In Memory Of Pearl Rose Tank

January 6, 1920 - April 26, 2009
 

(This eulogy was given on April 30, 2009.)

We want to thank you all today for coming here to honor, to remember and to say goodbye to our Mother, Pearl. As you may well know it is very difficult to say goodbye for the last time to someone who has been in your life since the day you were born. It is especially so when that someone was your loving, caring and always-protective Mother. But sadly this is what we have to do today with Mom.

 The American humorist, Robert Benchley said, "Death ends a life, not a relationship." So sadly is this true, for here in this life we will never see her smiling face again or look into her loving eyes, we will have to live out our mortal lives missing her. She will remain in our hearts and our memories until we can once again be welcomed into her sweet embrace in God's Paradise. Until that time what we can do to honor her is to be strong and caring in her absence. What we can do to please her is to behave, get along with each other, and to make sure that we never leave the house without wearing clean underwear.

Like most of her contemporaries Mom did not have an easy life. She was part of what Tom Brokaw justifiably deemed "The Greatest Generation." A child of "The Great Depression", she came of age as a young woman during the dreadful time of a world war, and became a wife and mother during a time of fear and uncertainty during the Cold War as this Greatest Generation rebuilt our nation to the heights of its glory. These trials and tribulations made this courageous generation strong in character, good at heart and responsible. Our Mother shared these uncommon qualities with so many others of her generation. In the minds of her six young children she was the greatest of Mothers.

Pearl Rose Griffin was the second child of eight born to her beloved parents, Ralph and Myrtle Griffin, or as we kids lovingly knew them, Grandpa and Grandma. Before her was Eleanor, then Pearl, followed by Marge, Fern, Bud, Skip, Barb and the "baby", Judy. Like all of the Griffin girls, Pearl was a beautiful woman in appearance, grace and spirit. While all of the Griffin children are known for their wit, the two handsome Griffin boys were well known for their exceptional sense of humor. Of course living in a household where they were outnumbered three to one by their fairer siblings the young men needed a fine sense of humor just to survive, especially when they were waiting for their turn to use the bathroom. The Griffin children shared and cultivated this twinkle of life, which they had inherited from their parents and then passed it on to their children. This wittiness would continue to play an important role in all of our lives as Mom always loved a good laugh and she never took offense even when she was the focal point of the good natured ribbing.

For instance, few people know that Pearl was a Navy Veteran of World War II. Even fewer know how important she, her sister Marge and their cousin, Minnie were to the war effort. In August of 1945 the three enlisted in the Navy and were sent to Chicago for their physicals, which of course they passed. But just three short days after the girls were sworn into the ranks, the Japanese surrendered! Now historians want to tell us that this surrender was due to the dropping of the second atomic bomb on Japan. But we in the family know the truth. For once the Japanese found out that the three Griffin girls had entered the fray, our enemy finally knew that they were now outnumbered and that they didn't stand a chance.

Sometime after the war Mom met a handsome, dark haired, blue-eyed Navy Veteran named Wilbur E. "Buck" Tank. They were married in 1946. Mom never was able to completely tame this wild Buck, but God bless her, like every good wife, before and since, she never stopped trying. We have never heard the whole story of how they met but we know it happened somehow because it ended up with six Tank kids running around God's Creation creating havoc in their household for quite a while. Linda was the first born and for some reason Mom and Dad waited another three years before having another child, then another and another and so on. Linda is quick to explain this extended period between her and the rest of us, in that after she was born Mom and Dad figured that they had already reached perfection, so the rest of us were all just accidents. On the other hand, Ralph would continually try to convince the rest of us that, unlike himself, we were all adopted. Be as it may, when the 1952 Fourth Of July fireworks lit up the night sky Mom had under her loving wing a five year old girl, a two year old boy, a one year old girl, and a two-week-old baby boy. Now you tell me if Mom didn't need that Griffin sense of humor, it was either laugh at life or go crazy.

Of course then Scott would come into our lives in 1954 with Sherri arriving last in 1957. After much careful reflection we now know why Mom and Dad stopped having children at this time. Shortly after Sherri was born they had purchased their first TV. So now while Dad loved to fall asleep in his chair watching The Red Skeleton Show, Dragnet or The Highway Patrol, Mom just loved watching Dad fall asleep in his chair.

During the early years in Hampton we were a "close knit" family, of course when you have eight people living in a small four-room house, what else could we be? What we remember most about her during this time is not only how beautiful, caring and loving she was to all of us, but also of how hard she had to work just to keep her all of her children fed, bathed and clothed. We did not have running water let alone a washing machine so she hand scrubbed our clothes in a metal tub. The tub was also were she bathed her six children. Fresh water was supplied by a hand pump conveniently located in the kitchen. Dad, a welder by trade, supplemented our family income as a part time fisherman on the Mississippi River. I can still see Mom staying up late to wrap the fresh catfish in old newspapers, which would then be sold to local restaurant and taverns. She did not stand for hours washing clothes, hanging them on an outside line to dry and then spending even more hours hovering over a hot iron in the July heat to iron our clothes because of some love of hard labor. She did all of this and more because of her unyielding love for her family. She was constantly busy but yet she always had time to give us a hug, or to answer, "Mommy, why is the blue sky blue?" or to finish off that often needed minor first aid with a band-aid, a smile, a hug and a kiss.

Mom was a truly remarkable woman with many moods, methods and abilities. Today people brag of being able to perform multi-tasking. Apparently these people have never seen a mother of six in action or they would put away their fancy little I-Pods and bow their heads in shame. Mom could be praising Pat for a job well done while cooking supper with one hand, listening to one of her sisters on the phone with the other hand, as she dragged Sherri clinging to her right leg around the kitchen and still catch Scott sneaking a hand into the cookie jar out of the corner of her eye. She never seemed to miss a thing that we attempted to get away with. While she could be kind, sweet and gentle to her child who had just tumbled off of the front steps, in one blazing second she could also rip a shoe off of her foot to pitch it across the room like a Bob Gibson fastball to bonk her child that she had told for the last time to stop jumping on the couch. With Mom if the wayward child heard the words, "For The Last Time..." well, it was to late to duck.

But when dealing with her brood Mom's favorite phrase was the dreadful, "Just wait 'til your father comes home!" And when Dad did get home, she never, ever, ever forgot to mention to him who today's culprit was. To this day, my brothers and I still cringe whenever we even think about that phrase, "Just wait 'til your father comes home."

Shortly after our family moved to a two story house in Carbon Cliff it was decided that when we were not in school the oldest, Linda was now old enough to watch the rest of us including the youngest Sherri, so Mom went back to work. Never before in the history of women's suffrage has a woman ever been so happy to rejoin the American work force. The long drive to work between speeding, zig-zagging cars was still easier than negotiating the short trek from the kitchen to the living room between six stampeding kids. Listening to a factory huffing, buffing, grinding and pounding away in full production was like a calm day in an empty meadow compared to the constant chatter and pre-adolescent confrontations of her little darlings. So when Mom went to work at American Air Filter in Moline she not only never missed a day of work, she was never even late in getting there! For the first time in ten years on a day-to-day basis she could actually talk to real live adults, other than her husband. She loved her job and the people she worked with. Yet even as she was now gone during the day she did not forsake her parental and wifely duties once she came home.

To say our family life was chaotic may be a bit of an over statement. Yet while it certainly wasn't Ozzie and Harriet it was also never boring. Some may have thought that we were poor but that was not the case. While money may have been at times in short supply we never wanted for what we needed. Our house in Carbon Cliff was the gathering place for many of our friends and our parents always welcomed them into our home. Many of them have said that they felt Mom was like a second mother to them.

Pat remembers that Mom's favorite color was purple and she often wore something of that color. The problem with this purple passion arose out of a habit she had of doing little house projects while on vacations from work, like painting a room. So one afternoon during one of Mom's vacation projects our father came home to find that he was now going to be sleeping in a purple bedroom, with white trim. We're sorry Mom but after all of these years the consensus is in, Dad was right, it was not an improvement. In fact in some fancy places like LA or New York it would not have been called purple, for it was indeed lavender. Thank Heavens we lived in the common sense Midwest were purple is simply purple and not any of those fancy places or our rough and tough father would have been sleeping in a lavender bedroom.

During our teen years Mom's favorite car was a pink Buick La Sabre. That's right I said pink. I don't believe I have to tell you how many dates went straight down the tubes as soon as Ralph or I pulled up in front of a girl's house to pick up a date in our mother's pink Buick La Sabre. Mom often would say that she remembered that late Saturday afternoon when one of her boys ran her pink Buick La Sabre right through the old Semri Drive-In fence while racing a friend named George in his '58 Chevy. But because she wasn't there when it happened, what she couldn't remember was how the metal fence post buckled over in half like a silly straw or how cool the sheet metal fencing looked as it fluttered up and away from the car and landed thirty feet away in a field. But she did say that she always seemed to remember that the crash dummy had been my brother Ralph. Meanwhile, I always remembered that she had taught me never to correct my elders.

Linda remembers how Mom was always good at coming up with the most outrageous statements. A prime example was one concerning Linda and her husband Ed. Linda and Ed claim that they first started dating during Ed's high school freshman year. But the family all knows that they first started dating by sharing baby bottles in the nursery. In their teen years a favorite date was going to a drive-in movie. On many a Saturday night Linda and Ed would come home after such a date looking like they had both just run the Quad-City Marathon... in the Mississippi. As they walked thru the door our mother would always ask innocently, "Well how did you two make out?" To which they would both slyly smile and answer with a wistful, "All right." She never caught on to the problem of such a question at such a time until years later when it was explained to her why all of us had thought it was so funny. Once it was explained she too saw the humor of it.

Scott remembers how Mom and Dad always seemed to know what we wanted for Christmas and how they always left the "big" present for last such as a bike or a drum set out on the back porch like Santa Claus had left it there. He said they always wanted us to continue to believe in Santa Claus and apparently it worked, well at least with Scott because he was seventeen years old when Santa gave him his drum set. 

Ralph remembers all of the loving care and kindness she showered upon him when he was so badly burned by a fire. He remembers that it was Mom and Grandma who always took him "all the way to Chicago" to see a heart specialist and that no matter how many times they made this trip how they always seemed to get lost. 

Sherri remembers how after Dad passed away Mom had come to live with her and helped her raise her small boys. After raising six kids, Mom now had a new beginning with raising three more that gave her a renewed purpose in life.

In her later years Mom loved to play Bingo, and I mean she loved to play Bingo. She was a stickler for getting her hair done every week at the beauty shop, and come rain, sleet, snow or high water she would make that appointment. She was a woman who loved her sisters and brothers even when they were mad at each other, just another trait that she has passed on to her children. She loved her husband, her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren and her friends. And in return we all loved her right back.

So what do I remember about our mother? Well like the rest of you there are so many things that they all cannot be stated here. But for one I will always remember that with six children Mom had to deal with everything from broken dishes, to broken arms, and broken hearts, and she handled it all with love and kindness. In the spring of '65 I had asked Mom if I could get the Beatle's new album, 'A Hard Day's Night.' With money being tight Mom had answered that she could not get it for me right now. But that same afternoon when I came home and went upstairs to change out of my school clothes the album was sitting on my dresser. I have often wondered what Mom had to sacrifice to get me that album?

In the years to come we will forget her later years of age and forgetfulness but instead we will remember Mom in her earlier years and of how she smiled and laughed with us. If I weep it is not for her but for myself in missing her for today Mom is in a better place with our Lord, free of pain and sorrow. She is no longer lonely, confused or afraid for Dad is now gazing once again upon her beautiful face and Grandpa and Grandma are happy because another one of their Griffin girls has come home.

So for right now at this time of mourning I will not think of her time of death but rather of one short day last August when I came through town and we took a short ride back into our past. On that day as we passed our old houses in Hampton and Carbon Cliff she smiled and made a few comments as she drifted in and out of who she used to be and of what she had become with age and illness. For just brief moments at a time she was back only to then again fade away into her lonely world. It will be the moments when she smiled that I will remember. It will be the last time I kissed her goodbye on that August evening. The last time she told me she loved me. That is what I will remember because, I love you too, Mom.


MT

A Tribute To Grandma

By Jennifer Brady

http://act.alz.org/site/TR?pg=fund&fr_id=1060&pxfid=16840

"Copyright 2009.  Michael E. Tank   All rights reserved. No part of this document may be copied, faxed, electronically transmitted, or in any other manner duplicated without express written permission of the author."