Presented by Sam Dittmar at the funeral of his father, Rev. James Dittmar, on 7 November 2000.
My father was a gardener.
The pursuit of gardening was one of the delights and - as with any diligent gardener - one of the frustrations of his retirement. For him, it was an avocation that had been in hiatus for decades.
From the stories he shared with us, his interest in gardening began at “The Acres.” How many acres there were, I really don’t know. And that’s not important. It was gently sloping land not far, but still a healthy walking distance, from his boyhood home on Scott Street in Williamsport. His mother viewed it as useless when his father bought it, but was a focus of his father’s life after he lost his furniture business in the Great Depression. There were chickens and the inevitable eggs and vegetables - more vegetables than they could use. So it was my father’s job to sell the excess, carting it in a wagon though his neighborhood. Not that it was something he enjoyed. I think it was embarrassing for him, but he did it. It was either that or enduring his mother’s scolding, which I think she could do all too well. But at “The Acres” there was time to watch, work with and listen to his father. That was the beginning.
His more recent gardening began with a plot in his backyard - maybe 20 by 20. But soon his energy - enviable for a man in his 70’s - and available time gave him a bigger itch. A backyard garden was not enough - there were at one time or another bigger plots to be plowed in Lower Burrell and Vandergrift. And even that original backyard plot managed to expand a foot or so a year. My father did vegetables - not flowers. Those were my mother’s department.
Annual preparations were simple yet thorough - order seeds, plant them, transplant seedlings into well-used red plastic cups and water them regularly. Give them the warmth of the washer and dryer in the laundry room until it was warm enough to take them out to the back porch. His gas-powered tiller - clearly oversized for the task at hand - could never be ready too early. Eager anticipation and mild excitement overcame reasonableness. Soggy, cool soil was no reason to prevent him from getting the tiller out of the basement and when he became too old - whatever that age was - from finding someone to till his garden for him. For several years, a trip to Masley’s barn for cow manure was standard. Nothing could match manure for garden fertilizer.
Summer passed. There were beans, cauliflower and broccoli heads to pick, blanch and freeze. Tomatoes were pealed, boiled down into juice and sauce and then canned. Green peppers were stuffed and frozen. And after Labor Day the last ears of corn were picked (if the raccoons hadn’t gotten them first) and the potatoes were dug. Usually enough to last through to New Years’. Skeletons of plants were pulled. Leaves were piled and turned into the ground. Another cycle of warm spring days, weeding in the heat of summer and harvesting whatever was ripe was complete.
Full quart glass jars with sealed metal caps would be placed three deep on newspaper-covered shelves in the cellar. In some ways, this was cause for autumn satisfaction. Months earlier, there had never been any guarantees of bumper, even meager crops. The reward, however, was as much in the sweat and sore muscles as in the colorful jars on the shelf or the fresh vegetables on the kitchen table.
My father, you must understand, was a gardener.
Although his tools and resources may not have been fertilizer, seed, hoe and rake - and his labor not performed wearing a smelly sleeveless undershirt and muddy shoes, he was, in every sense of the word, always gardening. From 1935 - when he went off to The Missionary Institute in Nyack, New York - until Saturday, November 4.
In this sense, we could picture him as the gardener who stood behind a pulpit wearing a black suit or greeted parishioners after a service. Those are immediate images.
Yet, consider these places and circumstances: wiping his forehead behind a hamburger griddle at the store at Mahaffey Camp, cheering from the grandstands of Memorial Field at Valley High School, digging a water line for the new parsonage in Clymer, being a startled passenger (along with his wife) in the backseat of a car suddenly parked on River Road in Braeburn and watching the young couple in the front seat doing their thing, joking with a foul-mouthed Little League baseball coach in McKees Rocks, stoking a coal furnace for a winter’s church service in New Wilmington, standing guard in a dormitory hallway-turned bowling alley on the fourth floor of Simpson Hall at Nyack, planting Scotch pines on a barren hillside behind the church in South Fork, answering “Yes” to a marriage proposal from Miss Sarah May Morris.
The places and circumstances were unremarkable, maybe. But the tools and sources of strength were not. They derived from a continuing and spirit-renewing discovery of a God who loved him enough to send Jesus, the Christ, to live and die for him. James Samuel Dittmar’s personal relationship with God was completed and fully realized this past week. In the years before that, it resulted in at least one thing of which we were all beneficiaries - his love for people. I’m sure at one time or another - just as hungry rabbits try the patience of any gardener - some of us tested the depths and boundaries of that love. We always knew we were loved, not only in word but also in action. I, perhaps, more than most found his love deep enough and wide enough in include even me. It was something to be counted on. It was there when his sons asked him the important questions in life: What do I do about a job that is becoming impossible? How did you know you were in love with Mom?
It’s important to remember that this gardening analogy is not unique to my father. We can change the name and places and details of what has been said. It would apply to many people we know.
But today we are here to remember and honor the life of one man in particular. I look at you all. I see a garden. I do not see neat rows of potatoes, beans, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower and corn, but we are a work in progress. Some people have already been harvested. But you who remain are arranged in straight, carefully measured rows. I see a garden.
Then I look at myself - and my brothers -- lives begun with a miracle, handled with faithfulness and fed by love. I also see Christian faith just as miraculous, also nurtured carefully and deliberately and founded on the love of Jesus Christ reflected in the life of not only one, but two Godly parents.
Our lives, I believe, have been prepared for harvest - because, you see, my father was a gardener.