A Euglogy by Arielle Neal, given on 7/27/14

When I think of my dad, there are 3 main qualities that set him apart from the rest: that he retained a childlike curiosity throughout his life, his extreme intelligence, and his enormously giving heart. Any of those traits alone is notable, but in combination they’re simply remarkable. 

My dad was extraordinary. He was an extraordinary dad and an extraordinary person. I have wavered with how best to communicate today just how special he was. Every one in this room, I am certain, has experienced his enormous appetite for knowledge, his generosity, and his unwavering sense of justice.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of seeing my dad wear many hats- doctor, inventor, brother, uncle, husband and friend to name a few. Today I’m going to speak about the one I know best. I want to share what kind of dad he was. My dad raised me from the time I was four through middle school, so for most of my life it was just us. We called ourselves the “A-Team.” When I was in elementary school, he would leave notes in my lunchbox, telling me I was his favorite daughter (for the record, I am his only daughter). We spent weekends hiking in Cades Cove. He was the only father in attendance at my Brownie Scouts meetings. We made homemade paper together and dried flowers. We collected rocks and tumbled them for hours until they were shiny and looked very expensive. We became expert makers of creme brûlée using his blowtorch to caramelize the sugar on top. 

When I was in 5th grade he took me to see the Spice Girls, making me promise I would not tell my Aunt how much the tickets had cost. At the time I thought that to be a sign of his secret generosity, but I realize in retrospect he may have actually enjoyed watching the Spice Girls as much as I did. He would quiz me on spelling during the car ride to school. We loved running around under the black lights at Laser Quest, shooting our imagined enemies. He was always engrossed in something— hauling me with him to the UT library, tinkering with a science experiment in our kitchen or recruiting a family member or friend to help him on a home improvement project that he assured them would take only a few hours.

My dad and I loved to cook together. One meal we started making when I was maybe 9 years old was lobster and artichokes with lemon sauce. It was a decadent affair that took time and preparation. One particular night we made this meal, we enjoyed it so much that by the time we finished eating at 10PM, we wanted more. I remember my dad glancing at the clock in our kitchen, calculating aloud that Krogers didn’t close for another two hours. Few people would have actually gone back to the store, re-bought the ingredients and made a second round of dinner, but that’s exactly what we did. Just before midnight we were back at our kitchen table, a plate of lobster and artichokes, round two of the A-Team feast! 

This is a silly illustration of something I love about my dad. He didn’t take rules at face value. When given the choice between following a tacit social rule about how many decadent lobster dinners to have in an evening, he didn’t care that you should only have one. In fact, he tended to be pretty skeptical of statements that were founded on should. He spent his whole life questioning the status quo of how things were done. Much of his research hinged on questioning an established way of thinking or doing something. His curiosity led him to research whether an illness could be treated more effectively, or if a solution existed to a problem someone deemed unsolvable. 

He rarely considered something to be impossible. It’s common for people to make up excuses for why things are the way they are. But that was not my dad. He used his power of observation to focus in on something unsatisfactory, and then set about finding a way to change it.  

When he was in college, he worked as a janitor. During the first hour of his shift he would get all the cleaning done and then he would sit in the elevator for the rest of the shift and study. He was the first person in his family to go to college. For him, it was never about if something was possible, just a matter of figuring out how to make it possible. 

And I’m sure everyone here today has witnessed that drive and ability in him—whether he was coming up with a treatment to slow hair loss for my grandfather, or patenting his inventions to restore sensation in damaged nerves, or figuring out a treatment for PTSD or better ways to manage diabetes, or his lifelong fascination with flight, my dad’s curiosity was unmatched, as were his two other defining traits— his enormous heart and lightening intelligence.

I’m not sure if any one here has ever tried to debate with my dad but if you have, I’m willing to bet you didn’t win that debate. The man had a mind filled with more information than an encyclopedia. He could casually switch from topics as varied as quantum physics, to the complete history of a rare Native American tribe, to current political scandals and finish by telling you why Ke$ha is actually a great writer of love songs. I mean, c’mon! 

But I’m here to tell you that my dad didn’t know everything. And he didn’t think that he did, either. Despite his insatiable appetite for knowledge, he was well aware of a realm of existence that could not be Googled, cataloged in an encyclopedia or examined in a laboratory. Call it the mystical, religious or spiritual. My dad most often called it God. Last Thanksgiving, we had a conversation about how he was so often able to see things that others didn’t— whether in his patient’s illnesses, or in scientific quandaries. My dad said very simply to me, “That’s because I ask every day for God to help me, to use me as his tool.” It would be very easy for someone with my dad’s talent to believe that the talent was a product of his own doing. In fact, I think it’s generally easier to credit misfortune for being God’s will, and to take credit oneself for good fortune. 

I was only somewhat surprised to hear my dad say this during our Thanksgiving conversation. It’s not that I questioned my dad’s faith. But when I was growing up, we did not attend regular church services. I wasn’t particularly familiar with the Bible. Thanks to my dad, I know more about the quantum physics behind the universe than I do about the Creation Story. I now see that for my dad, there was no separation. It was not a matter of choosing Faith or Science. I see now that everything he so revered— ancient fossils recovered from deep in the earth, an emerald-colored beetle he kept on a shelf in our kitchen, even the questionable chemicals he sometimes mixed in our kitchen— he saw God in all of it. Taking me hiking in the woods, showing me the far away cosmos through his telescope and the molecules in a leaf through his microscope— all of it was God. God wasn’t just something to be worshipped on Sundays nor was his presence confined to church. God powers and is infused in every atom, perceptible or not. In my dad’s eyes, everything we experience, any knowledge we have access to, is a gift from God.

My dad wrote to me that he lived as if he were a tool whose job it was to make heaven on earth. To my dad, heaven was a place where hearts are large and open, where the ordinary is met with wonder— as God’s handiwork, and where with talent comes the duty to use it for a greater good. My dad spent his life trying to make a little bit of heaven on earth. I think he did so wonderfully.