Funeral Homily for Hobart Manley-The Rev Melanie Lemburg

Funeral Homily_Hobart Manley

November 8, 2023

 

        Shortly after Hobart died, I got a text from his long-time friend and fellow parishioner, Bobby Minis.  The text said, “I’ve got a story about Hobart that you can tell in church.”  I was immediately intrigued by the implications:  that there are lots of OTHER Hobart stories that I probably shouldn’t tell in church.  (I got to hear some of those, too, from other parishioners and especially entrusted to me by Marilyn and Margie. In fact, a lot of their stories would end with them saying, “Oh, but you can’t tell that one in church!”)

        So here’s the Hobart story that I CAN tell in church.  Bobby and Margaret Minis moved in next door to Hobart and Marilyn when their youngest daughter Florence was around 2.  The Manleys’ kids were already grown and out of the house, and Hobart and Florence became special friends.  He’d call her “ding-a-ling,” and she’d call him “ding-a-ling plug”.  They became friends as Hobart would often be out in the Manleys’ front yard hitting golf balls.  One Christmas, Florence got a set of golf clubs on Christmas morning, and her parents later discovered that she had disappeared.  They looked out their window and they saw Florence, out in the Manleys’ front yard with her child-sized golf club in hand and Hobart in his pajamas and bathrobe with his arms wrapped around her teaching her how to hold the club.  That’s the kind of man he was.

        There was just an easiness about him--a sort of shy charm.  He’d often try to catch my eye in church and give me a little wave.  He was simultaneously a “man’s man” and also a gentle, gentleman.  Even at the end of his life, he always tried to stand up when his hospice nurses came into the room, and one of the last things he said to me was “you look real nice today” with that Hobart twinkle in his eye even though he could barely get the words out.  It goes without saying that he was a phenomenal golfer, but he also knew how to bait people just enough that he won a lot of money off of a lot of people on the golf course.  (Marilyn, I hope that’s ok to say in church?  I’m sure he always tithed his winnings…).

        Hobart brought a kind of quiet faithfulness to all areas of his life—in how he loved his family and his friends, in his marriage with Marilyn—they’ve been a study for me in how faithfulness and care evolve in a marriage with time, coupled with a deep sense of joy and of fun together.  And he brought that same kind of quiet faithfulness in his relationship with God and his life here in this church.  When he could no longer make it inside to church, he and Marilyn came on their golf cart to the outside service just about every single week.  When he got confused, he’d let us help him so good-naturedly.    

        We gather today to remember Hobart and to give thanks for the presence of this exceptional man in all of our lives.  And we gather today, even as we mourn his loss among us, to remember the hope of our calling.  That death is not the end but a change.  That through his death and resurrection, Jesus has made a path for us and gone before us to prepare a place for us at his side at God’s heavenly banquet in God’s eternal life.  There’s such comfort, too, in the readings that Hobart’s family have selected, a reminder that even as old age seems to unmake us, that in our new life in the kingdom of God, we will be fully restored, renewed day by day, at home not in our aging bodies but in our faith, cloaked in the glory of our creation as God’s beloved. 

        The hope of our faith is that we will all be fully restored together in God’s eternal life; that we will be reunited with Hobart and all those we love who have gone before us.  And I like to think that Hobart is waiting for us to join him by playing lots of heavenly golf and winning lots of heavenly money off his old golfing friends who have gone before.