Good afternoon. I am Doug Shick, I am the oldest of Victor's three sons, and it's really good to see you all here. I won't say I'm sorry it has to be at a time like this, as people sometimes do, because we've all come here, not to share grief and sadness over a death, but because we all knew Victor Shick. We've come together to remember my father; our father, your husband; your grandfather, your uncle, your father-in-law, brother-in-law, neighbor, business associate, employee, employer, tennis partner, skiing buddy, childhood schoolmate, college classmate—there are certainly more things that my father was to each of you, to each of us, but I'm sure the one thing he was to all of us was a dear friend. So let me say again, it's good to see you all here, and it's good to be here with you to remember Victor Shick.
It would be fun to describe my father as a hero, to list all the incredible things he'd done and how those things have influenced my life and the lives of others. But in fact, even if he may have been heroic to some, to me he was my father and whatever he did, these were just the things a father did. I would probably feel no different if he had been a movie star or the president of the United States—or both (for which there is a precedent, as I'm sure he would remind me).
So I'm not going to describe great things my father did. I'm going to talk about little things he did, because those are the things that made him my dad. Also, although I may seem to be the designated family spokesperson today, mostly that's because I'm the only one of us who seems to have inherited my father's irrational fearlessness when it comes to public speaking.
These are things I noticed about my father, things I liked about my father, and some things I either learned or inherited from my father—some of which I like, some of which I could quite honestly do without. Anyway, this is how I remember him. Hopefully, some of these will resonate with you. Perhaps they are some of the same things that made him your friend.
My dad was an independent thinker. He believed you should use logic and reason to evaluate the facts and make up your own mind about things, without prejudice. Most of you know my father as an enthusiastic conservative. What you may not know is that he held strongly to a few principles that were so far to the left they would make Ted Kennedy blush. To my dad, these made more sense than the ideology of the right, and they were right for him.
My father was gracious and tolerant. He made an effort to understand another person's views—especially if he disagreed with them.
My father was a gentle and compassionate man. Craig told us about Vic and his squirrels, and how after he caught them he drove them miles away and released them. I just want to point out that he had other alternatives to running them out of town: his trap was just a few steps from a pond, but that was not Victor's way.
He was a gentle and compassionate man; he was a gentleman. He would go out of his way not to embarrass someone who made a mistake.
He would also go pretty far out of his way not to admit that he'd made one, himself.
My father believed that sports are something you do, not something you watch. He was an avid skier, tennis player, swimmer, occasional sailor, and recent golfer. He took up golf in his mid 70's, he said, just in case he found he needed something less jarring than tennis and skiing—IF he started to slow down.
He taught me to ski, he taught me to swim, to sail, and he never could get me to play tennis. He loved that game, and I don't know if it bothered him or how disappointed he may have been that I didn't, but once it appeared that tennis wasn't for me there was no pressure, no feeling that I'd let him down, no sense that he wasn't just as pleased with me as if I'd just signed a contract with Wilson.
When he coached my brother's soccer team, they didn't have the winningest record—in fact, they might have lead the league in losses—but everybody played in every game; every play, every goal, every attempt was celebrated, and they certainly were the smilingest team in town.
My father was a patriot. As a naturalized citizen, I think he felt this even more strongly than he might have otherwise, but he was not the "my country–right or wrong" type of patriot. He thought the US involvement in Vietnam was wrong, and as a patriotic American he was deeply disturbed by what his country was doing. He was perhaps equally disturbed by the way I and many of my friends were then choosing to voice our displeasure. Still, he made sure I knew that he was glad that I was doing what I thought was right, and proud to live in a country where that was possible.
My father was not without paradoxes or inconsistencies. He would carefully turn out lights to save electricity; he saved the plastic bags newspapers came in to reuse them, but he wouldn't hesitate to replace a relatively new television with a newer one that had a certain feature the other one lacked. He was a news junkie who bought a satellite dish because the local cable company didn't carry C-SPAN2.
The first time I ever heard my father swear was watching the Watergate hearings. It was during John Mitchell's testimony, I think, and the word he used is frequently abbreviated with two letters, the first of which is a "B." He used to say "son-of-a-gun" when he did something like mis-hitting a nail with a hammer. In recent years he might even have used the "S" word—sparingly, and always appropriately—but probably that was ok once they began to use it so much on TV. I never once heard him use the "F" word, or any variation of it.
My father took pride in his accomplishments as much because of what it took to get there as because of the result. He never stopped talking about the time he finally made "par" on one hole on the golf course. I know he would've been pleased—delighted, even—to have made a hole-in-one, but not nearly so proud as he was of his par, since a hole-in-one took mostly luck, while making par took skill.
My father thought it was important to focus on the journey, as much on as on the destination.
Sometimes it took him rather a long time to finish a sentence.
My father undertook everything he did with a passion. If he found something he liked, he embraced it. Perhaps you've seen his birdfeeders or been subjected to his "lob" in a game of tennis.
My father enjoyed complicated things. If a task could be accomplished with ropes, pulleys, and counterweights, well, that was clearly the way to go. I could talk about the birdfeeders some more, but he is the only person I ever heard of who custom-ordered firewood in nonstandard length and with a tolerance on diameter, because that way it worked better in his fireplace.
If something was good, more was better, and I don't think he ever understood the concept of "too much." No sooner had he finished building the house in Grantham than he began adding on, removing, replacing, adding on some more—right up until a month or two ago, really.
My father was tenacious. His battle with squirrels comes to mind again. So does his computer, which was always something of a mystery to him but which he never tired of trying to figure out. I have to wonder how many telephone tech-support lines have a "Look Out For This Guy" notation on my father's profile—I imagine almost as many as mine.
My father thought that a hasty decision would probably take more time, in the long run, than a deliberate one.
I don't recall my father ever telling me I should have done something differently, or could have done it better, after I'd finished something I was proud of. If I was proud, he was prouder.
My father wanted to make things, do things, and have things be as good as he could possibly make them. If that sounds like a perfectionist, that's sort of right, but not exactly, because for Vic it wasn't at all a compulsion. Clearly he wasn't particularly disturbed when things weren't perfect, he just liked it when they were, and he delighted in doing whatever he could to get them closer to it.
My father lives on in me and in my brothers Roland and Peter. There's no way around this; half our genes are him. Each of us displays a different blend of his traits, quirks and mannerisms, and between the three of us they're pretty much all there. For some time now, and especially recently, I find myself remembering something my father did, and recalling that at the time I'd wondered, "Jeez, Dad, why did you do that?" only to realize now that I'd done pretty much the same thing myself not too long ago. I think I'm even beginning to understand why my loving wife always says, "Omigod, you're turning into your father" every time I come home from Radio Shack, Staples, or the Home Depot.
I was always comfortable and at ease when I was around my father. He wasn't the kind of person who lights up a room, as the saying goes, but certainly it always felt a little brighter when he was there.
I knew him for a little more than 48 years. You might've known him longer, or not so long, but you knew him, and that's what matters. You may remember the same person I've been describing, or you may remember someone whom you knew in a different way than I, but you remember him, and that's what matters. I will miss him, you will miss him, and I hope your life has been a little better for having known him. And we can all take heart that when we finally get to where Vic is, he will have already spent some time there. And he will probably have found a few ways to tweak it to make it better.
So long, Dad, and thank you.
Newport, New Hampshire
May 31, 2002