The Hands of Time--A Tribute to My Father-in-law

Jerrell Wayne Lewellen May 29, 1935—April 30, 2018

I will never forget my first encounter with Jerrell—it was 35 years ago this month. Rather, I will never forget my first encounter with his hands, in that first handshake. As his massive, work-hardened hand closed around mine, I thought, “This man could crush every bone in my hand, if he had a mind to.” Glancing nervously up from our clasped hands, I looked into his blue-gray eyes, sparkling with life and good humor, the dimple crater in his cheek as he smiled at me—and I felt somewhat more hopeful about the bones in my hand.

I thought I had callouses on my hand, some callouses, sometimes—they weren’t entirely soft. But Jerrell’s hands had a ready-to-grab-and-work look and feel, as if they had been formed and shaped by hefting bars of iron—which, of course, they had been. Sure, my hands had some degree of harder skin, in places, that might pass for callouses. But Jerrell’s hands were callouses, living, flexing monuments to a man who had made work into something akin to a sacrament, a useful, joyful, holy activity that had shaped not only massive steel buildings, and young apprentices, but had shaped his entire life.

How did those hands get to be that way?

Jerrell was a man of tools and work, a man of steel, a block of iron ore with arms and legs—and hands, hands with callouses. Jerrell was certified to weld every ore on the planet, a man of cultural dominion who took raw materials and shaped them into useful forms, a man who tamed steel, made it do what he needed it to do to get the problem at hand solved, to get the job accomplished.

And he did all this with a full-bodied grin on his face (most of the time). Jerrell had fun doing it; and it was contagious, even if you were the butt of the practical joke (ask Paul K for the details; there are many details).

Jerrell could multi-task. He could be about to flip down his welding hood, but just before striking an arc, pause to tell a story. Nobody could tell a story like Jerrell. And he had stories to tell. Hear the stories of his youth, and the wonder is that Jerrell lived long enough to get Alzheimer’s. Stories of his childhood on the ranch, in the mountains near Northbend, hunting, shooting, blowing things up (including the outhouse—while his brother Garry was using the outhouse), stories about pranks with wildcats, thugs, carburetors, gunpowder and cannons, boating adventures. Jerrell was an endless source of entertainment for his grandkids. When he wasn’t around, my kids would try to retell Grandpa stories, but they never quite worked unless Jerrell was telling them. He “remembered with advantages the feats he did that day.” 

But being an ironworker was dangerous, had its hazards. I’ll never forget receiving the phone call some years ago, that Jerrell was being rushed from the job site to the hospital; a 1,500# steel I-beam had fallen on him. Fearful of the worst, when Cheryl and I arrived, there was Jerrell sitting up in the ER gurney, as I recall it, telling a story to the ER nurse, animated, full-bodied grin, big calloused hands gesturing as he spun the yarn, dimple in all its splendor. For a moment, I felt sorry for the steel I-beam. My guess is it had a permanent Jerrell-shaped crook in it and was good for nothing but the scrap heap after attempting to crush Jerrell Wayne Lewellen.

Though his hands were hardened with callouses from work, it would be an enormous mistake to think of him as calloused, in the sense of hard, detached, unfeeling. This block of iron ore, was a man of tender feeling, a lover of his wife, his children, his grandchildren—and he was a lover of books, and reading; a lover of Shakespeare, but especially a lover of reading the Bible.

Though his hands were hard, there was nothing hard and unfeeling about the man. With those same hands, Jerrell milked a succession of cows—by hand, no machine needed or wanted—the last cow named Lucy. It was yet another way he could provide for his family, and, as he grew older, milking a cow by hand, twice a day, served as therapy, not only to ease the arthritic pain in his hands, but as a spiritual activity, a time of calm, of prayer, of quiet and tender reflection on the God who provided so abundantly for Jerrell and his family, on the God he loved and served with those hands, and that big, big heart.

Jerrell was a complex individual. Hammer-and-tongs ironworker that he was, picture with me the man holding court at lunch hour on the job site, young apprentices, who just that morning had learned yet another trick of the trade, a better way to do it right, now gathered around to hear Jerrell recite from his beloved Shakespeare. The man who had decided that formal schooling was overrated a few weeks before he would have graduated from high school, had later in his life discovered Shakespeare, one of the early bonding moments for Jerrell and this son-in-law. Listen in as Jerrell held court with those tough men, this passage one of his oft-recited favorites:

The quality of mercy is not strained; 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown… 
…mercy is above this sceptred sway; 
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings, 
It is an attribute to God himself; 
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s 
When mercy seasons justice. 
Therefore… 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this, 
That, in the course of justice, none of us 
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; 
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy.

From this man, these ironworkers heard some of the most profound and ultimate truths expressed in the most beautiful words, words rendered with such gusto and feeling by Jerrell. During these Shakespeare tutorials delivered to those, no doubt, bewildered ironworkers, he would pause to savor another bite of his beloved Pat’s incomparable apple pie. Jerrell and Pat had a mutual understanding. She would make all the pies Jerrell could eat, so long as he picked and peeled the apples. Though Jerrell had selective hearing loss, he heard and heeded this message. Nobody peeled apples like Jerrell.

Picture the man, hunched over the bucket, those hands again, hands deftly wielding one of his many razor-sharp pocket knives, methodically peeling another Granny Smith, green curly-cue peel trailing from his knife like a lacy work of art. I think of Jerrell peeling those apples—and Pat baking them with such loving skill—as something of a metaphor of their life together, of Jerrell’s life. It wasn’t finally about just getting the job done, accomplishing another task. Peeling apples slowed the pace, became another opportunity to pause and reflect, to take captive every thought, every activity to the obedience of Jesus Christ. Life was imminently important to Jerrell, but not just the big parts, planting the flag on the newly completed skyscraper. Every cut, every weld was important. Peeling the apples was important and to be done with artistry, and care, and love. Peeling the apples was to be enjoyed as much as sinking his gold-filled teeth into another scrumptious piece of Pat’s apple pie.

Building a house by his own unique design, every brick laid with those same hands, or building a steel fishing boat, a shop, the King Dome—building his family, whatever Jerrell was building, whatever problem he was solving, he did it with gusto, with laughter, with enjoyment. Jerrell lived out “Man’s chief end… to glorify God and to enjoy God forever.” By the grace and mercy of Christ, this was Jerrell’s life—and now his forevermore life.

A final word from Jerrell’s beloved Shakespeare, lines he would sometimes recite as he watched the tide in Dutcher’s Cove, his cove:

There is a tide in the affairs of men 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. 
On such a full sea are we now afloat, 
And we must take the current when it serves, 
Or lose our ventures.

By the grace of Christ, Jerrell did not omit this all-important tide in the affairs of men. For him that tide was the Water of Life, the only Savior of we broken and lost sinners, Jesus Christ. Jerrell would not want the voyage of one of your lives to be bound in shallows and in misery; he would not want one of you to lose your ventures. There is only one way to die well, as Jerrell did. Take Jesus at the flood. It is a full sea. The current now serves. Today—Jerrell’s memorial day—is the day of salvation. Jerrell Wayne Lewellen, knowing and experiencing firsthand what heaven is, I know Jerrell would want you to lay hold of Jesus Christ—today.