Eulogy for John Wilkinson

This is the text of the eulogy my brother Mark shared at the funeral. It provides some interesting history of my dad and his life.

I’m sure most of us in this room have had someone close to us diagnosed with cancer. It’s a
terrible disease, and when someone like a parent is diagnosed at an advanced stage, at least for
me, the grieving process starts then. For the last year or two since Dad we learned Dad had
advanced stage prostate cancer, I have been thinking about this day, and what I’d say about my
Dad if I had the opportunity to speak. And here I am.

John Wilkinson loved history. He loved telling people about world history--particularly
British and American history. But he also loved talking about his own history. He liked to talk
about certain parts of his life a lot, others not as much. Unlike world history, though, the facts
about our own lives are not usually as well documented. The years bend them, and bend our
perspectives about them.

You probably know my Dad was born in Scotland in
1943, in Airdrie, what is still known to be a rough suburb of
Glasgow. Back then it was populated by coal miners and factory
workers and their families. He was the youngest of seven
children, by some years. His mother died when he was young.
He was cared for by his older sister, Susan, who never married,
and they lived in the house of their father, Jeremiah, also
known as “Jerry.”

According to Dad, his childhood was harsh, without
much love. It's not clear whether this was just how children
were raised in Airdrie at that time, or whether there was some
aspect of his upbringing that was uniquely painful...but by the time he was a teenager, he went to
live with another much-older sister, Helen--she was old enough to have children my Dad's age.
He was much happier there, and his nephew Jim--who he stayed in touch with throughout later
years--was like a brother to him.

At around sixteen, he met some LDS missionaries in his town. The missionaries started
teaching him along with his sister Helen. With the Church, dad found both a new religion--one
that was practiced only by a small number of people in Scotland--and a religion that was little
understood and viewed with some significant suspicion, perceived as a very American church.
My Dad and his nephew/brother Jim were fascinated by the US, the American West, and
American music... So in the church, Dad also found a way to be closer to the country by which
he was fascinated. He spent lots of time with the missionaries, and according to the Scotland
family's version, started speaking with an American accent before he even left the country.

Elder Dick Whitehead, one of the
missionaries he got to know quite well
returned home to Utah, and shortly
thereafter, they offered to sponsor his time
and education in St George, Utah. Dad
raised money for his travel to the US by
working as a “hod carrier” -- someone who
carries mortar for masons. Dad had great
ambitions for his life and future, and Scotland
was not going to be part of them. As my Dad
left, he either swore--or joked--that only he'd
return to Scotland after he “made a million
dollars.”

His ambitions to make his millions must have originally been grounded in acting. He started
his theatrical career at the University of Utah and Dixie College in St George, where he met our
mother, Janet, the eldest daughter of a physician from Roy, Utah. Mom was a piano accompanist
in class he was in, and he asked her out. That’s how they met.

Two of Dad’s most triumphant roles in his acting career were Arthur Dolittle, the ne'er-dowell
father of Eliza in My Fair Lady, and Willy Loman, the unrespected salesman at the end of
his career.

Marriage to my Mom came along soon enough -- he won her
engagement ring by correctly guessing the number of watch
screws in a jar in a contest at a jewelry store. He joined the US
Army pre-emptively to avoid just being drafted, even though
he wasn’t a US citizen (and he never became one, incidentally)
then left for a tour of duty in Vietnam -- two days after I was
born at Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington. Mom and I moved
in with Grandpa and Grandma Flinders in Roy for the next 18
months.

After his return from Vietnam, the next few years involved a
brief stint at Florida State in Tallahassee, where dad started a
masters Degree in Theatre. However, depending on whose version you hear, there were conversations between various interested parties -- Dad, Mom, and
possibly her parents -- which can be summarized as either "Why don't you plan to get a job that
can support a family?" And "Why are you trying to crush my dreams?”

The more practical path won out, and thus began Dad's career in sales. He initially sold
floor coverings for The William Volker Company, who moved him to Idaho Falls, Idaho. That’s
where the next child, Amy, was born. He was then transferred to Great Falls, where the rest of
the family came along over the next 14 years. Dad soon changed from selling floor coverings to
selling furniture, then eventually became a “factory sales rep” who sold several lines of furniture
to furniture stores in sales territories that included the very large states of Montana, Idaho,
Wyoming, and sometimes even North and South Dakota.

Throughout the years, dad kept up his theatrical
interests through the opportunities he either found or created
in Great Falls. In 1976, for the bicentennial of the United
States, Dad and a committee of several people in the Great
Falls Stake of the church created a Bicentennial
extravanganza they called “This is My Country” with a cast
of a hundred, who performed on the outdoor stage at the
Great Falls State Fair. Dad played the role of Uncle Sam.
Later, he planned a few dinner-and-a-show evenings
intended for the grown-ups in the stake, that were called
“Soirees.” These sorts of things gave opportunities to many of
the kids in the stake to act, to sing, to dance. I vividly
remember when I was about 11 or so, being made to learn
“Food, Glorious Food” from the musical “Oliver” with eight
other kids, and Dad making us practice the song and dance
routine over and over on the stage in the cultural hall on a Saturday afternoon. This was the first
time I realized that performing takes practice, and sometimes beyond what is fun.

Dad’s large territories meant that as a sales guy, he traveled. A lot. Initially, when he just
sold floor coverings, it would be for a day or two a week. Then a week or two at a time as his
territory increased. He spent literally HOURS driving across the wide open spaces of the
American west, in various vehicles and vans, in all kinds of weather conditions. With that many
hours behind the wheel, the odds came up, and he got in several car accidents, but emerged from
them without serious injuries -- not so for the cars he was driving.
All of that driving...Looking back on that now as an adult, I’m not sure how he did that. I
can’t think of anything more miserable, but he seemed to actually enjoy it.

He’d call home every night while he was traveling to talk to Mom and each of the kids. I’m
sure all of us remember the conversations:
“How was school today?” “Fine.”
“What did you learn?” “The usual stuff.”

In the early 80s, Dad decided he’d try his
own hand at running a furniture store and
opened “Jonathan’s Fine Furniture” in Great
Falls. It looked, for a while, like we’d actually have
a dad who was home for dinner every night, and
for a few months we did. Then he opened a
second store in Billings, and he was back to being
gone again, spending 3-4 days a week down at
that bigger store in a bigger city.
His work, especially in the 1970s and 80s,
made him quite successful financially. He didn’t
talk to me a lot about his work, but every time he
got a new line of furniture, I remember he’d
usually tell me about it, specifically, and was
excited about “how he was going to make a lot of
money” with this or that opportunity. This didn’t mean a lot to me initially, but now I realize it
meant that our parents were able to pay for piano lessons, voice lessons, dance lessons for my
sisters, and more.

He and my Mom were both good examples of getting a college education, and the
importance of being educated, but also in being well-rounded and using your talents.
Things changed over the years, and I know that the older kids in our family had a very
different experience growing up than the youngest, in terms of how well dad was able to provide
for them, and Mom’s illness and death took a huge toll on all of us. Dad took it particularly hard.
When he started talking to Bev, shortly after he moved to Utah, he told us that he had been
in contact with someone that he had known many years before. He was very interested, and
excited. Just a couple of weeks later, I was on a business trip and when I landed in Atlanta and
turned on my phone, there was a text from Dad: “Great news! Bev and I are engaged to be
married.” Always the kind of news you like to get from your dad via a text message.
Our family is very grateful to Bev for the care she has taken of our father, and for her
service to him. She made him very happy over the last year, and was a great comfort to him until
the very end.

When the Wilkinson kids look back at our lives thus far, what we have accomplished
collectively and individually, and the people we have all become, I think both of our parents have
a lot to be proud of. I know I sure am proud of Amy, Emily, Jill, Kimberly, Megan, and Jessica,
and their families.