RICHARD FINN EULOGY(
My 93 yr old dad dided last week and I thought I'd share with you the eulogy I delivered at his funeral)


I’d like to begin my remarks today by playing fast and loose with the words of William Shakespeare; specifically in the form of paraphrasing Marc Antony’s oratorio at Caesar’s funeral;
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, and I come also to praise him.
“I come to speak at Caesar’s funeral; he was my friend, he was my father and he was just to me.
“My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me.
“What private grief you have, alas, I know not, and I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts, for I am no orator, but, as you know me all, a plain and blunt man that loved my friend and father well.
“For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, nor action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech to stir men’s blood; I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do already know.”

What we already know of Richard Finn, though what we may have forgotten in the last declining years of his life, is that he was our Caesar; a builder, a definer of an era, and a progenitor of a legacy that will live on long after we have interned his bones in their final resting place. I beg your forbearance, friends, as I attempt to describe the framework of one man’s life; the personality traits that defined his spirit; and finally, humbly, how this man influenced my own journey.
Richard was born in the year 1918, into a time so fraught with peril and tumult that we, awash in our 21st century affluence, can scarcely credit the dangers he encountered. In 1918 the first Great World War raged, and, of even more import to Richard, a terrible influenza pandemic swept the globe, killing approximately 25 million people worldwide. Uniquely, this killer disease did not attack the old and feeble, but rather the young and healthy, and so Richard was a prime candidate for early mortality; and in fact fell ill during his first year. His mother steamed water laced with eucalyptus oil and her baby recovered to survive the scourge, not the last time his fighting spirit would prevail.
Not infrequently as I have walked eucalyptus groves in our old Hillsdale neighborhood and crushed their fragrant leaves between my palms have I thought of my father as a baby fighting for his life. Such is the tenuous nature of all our lives; for many of us would not be here today if he had not survived.
Dick was born into a family of 12 siblings and I think this had a indelible impact on his lifelong capacity to get along with other people; for we learn the most from our siblings, don’t we? How to share, when to give in, how to make peace. But during the Great Depression of the 30’s it also meant there were many mouths to feed the Finn Family on Broderick Street in San Francisco. And this early inculcation of a work ethic –for everyone had to work, no matter how young, to put food into the common pot – this work ethic was one of the defining characteristics of the man.
We often hear talk now of THE GREATEST GENERATION. And Dick was a member in good standing of that elite group. He served his country as a non-commissioned officer with the rank of Staff Sergeant in the Second World War – the struggle against an evil fascism that defined the mid 20th century.
After the war Dick Finn hit a great streak of luck. He found his niche in the insurance business, met a stunningly beautiful woman, Marion Reis, who had a vivacious spirit to match his own boundless energy, and they married and began to raise a family in San Mateo.
My friends, some of you may have learned that no narrative is an unmitigated tale of triumph; and so it was that Dick suffered two cruel losses in mid-life. First he lost his best friend and older brother John Finn to a slow death from stomach cancer. John was a fire Captain in the SF fire department, and used to take his nephew Jeffrey riding in the fire truck -- the siren screaming -- and even let me slide down the pole in the fire station. Every boy’s dream. This same vibrant, loving, brother, was now wasting away before my father’s eyes. It hit my dad hard, and he was doubly impacted when near that same time the insurance business he had built with a ‘reputable’ partner failed and left him jobless and broke.
My dad went into a deep depression, but with a wife, three kids, a mortgage, and all the other encumbrances of life, Richard couldn’t quit, he had to soldier on, so to speak. And with the help of Marion, who simply would not let him fail, the support of his friends, and the kindly attentions of our family physician, Dr. Gullogily, my dad pulled through.
Eventually he found work as an independent insurance agent, working for Tom Fox. This is a man we in our family shouldn’t forget, for he hired our dad when he was down on his luck and gave him a start back up; and my dad made the most of it in eventually taking over this insurance agency and managing it until his own retirement.
I’d like to take a moment to sketch for you two of Richard’s greatest attributes. First, he was a wonderful friend to many people. I recall heading out for a job interview once as a young man, and my dad gave me a sage piece of advice which I have never forgotten. He said; “Jeff, just go in and make a friend.” And that is the way he lived his life. He had a wide network of friends. If you went out to lunch with him anywhere in San Mateo, your meal was constantly interrupted by a stream of his business and social acquaintances stopping by to swap jokes, stories and generally shoot the bull.
This was a man who was extremely well liked and no party was complete without his singing “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey?” followed by “If You Knew Suzy.” He could sing and he could dance. He carried himself through this life with a twinkle in his eyes, a joke on his lips and a very Irish gift for gab.
Because Dick was among the last of this greatest generation to pass on, most of his friends could not be here today. But I would be remiss if I did not mention his special friends, the Kochs, the Whites, the Foxes, the O’Learys, the Hurleys, the Haycocks, and especially his great friends the McGlennons.
My father’s other great trait was that he was a builder. He, and many of the families I just mentioned, formed the basis for building St. Gregory’s parish. From there my dad moved on to be a prime player in the formation of the San Mateo Recreation and Parks Department. But most importantly, he was a builder of a family. Look around you at the sea of young faces and well-adjusted, gainfully employed young adults. Because I possess only limited math skills I am unable to tally up all the grandchildren and great grandchildren, but they range in age from 18 months to 39 years; with another addition due in 3 months.
None of them would be here today without our family’s dauntless Caesar, without our beloved Richard.
When I began my talk I placed this chess piece on the podium for a reason. My father started me playing chess as soon as I could sit still and refrain from putting the pieces in my mouth. And whenever we would begin a game he would fix me with a very serious look and say, “Jeffrey, there is no luck involved in this game. You have to use your head, you have to think and plan ahead.”
So I knew we were not playing just for fun. I knew this game meant something. And this is the important fact; he never let me win a game. I had to earn my first victory. And I did so at the age of 12 with this chess piece – the white knight – which I used to mate his king in the far corner of the board.
This is the lesson my father taught me – in order to win in life I had to use my mind. And, just as importantly, all my victories had to be earned.
I have a 19 month old daughter and when I come back from a long run through the Santa Rosa hills, soiled and sweat stained, she loves to tackle me and bury her head in my chest while wrestling me to the ground. And this brings back to me my earliest memories of my dad. We would wrestle on the living room floor of our home at 3005 Beverly St. and to this day I still have a tactile sense of my father; he smelled like sweat and cigars.
Is it any wonder that when I sit out on my deck doing a crossword puzzle while smoking a cigar I am engulfed in a cloud of momentary serenity? When I put on an old jersey redolent of exercise and cigars I smell just like my old man. And for a brief, shining moment I am just a little bit more comfortable in my skin.
As I’ve said, my dad had a twinkle in his eye and a biting wit, and I will leave you with a final story demonstrating his acerbic humor. As a child every Friday night I was given one 16 ounce bottle of Royal Crown Cola to drink while I watched my favorite 3 TV shows, GET SMART, THE WILD, WILD WEST, and SECRET AGENT MAN. High as a kite on caffeine, sugar, TV gunplay and buxom women, this was as close to heaven as I am ever likely to get.
When the final show was over my dad would stride into the den, turn off the TV, peel me down from where I was bouncing around on the walls, arch an eyebrow at me and say in a voiced laced with stoic resignation;
“Jeffrey, the next words I want to hear from you are, ‘Good Morning, Dad.’”
And so I was ushered off to bed.
And now I can say to our father, to our Caesar, as he enters his new realm, “Good Morning, Dad!”