Donald R. Avery
August 11, 1926 - May 10, 2024
We remembered my dad's life and legacy at his memorial service on May 25, 2024, where I shared the following thoughts concerning his life and the positive impact he's had on me.
One of the readings was Psalm 23, verse 6 of which says "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." My dad lived life believing that promise. He had many struggles but instead of the struggles making him bitter, they made him better because he was able to see them in the light of his personal walk with God and saving faith in Jesus. Through the struggles, he saw and believed God's goodness and mercy to him personally and he lived with the assurance that he would, and now does, dwell in the house of God forever.
Four years ago, he asked me to help him write about his journy from June 1944 when he graduated from High School to when he returned from military service in June 1946. As he explained the story in his book, My Formational Journey, he told of a time while serving in the US Army overseas that he was ridiculed for by some of the men in his unit because he walked with a limp, caused by being mildly afflicted with polio when he was 16 or 17. He went on to explain that he had suffered from such shame about the incident that he contemplated taking his own life. But he prayed to God, came before God needy, and asked God to remove the shame that gripped him. He was instantly freed to live life fully. His remaining time in military service was an adventure!
This incident and his response to God's faithful answer prepared him to deal well with other struggles where he faced disappointment.
- A car crash during his last year of college that shattered one of his legs and broke bones in his face left him in a body cast for 6 months, tended to by his mother, a nurse, in their Buffalo Road home. But during that time, he met our mother through a mutual friend.
- When my brother and I were in high school he was working for a company that was depending on voters to pass a proposed transportation bond that was defeated, causing him to lose his job at a company he had recently joined. But, eight years later after a couple of other jobs, he started his own company at age 60 and worked another 20 years engineering the subdivisions of Chili, Riga and Ogden. My brother and I live in two of those subdivisions.
- Though during his last three years, he was wheelchair bound, but became a beloved resident at the Episcopal Church Home, encouraging the residents and staff there.
For people like my dad, who receive the gospel, it changes everything. It has been said that in Christianity the bad events and circumstances are made no longer true. He was thus able to own Psalm 23:6 for himself.
Two other beautiful characteristics about my dad were:
- He was always more interesed in hearing about you then telling you about himself.
- He never stopped learning.
These characteristics are on view in this remembrance. When he was 87 years old he had my brother put him on the Amtrak train in Rochester so he could visit me when I was working on the Hudson River - Tappan Zee bridge replacement in Tarrytown, NY. I picked him up at the train station in Croton-on-Hudson and we went to a few viewing locations where he could see the progress of the bridge construction. He was interested in me and interested in learning what was happening at the bridge.
My dad was a lifelong blessing to me because he demonstrated how to live life as God intends it to be lived.
