By Randy Capps
Legacy is a word we learn pretty early in life, but it’s not something you really think about until you’re closer to the end of your story.
Recently, I spent an hour or so pondering it at my uncle’s funeral. Uncle Alan was a competitive power lifter in his youth and was quite possibly the strongest man I’ve ever met.
But he was as gentle as he was mighty, always went out of his way to serve others through years of police and security work and had a room full of folks there at his service to pay their respects.
The screens at the front of the church had his photo up, and I must have stared at it for five minutes straight. I remembered the face of a man I hadn’t seen in years. I could see my other late uncle’s features around the eyes, and I couldn’t miss the striking resemblance to my late grandfather, despite the fact that he weighed about half as much.
I remember sitting on the floor in his living room as a kid, back in the Mike Tyson days, watching a replay of one of his fights. I didn’t really know how much I liked sports yet, but I remember how cool it was to have this mountain of a man explain the finer points of boxing to me.
I listened to my cousins, his son and daughter, stand in front of the congregation and talk about what their dad meant to them.
They used words like love, safe and protector to describe him. The last thing Paden, who was the ring bearer at my wedding, said stuck with me.
He promised his dad that he’d take care of the family now. As far as legacies go, it’s hard to imagine one that Uncle Alan would have liked better.
