You Did Great, Dad

June 12, 1993

Did I do OK?

By Tim Peeler
Son

Family Slide Show

NOTE: This is the full text of what I had intended to read at dad's funeral last week. Some of it was left out while speaking.

Our dad and I had a lot of long, meaningful talks in the 21 years since my mom died. I live in Raleigh, so I didn’t have the daily contact with him like my sister Donita did. Beth, my middle sister, and I are so thankful what she did for our dad. Both Beth and Donita had a different relationship with him than me. Long ago, I was OK with them being Daddy’s girls.

The two of us had the bond of sports, the bond of laughs, the bond of deep, shallow philosophy.

I remember the end of one conversation a few years back when he was feeling a little blue and a little sentimental. He asked me a stunning question: "Did I do OK?"

Our dad was born in a cabin with a dirt floor. He plowed the fields in this community with a mule. His family grew what they ate, and sometimes killed it. He watched his parents and aunts and uncles – he had 20 on one side of the family and 24 on the other – struggle every day of their lives. Sometimes, coming back on the bus from a high school or Legion baseball game, the team would stop for something to eat. He usually hid in the back of the bus while his teammates enjoyed store-bought food, except the few times Kermit Pendleton or Evan Shelton slipped him a dollar or two to get something. They often found some paid-work that didn't need to be done to help him out a little.

He raised his four brothers and sisters with our sweet grandmother when our grandfather was fighting the twin demons of alcohol and paranoid-schizophrenia after World World II. When the New Deal was passed, they asked for a little help, and they got $5 a week from social services – but only for a little while. Like my uncle Eddie said earlier today, they were dirt poor, but dad was the only one who actually knew it. He tried to make things better for them all.

Our dad wanted so badly to leave home and go to college, and he received a county scholarship to go to NC State. But he couldn’t afford the $15 housing deposit, literally the only money he needed to pay to get a full engineering degree.

He and our mom got married right after they graduated high school, at just about the ages of my kids are today. They struggled. He told me about the times when they ran out of food. But when he got paid at the end of the work week, they would splurge for $10 or $15 in groceries, dump them out on the floor of their rented house and have a feast of kings sprawled out in the living room. Usually, there were other members of the family there sharing it.

He paid his own way through Catawba Valley Technical College, but basically taught himself how to be an engineer and makeshift inventor. He made saw blades, taps, dies and other cutting tools.

Our dad designed the house where we were raised, even the addition he built with my brother-in-law Delaine while I was in college. He made it both a house and a home for all of us. My sister arrived before my parents were 20, and by the time my other sister came along they were adults. I was a surprise that came home with them from a six-month assignment in Louisville.

He worked for more than 40 years at the same company,Vermont American Manufacturing, sacrificing his family time and the tips of two fingers to the company. For years, when he was umpiring baseball games and refereeing basketball games to have a little extra money to take us skiing or maybe a rare trip to the beach, he endured the taunts of the crowd, asking him:

“Is that one-and-a-half strikes?”

“Who has two-and-a-quarter fouls?”

He was fair and firm in those games. Only once did I see him chased through the parking lot by a knife-wielding baserunner.

He also played ball into his 50s, finally giving it up when the game changed so much he didn’t like it, not because he felt like he couldn’t hit a line drive down the right field line or hit the corner of the plate as a pitcher. The only time he stopped trying to make a hook shot from the side porch on our driveway basketball goal was when he built the family room on top of our gravel court.

He took me to Lake Norman when I was really young, putting a bottle of formula in his tackle box. Our family spent many days on that lake together. Whether we ever got a bite was irrelevant. It was on the pier at that lake where he taught me the only lesson I needed about race relations.

Graduation day, 1988.

There were about a dozen trespassers at the company lot where we always camped. They were drinking beer, using foul language and using words he didn’t approve of. With his fishing rod in his hand, he whirled around and told the rough-looking crew: “Neither of us needs to hear how stupid you are.” They stopped talking and shortly left.

Mom and dad made sure my sisters and me were able to do what we wanted after we graduating high school. He was never rich, but he provided us with access to education and helped each of us as we started homes and families of our own.

He so loved all of his grandchildren and great-grand babies.

He watched the uncut version of “Blazing Saddles” with them when they were far too young, laughing loudly like he had never seen it before every single time. I’m pretty sure they did a reenactment of the campfire scene every year at the family campout. He taught them life skills and played with them like toys on Christmas day every time they were around. Nothing gave him greater pleasure in recent years than watching Jeffery and Katie’s twin girls play in his backyard.

Our dad was a man of strength. He stood right here and sang to our mom on the day of her funeral. Not every note was perfect, and he was upset about that afterwards.

If someone ever tells you that the self-made man is a myth, tell them about our dad. There are others like him here in this church and this community, people of will, of character, of grace, of pride. They are the people he taught us to look up to.

My last interaction, near the end of the family campout two weeks ago, was not good. I had come up to the house to get something we needed at the campsite, but there was a mechanical issue that needed attention at his house. I worked on it for four hours, puttering around the house, trying to get it to work. I’m sure everyone thought I was napping. He came home, saw what the problem was and shuffled out to the garage. He slowly walked down the hall, with one implement in his hand and, within five minutes, everything was fixed.

I just wanted to whack him on the head.

But that’s who he was. Our dad knew how to fix things. He knew how to do things. He knew how to sing things. And he knew how to say things.

So I’m still stunned by that question he asked me: “Did I do OK?”

You did great, dad. You did great.

Michael "catching" a fish.

He Taught Me to Fish

By Michael Peeler

Grandson

As anyone who ever spent 30 seconds talking to Papaw Don could tell you, he loved sports. He’d played baseball in high school and for years after, he’d refereed and umped and announced in basketball and baseball, he’d been to hundreds of high school and college football games, and he’d played golf for decades, using his big backyard as a personal driving range.

Michael at his first Durham Bulls game.

I was never great with sports; I can’t dribble to save my life, I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a football, much less a golf ball, and the most remarkable part of my t-ball career was being so bad the coach stopped letting me go up to bat.

But one thing we could always connect over was fishing. Papaw loved fishing, and it was the closest thing to a sport that I ever enjoyed. And since our house was right next to a pond that was always well-stocked, it was pretty common for us to find ourselves fishing whenever he came down to Raleigh.

At some point, we developed a bit of a ritual — Papaw would come down on a Friday for one of my ill-fated T-ball or coaches’ pitch games, or one of Benjamin’s far more promising ones. He’d spend the night and we’d go to the NC State football game the next day, and then he’d get convinced to spend another night with us. And come early Sunday morning, Benjamin and I would rush downstairs to beg mom and dad to let us skip church and stay home to fish with Papaw. We’d barely have gotten permission before we ran outside to grab our tackle boxes and start digging up the yard for worms. Then the three of us — and sometimes a few of the neighbor kids — would get some lawn chairs and carefully walk down the steep, often muddy hill to the pond. We’d fish for hours, pulling little crappies and the occasional bass out of there until mom and dad walked down, typically still in church clothes, to summon us to lunch.

For a while, Benjamin and I couldn’t cast our own rods, and we’d dutifully bring them over to Papaw every time we needed it sent back out. Combine that with my tendency to reel in far too quickly and far too often, and it meant Papaw cast far more than his fair share of fishing line on my behalf. Every time, he’d smile, wind back, and send the bobber farther into that pond than I can even manage today. And when we started to get more adventurous and attempt to cast our own lines, it was Papaw who’d calmly show us how. It was also Papaw who’d calmly free the line every time we got it stuck in one of the trees around the lake, something which happened so often we started calling those trees “fish sticks.”

Whenever we’d finally catch something, Benjamin and I — and most of the kids in the neighborhood — were usually too squeamish to take the fish off ourselves, so that was always a job he’d help with. More often than not, he’d take a hold of the fish, pull it off in one swift motion, and in the same movement toss it right back in. Every year, when mom hosted the neighborhood fishing derby, Papaw came to help with that — while he was officially a judge, his score sheet was blank more often than not, and he’d usually spend the day walking around the pond, helping all the teenage judges get fish off the little kids’ lines, giving tips out to anyone who needed them, and talking with the parents that were sitting beside their kids. He was always in his element on those days, talking, building community, teaching men and women to fish.

When I think of Papaw Don, it’ll be of those times, sitting next to him, hearing him point and chuckle when a fish bit the line. It’ll be of his calm and careful teaching style and his unending patience. It’ll be of him having just as much fun as us, if not more, sitting down beside that pond.

Family is a Happy Place

By Rebecca Earl Black
Niece

Clearly, I'm not one of the many great writers in the family... but here's my greatest memories of Uncle Don I've been thinking about since I heard the news yesterday. (...in no particular order, bc editing on a phone "ain't gonna happen"... and grammar/punctuation, use of !!!, or anything else I do doesn't count either! *TIM!* Bc, again, I'm not a writer and I just don't worry about those things. Oh yeah, and some are stolen pics too.)

Lake days. Alllll the great lake days at "Papaw Don's Lake" with the cousins. The second round of cousins who I played with growing up were more around my age, since he was the oldest and my mom is the youngest of the group. Uncle Don trying to get us to waterski. Lol, I just did not have that upper body strength at that age to pull myself up but he drug us around coaching and letting us try anyway. Loved jumping out of the boat when we got close enough to swim back in.

Playing ball in the yard and John Davis "teaching me how to catch" bc he would throw it right at my face, hard, and I had no choice but to catch it or get my teeth knocked out. I neverrr missed. Did Don teach him that way?? Lol, it works, that's for sure.

Hearing Don's stories about his inventions, missing fingers no big deal, ..."Well, I was doing this and I cut off another finger!" Like. How do you even... you know what, nevermind, better to not question a Peeler about some things.

Going out into the field to see the great rigged self-mowing lawnmower, and hit golf balls- which I never got anywhere near good at that.

I loved hearing him sing. Going to see him sing the National Anthem at ballgames/The Crawdads when I was little, I was always amazed and felt like he was famous... Church for any songs, and singing with The Guys, but specifically always looked forward to him singing "O Holy Night" at Christmas.

Hearing stories of his ball-playing and umpire days. He was a runner, up until more recently was still pretty active jogging/walking at least at our Family Fun Runs. The last one he did run with us a few years ago, he was right with me on the long hill coming back up towards his house coaching me and the kids on how to not look up at what's ahead (the never ending hill) and just look down at where you're at right now. He came to support us at our First Family (extended to add friends) Warrior Dash Mudrun, and I could see it in his eyes he wanted to be out there too. He could've done it I know, but he didn't want to push it.

I remember him being able to get up and speak during my grandfather's (his dad's) funeral, which takes a whole different level of strength that I don't have in me, and I learned a lot about my grandfather that day through what he wrote. I was reminded last night that Don is at least partially responsible for my (our) ridiculous sense of humor, and I'm sure that goes hand in hand with that Peeler stubborn trait too. I'm most thankful for that sense of humor, and consider it one of my best traits... I just don't let all ppl see it.

The camp outs. I sing to my kids that first day when getting ready to go, "It's the most wonderful time of the yearrrrr." They looking at me like I'm crazy, as they should, but it's true. Detox from the world and my happy place is at that creek, always has been. Just sitting around the campfire or at the creek on a hot afternoon, listening to all the parentals talk, sing, and tell stories. Swimming, playing in the dirt, backyard baseball... Don skipping rocks through the creek, sometimes all around and OVER my babies heads(!)... he'd be the only one I'd ever trust to do that. I remember thinking DANG, Good thing he's got good aim. Laughing at whoever was the one to fall in the colddd creek water when walking across the slippery rocks.

Sunday afternoons back in the day with family after church... no worries, no distractions. Mamaw Peeler was a Saint, annnd that's where my goodness comes from, thank God for her bc we may have all been little hellions if we didn't have those genes mixed in.

He also got the love for babies and kids that Uncle Bud and all of us have. I've never seen as many boys/men have it as the Peelers, including it getting passed to mean ol' Brandon (), Adrian, and my boys.

Don was a badass. Excuse that language, (Moms and church, etc) but he just was. No matter where he came from, no matter what happened in his life, he rose up and lived it and loved it. And along the way took care of everyone else too, since he was the oldest. He worked til the end, could do and fix almost anything, and passed down the most important things in life to his grandkids, great-grands, and us nieces and nephews. He came back on Monday of this past Memorial Day weekend to check up on me packing up by myself. Said, "Well, not much I can do here then, but wanted to see." If I would've needed help, I know he would've tried or at least been Supervisor and given directions to the boys to get me some help.

Please pray for us... his kids/grandkids, siblings, friends and all of us cousins over the next few days (and weeks, and holidays to come). The Man, The Myth, The Legend. #PeelerBuilt

A Man With a Yake

By Robin Peeler

Niece

 

My Uncle Don had a Yake when I was little.

 

It had a rickety old pier to get to and from the water which made you feel as if you were a Flying Walinda when you were on it. That’s one of my first memories I have of him.

What I was too little to understand at the time was his yake was actually a property on Lake Norman.

 

He was a man of many talents and equally as many shenanigans. Together with my Pop he had a hand in teaching me a plethora of things. Fishing, my love of softball, harvesting peanuts, skipping rocks, using the rope swing and knowing just where to let go so I’d land in the deep hole and miss the boulder that surely would’ve broken my back had I hit it.

 

Driving him around Pine Mountain in a golf cart not to retrieve his ball, but gather hundreds from the creek left behind by others.

 

He had a quite a hand in my sense of humor and taught me how to pun with the best of them. 

 

The only thing I was ever better at than him was losing more toes than he did fingers in a lifetime.

He was a second Dad to me and the hole left in my heart by his absence will be matched by no one. To my dear cousins Donita Davis Beth Peeler Finley and Tim Peeler: thank you for sharing your Daddy with all of us kids. We were lucky to have him and blessed to love and be loved by such a special soul.

Rest In Peace, Uncle Don and give Aunt Ruth, Uncle Bud and MawMaw Lucy hugs for all of us.

My Personal Seatbelt 

By Melissa Peeler
Niece

 

Yesterday, we lost a great man - my Uncle Don.
 

He is pictured here in the middle with his siblings: my Aunt Frances, Aunt Peggy, Dad, and Uncle Bud (also deceased).

My earliest memory of Uncle Don is riding home with him in his truck after church on Sundays. I would stand in the seat beside him and his outstretched arm across my mid-section served as my "seatbelt."

 

We had a shared love of Coca-Cola, peanuts, puns (the bigger the groan the better), crossword puzzles, and knowing the answer to trivia questions, which were quite often trivial in nature.

 

I remember rounds of golf with him and Dad at Pine Mountain. The man could come home with more golf balls than some stores kept in stock. He sometimes spent more time in the trees and water hazards looking for them than he did in the fairway.

 

He was a devoted family man who loved and cared for each one deeply. And that love and care extended to friends and church family as well. Though he has left us physically, his impact in this world will carry on through the many lives he has touched over the years.

 

Rest in Peace. Love you always.

 

"Don't Do What Papaw Does" 

By Matthew Finley 

Grandson

Mamaw Ruth, my beautiful mother, Beth Peeler Finley, and my wonderful Aunt DeeDee, Donita Davis, always told us over and over when we were growing up, “don’t do what Papaw does,” but that was nearly impossible, seeing as he taught all us boys how to do everything.

Papaw Don taught us how to fish, to swing a golf club and a baseball bat, to shoot that sweet baby hook of his off the backboard, to plant and harvest, to laugh at goofy puns, to sing "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "My Ding-A-Ling," to get in a little trouble without getting caught by any of the mommas, to get full up on oysters and shrimp while runnin’ the deep fryer in the garage before ever actually sitting down to eat Christmas dinner, but most of all, he taught us all how to be great men.

None of us would be where we are today if it weren’t for his example. His stories of life and adventure took me across the country and back. I’d have never gone out to Mt. Hood and slid down that icy volcano, if it wasn’t for him.

 

Not really sure where to go from here, but I suppose I’ll whack some golf balls, walk into the woods toward the creek, check out the old mica mine, practice that signature hook shot on the hoop in the driveway tomorrow, or probably just do all of the above, because that’s what Papaw did.

For All You Taught Us

John Davis

Grandson

 

There are a million words to say and they wouldn't do him justice. There are thousands of pictures and stories. It's tough to put words to what this man and our family mean to Laura, Charlie and I.

 

When we needed a home we had one, when I needed help he taught me, when we needed an example of hard work, adventure and love we looked to him.

 

We all learned the art of a great joke and I will blame lots of our crazy adventures on how he helped raise us. I would have never put on a pair of running shoes if it wasn't for his example and the family behind him cheering us on.

 

I would never be able to say thank you enough for what you taught me. I am heartbroken for our family because of our loss but I am so incredibly happy for you to know you are in a better place with loving arms there to welcome you.

Today, I'm going to work around the yard, help comfort our family, play outside and probably go for a run through the neighborhood.

We already miss you so much, Papaw Don.

Hold on Tight

Jeffery Davis
Grandson

I love you Paw Paw Don. There is no easy way to express how much we will miss you.

 

There are so many memories that keep popping up in my mind from going fishing, to playing golf At Pine Mountain, watching baseball games, and sitting on the grass just talking. However, I know that he has not let go of Maw Maw Ruth since he got there.

 

Love you.