I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
2 Timothy 4:6-8
October 12, 2009
Chuck’s daughter, Wendy, was the one who suggested the 2 Timothy 4 passage for today’s service. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Wendy recently read this text to her Dad, and felt that it represented his life and especially his battle with cancer.
The words are the Apostle Paul’s own testimony. Of the thirteen letters in the New Testament attributed to Paul, 2 Timothy is almost surely the last to come from his pen and his heart. More than likely he is sitting in prison, or at least under house arrest. The emperor Nero is in power, and Nero’s consolidation of power has already included the execution of political rivals and of his own mother. Paul is quite aware that “the time has come for (his) departure.”
As he looks back over his life, however, he looks back with gratitude and with satisfaction. “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”
He also looks forward with anticipation. “Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord…will award…not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”
I agree with Wendy. This text is a great one to use as we celebrate the life of Chuck Schoendube.
I have fought the good fight. Chuck was a fighter. His battle with cancer is only one illustration.
He was a political fighter – a staunch Republican and big Rush Limbaugh fan. Nancy once bought him a Jimmy Carter tie as a joke, and he was furious. There was no gray area in politics. Or anything else.
He was a fighter because he was a survivor. Chuck was born in the Philippines to an American father and a mother who was born in Czechoslovakia and had become an Austrian citizen. His family stayed in the Philippines through the beginning of World War II.
That experience continued to shape the rest of his life. When Chuck and Beverly joined Corinth in 2005, this is what he said when asked to write a paragraph about his faith –
Beginning Dec. ’42 in Manila, Philippines, surviving 3 weeks of Japanese bombing as a War Dept. guard followed by years as a civilian POW under imminent threat of execution, followed by mortar fire during the great battle of Manila, with only the loss of an eye, came the realization that I must be in the care of a Supreme Being, my Lord and Savior. Hours and hours of discussion with fellow POWs who were priests, pastors, bishops, rabbis, and mentors confirmed this belief in Him which has sustained me and guided my family for over 60 years.
So even before his first cancer diagnosis in 2007, Chuck saw himself has a survivor, one who had fought the good fight.
I am quite sure it was those shaping experiences of his early life that caused Chuck to believe he would beat cancer. Anticipating this service, my wife Linda and I sat down a week ago to watch the Stephen Spielberg film, “Empire of the Sun,” at the recommendation of Dr. Will Thompson.
The film is about life in a Japanese prison camp during World War II. Although the one in the film is about a camp in China, the parallel is that just making it out of such an experience after living it for 37 months requires an attitude that says, “I’m going to survive. I’m going to beat this. I will bow if I need to. I will cooperate where I have to. I will find a way to eat. I will will myself through this.” Whether or not Chuck was aware at the time of God’s providential hand, he certainly looked back on the experience as evidence that God is real, and only God’s hand could have brought him through.
Six decades later, when the doctors said he had cancer, Chuck took the same attitude: “I’m going to beat this.” He never, and I do mean never, accepted the fact that this disease would win. He went into Hospice as if it were a therapy center to get him back on his feet. I’m told he’s the only patient in the history of the facility to walk laps around the halls. The nurses would sit at the desk thinking how tired they were – only to watch one of their patients refuse to give in to his disease.
Chuck defied every prediction of how long he would last. It’s been almost three weeks since Dr. Thompson told me he didn’t think Chuck would make it more than another day or so. That same weekend, my wife, Linda, and I stopped in to see Chuck. He was so weak his speech was hard to understand. I was trying to talk to him about being OK with the end of life, and he kept saying something over and over about going somewhere. Finally Linda realized what he was saying: “I’m not going anywhere.” When we repeated those words back to him, he answered, “That’s all I have to say about that.” A week later when I stopped by, he was watching a football game and he said, “I’m going to play in the Pro Bowl.”
That was probably also his sense of humor coming through, but Chuck was a survivor. He fought the good fight right to the end.
I have finished the race. Chuck’s “race of life” started in the Philippines because his father had enlisted in the Army during the Spanish-American War (1898-1901). A major battleground of that war was the Philippines, which ended with the Philippines as a territory of the United States. Chuck’s dad returned to Manila after the war to work for the U.S. government during reconstruction as an electrician and fire marshal. He later became the city engineer.
Chuck was educated in the Philippines, and told me his education, particularly in math, was way ahead of American schools. He graduated from high school and went on to a college of technology in Manila with a scholarship for basketball and academics. The bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 changed everything, and the Japanese invaded the Philippines the next day. General Douglas MacArthur had to abandon defense of the Philippines, and the Japanese marched peacefully into Manila and rounded up the American citizens into Santo Thomas Prison Camp.
Conditions were tolerable at first, and Chuck was even allowed to take some college level engineering courses during the imprisonment. But food, freedom, and other conditions worsened during the next three years. His father was left out of the prison camp and kept under house arrest to run the alarm system for the city. Three years later when General MacArthur returned to liberate Manila, Chuck’s father was in one of the American tanks that entered the prison camp.
After the war, Chuck returned to the U.S. and entered the University of Michigan. One of his professors had been in the Philippines as well, and Chuck was allowed to transfer some of his course work from the prison camp. He graduated in 1948 and soon went to work for General Electric, a career that spanned 35 years and brought him to Hickory. His father had worked closely with GE in Manila.
In another “survivor” story, he almost didn’t make it to Hickory. He was due to take a flight in 1972 but gave up his seat on the plane to another employee’s wife. By that time, his children were all teenagers. That plane crashed, and all the GE employees, including several senior management members, were killed. Chuck always said he was destined to come to Hickory.
Chuck’s “race” in life was full speed. When everyone else went home from GE at 4:30, he would stay until 6:00. After dinner he worked at home through the evening. He had a keen mind for math and engineering, and was awarded nine patents General Electric. He noted and retained trivia – his daughters said he would have been a great contestant on Jeopardy.
He loved learning, and never stopped. He was still getting the “Spanish word of the day” on e-mail right to the end. He had tapes in his car to learn German. A few years ago Nancy gave him Pat Conroy’s book, “My Losing Season,” as a gift. He said, “All I have time for is textbooks for new knowledge. I’m not reading about a bunch of losers.”
When he retired from GE, he didn’t retire. Not only did he continue to enjoy the interaction with his GE “lunch bunch” at Bennett’s, Chuck went to work for Catawba Valley Community College as a tutor. Those were the “glory years,” his family says. He worked in the resource center and tutored students in calculus and physics. He had always wanted to go back to school, and this was his chance. He continued working there until he became sick.
Chuck kept running the race as long as he could.
I have kept the faith. This phrase can be understood various ways. I am sure for the Apostle Paul it meant holding on to and spreading the deposit of faith with which God had entrusted him.
The word “keep” means “to take care of, to guard,” and “faith” can mean either the conviction of what is true (especially about God) or, more broadly, “fidelity” or “faithfulness.” (I think Chuck would be honored by that vocabulary lesson. He himself had an extensive vocabulary, and corrected others for trite and overused words. Please note that I have not used the word “cute” anywhere in this meditation. That was one of his pet peeves.)
When I think of Chuck keeping the faith, I think first of his fidelity to Beverly. They were in their sixtieth year of marriage when he died.
They met in Schenectady, New York, when Chuck moved there to work for General Electric. He told me he met her at the first Saturday night dance he went to there – though she may have a different version of that story. She was only 17, but she caught his eye. Wendy says his comment was that “Beverly was such a beautiful dancer.”
Their relationship continued in part through love letters, some of which Beverly and her daughters recently found and read through. To show you Chuck’s language perfectionism, he would read Beverly’s love letters, correct her grammar, and send them back. But she married him anyway.
The family memories are overwhelmingly warm ones. He loved Halloween more than Christmas. Family vacations included destinations from Cape Cod to Florida. Chuck was always the Scrabble champ. Very competitive, he was quite proud that he won ladder golf at a family outing just last year. He loved the ocean, loved practical jokes, and loved just being with his family.
When I visited Chuck and Beverly as they were preparing to join Corinth, he named every child and grandchild with great pride. Bethany, who read the poem today, was “the great communicator.” Chelsie, who read Ecclesiastes 3, he called “a genius” – a rather high compliment coming from Chuck. Her mother and aunts call her “little Chuck.”
The pieces of advice he wanted to leave for all of us were two, primarily: “Learn all you can” and “Be the best you can be in everything you do.”
Chuck would agree with the Apostle Paul that at the end of life there’s nothing more satisfying than to look back and say, “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”
It’s been several weeks now – just after he entered Hospice – since Chuck and I had a good conversation about his faith. He was somewhat reluctant to engage in a conversation about eternal life because that, of course, would be tantamount to admitting he was getting near death. For a guy who was still asking for Grecian Formula at Hospice, admitting that this life was drawing to an end was not easy.
But Pastor Bill, Nurse Betty, Chuck’s Stephen Minister, and I have all visited him, encouraging him to face the reality of death and not fear it. For my part, I’m quite convinced that my telling him last week it was OK to let go probably made him last a few more days. “I’m not going anywhere,” remember?
But that conversation a few weeks ago was our best one. He was there by himself, and, at that particular moment, conceding that he wasn’t going back home. He said he was at peace with God, and we went back over the basics of our hope as Christians. Death is nothing to fear – it is a transition from this life to the next, made possible by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In him we have our hope.
That is the faith which the Apostle Paul kept to the end. That is faith in which Chuck lived and died. That is the faith which allows us to grieve, but not as those who have no hope.
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.” We believe him.
Amen.