall, may have written Truman's name into the cement to get Truman himself into trouble. I like to think, though, that it was indeed done by Truman himself.

As a teenager, Truman worked on the Dollie Neal Ranch, just north of Garden City. You can still see it there today, although it was abandoned long ago. Often, he and another ranch hand would travel to other ranches throughout west Texas – sometimes as far as Fort Worth. On one such journey, to a ranch in the Big Bend country, the proprietor of the ranch complained to the boys about a bear nearby that had been bothering his cattle, and he asked them to go out and shoot it. To kill the bear, he gave them a .22 rifle. Now, a .22 caliber bullet is about the size of two Tic-Tac breath mints, placed end to end. The bullet can be dangerous, but there were probably better choices available for our two young bear-hunters that afternoon. Well, they found the bear, and using their .22 rifle, they shot the bear. After noticing that he had been shot, the bear was . . . irritated. So, Truman and his friend spent the night up in a tree, just out of reach of a very angry bear, waiting for help to arrive the next morning.

The difference between a brave man and a coward is very simple. It is a question of love. You see, a coward loves only himself. He cares only for his own body, and his own possessions, and he loves these above all other things. On the other hand, a brave man loves others first and himself last.

Any fifth grade history student knows what happened to this country on December 7, 1941. Our country's naval fleet was attacked at Pearl Harbor, and suddenly we were at war. Truman was 16 on that day, and if his childhood had not ended before that time, it most certainly did then. Soon enough, it was his time to serve in our nation's armed forces, and Truman became a member of the Third Division of the United States Marine Corps, headed across the Pacific on the USS Starlight. If asked about his time in the Marines, Truman always said that he was not a hero – that he didn't do anything special. He lied –or, at least, he didn't acknowledge the truth to himself. Let's leave the USS Starlight in the Pacific for a moment, and let me back up, and tell you exactly how Truman came to be a Marine. And, no, he was not drafted. Here's what happened.

Back in Garden City, a man living in the town had received his draft notice. This man had a wife and three sons at home. Truman heard about the situation, and after some thought, and without consulting anyone else, he went down to the courthouse and asked to be enlisted instead – to take the other man's place. As he explained it to me, in his typically blunt fashion, "I figured it wouldn't be as big a deal if I got killed, as if that other man had died, because I didn't have a family to take care of." But can you imagine the relief and the gratitude that that entire family must have felt, first thinking that their husband and daddy would have to leave them and go off to war, and then finding out later that he had been saved by the actions of a teenaged cowboy who lived nearby?

Truman didn't make this decision lightly, or with any sense of naiveté. You see, another local man, the son of the ranch foreman for whom Truman worked, had already died in the war. He was a sailor on the USS Arizona when it was destroyed in Pearl Harbor on December 7. For a town as small as Garden City, that must have been a terrible blow to the entire community. So Truman knew what he was getting into when he took that other man's place. Oh, what happened to that other man – the one with the wife and three sons? He never did get called up, and was able to stay home with his family. They had a fourth son, and they named him . . . Truman. So, if you ever meet a 70ish year-old man from West Texas named Truman, just maybe. . . .

Truman served honorably as a Marine, and he saw more than any teenager from west Texas should ever have to. Do you know that picture of the five Marines and one Navy Corpsman raising the American flag on a rocky mountaintop? That's Iwo Jima, or "Sulfur Island." It was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war, and it was the most difficult engagement in the entire history of the United States Marine Corps. One third of all the US Marines killed during World War II died on Iwo Jima during that single, 36-day battle. Truman was there, as part of the Marines' Third Division which attacked through the center of the island in February and March of 1945. After Iwo Jima had been secured, he was preparing to participate in the invasion of mainland Japan when he and his fellow Marines received word that the atomic bombs had been dropped, and that the war was over.

I don't know many other particulars about Truman's time in the service. He never really wanted to talk about it, and when I asked, he would only give me very vague answers. The historian in me would have liked to have known more. But, then again, I have never had another man try to kill me. Nor have I ever had to kill another man. So, I have accepted that some things are better left unspoken.

If asked about his time as a Marine, Truman would say, "We were just dumb kids – we didn't know what we were fighting for." But he did. He was fighting for his country, but also for his family back home. For that man with a wife and three sons. For his buddies on either side of him in the Pacific. And that makes him a hero to me.

Truman left the Marines in 1946, but he always remained proud of his time in the Third Division. No, he didn't talk about it much. In fact, he always had a certain . . . disregard . . . for those veterans who like to brag about their own time in the service. But make no mistake – Truman remained intensely proud of his time as a Marine, right up until the day he died. In April of 2013, some 68 years after the end of the war, I accompanied my Granddaddy to Washington DC as a part of the Honor Flight – the organization which takes World War II veterans to Washington to see the World War II Memorial. We saw a lot of sights, but there were only two which Truman really cared about seeing. One was the grave of Audie Murphy. The other was the United States Marine Memorial, or the "Iwo Jima Memorial." The Marine Memorial was not on our trip's itinerary, which bothered him to no end. Finally, I promised him that, if the tour didn't stop there, then we would get a taxi that night and go back to see it ourselves. Fortunately, the tour had a little time to spare, so the group as a whole visited the Memorial. For Truman, it was the most meaningful part of the trip, and it was where we lingered the longest.

During the Honor Flight, our group was accompanied by active service members from the Army and the Marines. Every time he had the opportunity, Truman would have me wheel him over to visit with one of the young Marines. Even separated by three generations, there was always a palpable bond between the two Marines – the old, and the young. About six months ago, Truman told me that, all things considered, he would do it all over and join the Marines again – but he didn't think they could use an 88-year-old man.

Now, let me tell you a love story. A lot of you already know this, but to the young people here – our culture has it all wrong about the true definition of romantic love. You see, it's not some Romeo and Juliet fantasy, or some Harlequin romance or Disney cartoon or some other fairy tale. True love is a story where two people meet, fall in love, commit to be with each other forever – in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, through good times and bad, until death do they part – and then those two people spend the next half-century just getting to know one another, and growing old together. It's a story like Sarah and Van, like Joyce and Victor. Like my other grandparents, Wayne and Louise Fitzgerald – my Pappaw and Mammaw. Not everybody finds that kind of love, but if you do, you're a lucky person. Truman was a lucky person.

On Saturday, March 6, 1948, at the end of a very brief courtship, and with some trepidation by members of both of their families, Truman stood with Miss Madelle Moore at 10:00 at night in the front parlor of a home on the corner of 12th Street and Oakes in San Angelo, Texas. It was the Baptist parsonage, and on that Saturday evening, the pastor who lived in the home declared Truman and Madelle husband and wife. It was the beginning of a marriage which lasted over 64 years. It was the beginning of one of the most beautiful love stories any of us will ever know. Truman and Madelle had two children – a daughter, Cindy, followed by a son, Steve. They lived in more places than I can count – I remember eight just in my lifetime – and they owned more cars than even they could remember. And they did it all – together.

As a married man and a father, Truman was always a hard worker – whether he was selling tires, setting up shop at a flea market, or just raking leaves. And Madelle was proud of her husband – she made scrapbooks with newspaper articles and award certificates telling about how Truman had sold the most tires at the Sears store on Lamar, or about how he was being promoted to a better position within the company. Together, Truman and Madelle traveled all over the country – whether they had the money to do so or not – and they visited over forty states together. Their children grew up and got married, and each of them have also been blessed with the type of long-lasting, true-love story which I discussed earlier. But I believe that the fun really began for them on August 23, 1967. You see, that was the day my older brother R.J. was born. Put another way, that was the day Truman and his wife became grandparents. My perspective is limited, and of course I am most definitely biased, but I believe that, for Truman and Madelle – for my Granddaddy and Grandmother – they had the most fun together once grandkids, and then great-grandkids, came along. It's nothing against Steve or Cindy – in fact, my guess is that they would tell you themselves that the same has been true in their experience – that grandkids are always more fun than your own children.

Around 1980, after he had retired from Sears, Truman and his wife moved down to a small house near Tyler, Texas, on Arp Club Lake. It's a small lake – maybe two miles long and no more than 200-300 yards across at its widest point – nestled between Lake Tyler and Lake Tyler East. It was, they both said, their favorite home of all. In fact, on one occasion Truman told me that when he died, he'd like for us not to bury him, but to just take him down and throw him into the lake. I won't do that, but whenever I want to visit them in my mind, I won't think about a small plot of land here in Fort Worth. I'll think about "the lake."

While living at the lake, Truman and Madelle began a custom of, each summer, taking one grandchild on a trip. They didn't really have the money for it, but as I said earlier, that didn't let that stop them. We all had our choice of any location in the continental United States. I chose Colorado. We went to the Cave of the Winds, the Garden of the Gods, and Santa's Workshop. And we rode the train up to the top of Pikes Peak. It was that trip that really sparked my love of traveling – of "road trips" – and it's an interest which continues today. In fact, my family and I were in Colorado Springs the week before Granddaddy went into the hospital for the last time. The last meaningful conversation I had with him, other than when he asked me to make this speech today, was when I called him from the summit of Pikes Peak, and we remembered together our visit there 30 years ago.

They moved back up here from the lake in the mid 1990s, and so it was easier for all of us to call them, and to go and visit them more often, and for us grandkids to take our own husbands and wives, and our own children, to visit them. I'm sure that no person on earth ever seemed quite so happy to see me, or to hear my voice on the telephone, as my Granddaddy and Grandmother were. And that's what I'm going to miss most of all.

Around 1998 or 1999, when they were living on Anderson Street in Red Oak, Truman climbed up onto a stepladder for one reason or another, and accidentally stuck the top of his head into the ceiling fan's moving blades. He would do those kinds of things periodically – that's the type of guy he was. He had about a 1 ½ inch laceration on the top of his head. I was in graduate school at the time, and was working nights and weekends at a clinic in Mesquite. Granddaddy came over to my clinic, and despite my inexperience, he volunteered to allow me to repair the wound. The doctor on staff was agreeable. Me, not so much. You see, I had never stitched up a person before. But that didn't matter to my Granddaddy. So, I spent about 45 minutes repairing a wound that would take me all of three minutes today, and he sat there patiently for all of it. That's also the type of the guy he was.

For Truman and Madelle's 60th anniversary, back in 2008, my wife and I took them down to San Antonio. We ate on the Riverwalk, visited the Alamo, and saw the Broadway play Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theater. But I think the favorite part of our trip was when we went to the San Antonio Zoo, the same zoo which Truman remembered visiting in his childhood. The zoo is a large place, so I rented each of them one of those motorized wheelchairs to get around. Well, my sons were with us – ages 10 and 8 at the time – and they asked their Granddaddy and Grandmother if they could be allowed to ride in their laps, and to steer their wheelchairs around the zoo. Of course, Granddaddy and Grandmother agreed. And so visitors to the zoo that day were treated to the sight of two boys racing and playing chicken on motorized wheelchairs, each with a nervous octogenarian along for the ride. I'm sure that was Truman's and Madelle's favorite part of the entire trip.

I was lucky enough to know all four of my grandparents – they were all alive and well until I was in college. As a kid, any day I got to see one of my grandparents was a good day. It was a very special time when Granddaddy and Grandmother would come to visit, and park their RV in our driveway. I used to stand out in that driveway, and keep a lookout for them, coming down 2377 past the high school and turning onto our street. I would think to myself, "Here they come! It's a good day! Special times are ahead!" Now, I'm not unique in that. Earlier, I mentioned their house on the lake. When we would go down there to see them, you had to drive across the dam and then around the lake along a narrow, tree-lined road – maybe a mile or so. More often than not, as we rounded that last bend in the road, Truman – Granddaddy – would be sitting outside, just waiting for us to drive up. Now remember, this was before cell phones, and it was a 2 ½ to 3 hour trip down there, so he only had a very vague idea of when we would arrive. But there he would be, waiting for us. Special times are ahead.

Today, it's a different road, and it's his turn to ride off down that road, alone. We have to stay behind, and we won't see him again, and we won't hear his voice on the telephone again – not in this lifetime. We cry today because we want him with us. I don't want him to go, but it's because I want to keep him. Because I'm selfish. I'd like to keep him around forever and ever, just like I'd have liked to have never had to say goodbye to so many others in my life. But there are no regrets. This isn't that kind of funeral. We have sadness, but it's a joyful sadness. Because Truman Elwood Smith had a great life, and now, today, he doesn't belong with us anymore. He belongs somewhere else. He belongs with someone else.

In the midst of our tears, as we stand at the end of the road and watch Truman ride away, and we wave goodbye one last time, remember to be joyful also. Because today, he isn't suffering anymore. No more fatigue. No more coughing. No more sickness. He's feeling healthy and whole again today, just like that little boy in Valera who wrote his name in wet cement. Just like that young ranch hand in Garden City, who decided to take another man's place, and volunteered to stare death in the face. Just like that young newlywed on that long-ago Saturday night in San Angelo. And remember to be joyful because, just beyond that last bend in the road Truman has taken, a whole lot of people are sitting out in front of their houses. They've been waiting, and they've been watching for him to come around those trees and into sight. There are his Grandpa and Grandma Bogard, and his Grandma and Grandpa Smith. There is Aunt Matt, and Uncle George, and Bobbie and Robert. His mother, Callie, and his baby brother, Bennie Logan, are there. His buddies in the Marines. His dad and Miss Mary. Marshall, Oran, and Olin. Joyce and Victor. Sarah and Van. Helen. They've all been waiting for him to come home, and they're all ready to see him again. And in front of everyone, with a big smile on her face and her arms open wide, there's a very special lady today, waiting for the love of her life to come home one last time. She's the same lady that waited for him in that house in San Angelo over 66 years ago. She's the same lady who Truman belongs with. Who he's always belonged with. And I know what she's saying: "Here he comes! Today is a good day! Special times are ahead!" And I know that, this time, today, when she finally wraps her arms around the man she loves, the man who has finally come home to her, this time they will never have to say goodbye to each other, never again. You guys remember to smile a little this afternoon, because Truman Elwood Smith is home today.