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Obituary

Rodney Dale Holm of Palisade died at his home in Palisade on Friday, September 12. He was born May 13, 1940 at his grandfather’s house in Morrison Township. His parents were Knute and Ruth (Pratt) Holm. He grew up in Palisade and graduated from Aitkin High School in 1958.

Rod married LaVonne Lieske in 1959; they had two children, Perry and Jaye (Judy). In 1981 he married Judy Lamson.

Rod was a man of many talents. He was a farmer, worked construction for Victor Carlson and Sons, and ran the Palisade Mercantile store. In 1979 he discovered his true calling when he and his wife Judy became over-the-road truck drivers, traveling more than a million miles together until his diagnosis of brain cancer in Dec. of 2006. They drove for Midland Co-ops, Mpls, Maverick Inc, Rogers, International Transport, Rochester, Nelson Inc. Deerwood, and the last 13 years for Tri-State Motor Transport in Joplin MO.

He is survived by his wife Judy; son Perry (Sheri), Fergus Falls; daughter Jaye (Theo) Lawrence-Durbin, Eagan; granddaughters Kristen and Teagan Riehle, Eagan; brothers Jerry (Cherie), Aitkin and Mike (Suzi), Barnesville; sisters Charity (Kenny) McNeil, Swatara; Patsy Sandsness, Columbia Heights; and Linda Iverson, Omaha NE; Uncle Melvin (Delores) Holm and Aunt Carol (Gene) Hawk; many nieces, nephews, and cousins; and his beloved Kitties.

Rod is preceded in death by his grandparents Jasper and Della (Colbert) Pratt and Jacob and Lucy (Geyer) Holm; parents Knute and Ruth Holm; stepdaughters Patty Anne and Bobbie-Sue Lamson, and brother-in-law Larry Iverson.

Memorial services will be held (DAY TIME OF SERVICE) at Bethel Lutheran Church, Palisade, where Rod was a member. Honorary pallbearers: Lenny Anderson, Glenn Britney, Wayne Lubbert, Vernon Moore, Lloyd Johnson, Donny Johnson, Russ Kellerman, Harvey Blomberg. Private interment in Pine Grove Cemetery, Palisade.

"A Life Well Lived" - Eulogy

Rod's Eulogy, given by his son, Perry at Rod's memorial service, Sept. 15, 2008.

Rodney Dale Holm
May 13, 1940 – September 12, 2008
“A Life Well Lived”

The poet Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a poem called Requiem to appear on his own tombstone. It concludes with these lines.

“This be the verse you ‘grave for me
Here he lies where he long’d to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill

For Rodney Holm, we have to add another line. “Home is the trucker, home from the road.”

Rodney Dale Holm was a child of Aitkin county, born in Morrision township in the home of his grandfather, Jasper Pratt. Grandpa Pratt had a great effect on Dad, and he had a deep and abiding respect for the man who he said always made him feel like an equal, even when he was just a boy. I think those of us who knew Rod well would say that later in life he did the same for all who crossed his path. He grew up in Palisade, raised by mother Ruth and father Knute, in the town he would come to love. He attended Palisade Elementary and Aitkin High School where the relationships he began there would bear full fruit some 40 years later in a wonderful turn of events in his life. After high school he married LaVonne Lieske and they had two children, Perry Steven and Judy Ellen, who is now known as Jaye. Though they did not stay married, Rod and LaVonne remained friendly and respectful to one another and always, always put their children first, often making great sacrifices to see that we got to experience growing up with both our parents.

In his 30s, Rod met, married and made his life for the next 35 years with Judy Lamson. The two of them were a good fit and they made a strong marriage, a deep and lasting commitment to one another, and a fine, interesting life together.

I’d like to share with you some thoughts on that life and on the man we all knew and loved.
Let me ask you, what defines a person? How do we put a life well lived into a few words and a few minutes?

As I pondered that question for this eulogy, four words came to mind as I thought of my father. Change, Freedom, Memory, and Loyalty. Let me use those as the framework to share with you some thoughts on my father.

Change – Rod made a great effort to improve himself over the course of his lifetime and that effort bore great reward in his later years. The volatility, fire, and anger of his younger years was the engine of his great strength, toughness and determination but as he moved through life he wanted to mature and give other qualities within him the lead role. He wanted to be kinder, more gentle, more concerned for others and the world around him, and he succeeded. His daughter Jaye once asked him how he did it. He replied “I just pretended to be the kind of man I wanted to be and then after a while I wasn’t pretending anymore.”

How often in life does a person experience a renaissance, a new beginning in life? And what kind of effort must it require to bring that kind of change about in oneself. My father knew that effort, paid its price, and for him the results were extremely gratifying. He showed us that within him lived a man of kindness, sincerity, and sensitivity; a man who possessed a wonderful knack of making those in his presence feel attended to and important. This manifested itself in many lovely ways.

For example, in all those years on the road he met many people asking for hand outs. No one ever went away with nothing, even if it was just a dollar or two. He didn’t judge them or question them; he just went ahead and helped in his own small way.

He came to treasure animals and their simple, peaceful natures so much that over the many miles, the truck always had a supply of dog food and cat food, so they could feed the strays they came across on the road.

There was his ability to pay attention. When you were with Rod, wether friend of casual acquaintance, or family member or meeting him for the first time, you had his full attention. He was not distracted, not doing something else in his head. He was concerned with you, and only you, and it is a wonderful feeling to be with someone who treats us that way. I think Dad worked hard at honoring people this way and I have witnessed many, many times the pleasure people received at being respected and attended to in this warm and gracious manner.

And then there were his kitties. Over the years in Palisade, this gentle and kind-hearted man took in 16 stray cats, 7 of which still live in the house today. One of his beloved Calico cats, which were the first two to be taken in, settled in on his hospice bed and rarely left his side in the days leading up to his death, as if she knew she was needed. I like to think he knew she was there with him during that time.

Freedom – Rod was many things in his 68 years – farmer, construction worker, bartender, factory worker – but in 1979 he found his true calling when he became an over the road trucker with his wife Judy. Something about the freedom of the open road was a perfect fit for his restless soul and adventurous heart. With Judy at his side he traveled more than a million miles, north and south and east and west, to every one of the lower 48 states and 8 provinces of Canada. His loads were as varied as tractors and construction equipment, produce, lumber, brick, furniture, jet engines, air craft parts, nuclear material, hazardous waste, and munitions.

How often in life does a man find his perfect job? THAT ONE THING you would choose to keep on doing until you cannot go on anymore. Dad found it in long haul trucking and he knew he found it and counted himself the most fortunate of men in the discovery. The freedom and responsibility of truck driving was a great fit for Dad. In what other job could you be given a load of cargo worth 10 million dollars and told to show up 3,000 miles later safe and sound and on time, and never bother the home office all the while. He loved that freedom, those adventures. A million miles! A million miles driven over a 28 year period and not a single late pickup, not a single late delivery, and never a ticket. Rod Holm reached the top of his profession.

He loved that work. He loved seeing the country in a way that tourists never could – the working side of America, the America of docks and factories, warehouses and railroads, military bases and assembly lines. A working man all his life, he felt a kinship with the working people he met in all those places. He always admired the hard workers with mean jobs, many of them loaded down with great disadvantages and burdens. He would say “they’ve got their shoulder to the wheel.”

In the summer of 2007, a while after the first brain surgery and treatments, my wife Sheri and I went to Palisade for a visit. Sheri remarked to them casually that she had half a mind they would be going back to trucking. Dad and Judy gave a sheepish grin as they looked at one another. It turns out they had all their bags packed and were due at Tri State Motor Transit on Monday. They had just called a few hours before that to say they changed their mind; Dad just wouldn’t be able to do it, but the love of trucking never left him.

One of the reasons I know it was his perfect job was because of how he and Judy used their free time on the road. They were always walking, talking to people, exploring, taking side trips during layovers, and just generally reveling in the freedom they had to see this great country of ours. People who are simply enduring their jobs for the paycheck don’t act like that and don’t make the effort to squeeze the most out of all their opportunities. My how he loved that job! How lucky he felt to have found it!

Memory – Dad loved to live in the past. He often told me that the future hasn’t happened, now is just a moment, but the past is endless and there is a lifetime’s worth of things to enjoy, and ponder, and learn from. I never knew anyone who loved and honored the past like my father. If you knew him well, you knew his prodigious long-term memory and the incredible detail he could share of things that happened 50, or even 60 years ago. It was a real pleasure to be with him to share his memories and I know they were a source of great joy to him. I’d like to share a couple of them with you to share the kind of man he was, plus they are just darn good stories!

A good friend of Rod’s was in a nursing home and had fallen into a non-responsive state. Over the years, the two of them would always argue good-naturedly about who would pay for the coffee as they sat and talked and visited. His friend would always try to get in the first pronouncement of “hey Rod, my turn to buy.”
Dad paid a visit to his friend’s room. The doctors had told the family that this state may per permanent, and no one had been able to rouse him from it. Rod walked in the room and up to the side of the bed, saying loudly, “my turn to buy, John!”

John opened his eyes and said “hi Rod”. And he went onto live another day.

When my sister Jaye got married in 2002, I spoke at the ceremony. I was nervous and wanted to make the best speech ever. I had pages full of big ideas, and fancy concepts of what marriage is. It was very flowery and preachy. I knew something wasn’t right but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then, the day before the wedding, Rod and I were walking through Como Park in St. Paul, where the ceremony would be held the next day. I told him of my speech. He was quiet for a while, then said to me the most important thing about marriage I ever learned.

“For me”, he said, “the most wonderful thing is having someone alongside you when you see something beautiful.” “You can touch them on the arm and say Hey, look at that!” We talked a little more and he spoke to me about the importance of companionship, and about how the little things, the simple things, the sheer act of being present with your spouse is the most important thing.

Needless to say, I changed my speech. I think “hey, look at that” is the most important thing my father ever taught me. Someday I’ll see him again and tell him just how much it meant to me.

So many memories of a life well lived…
Town Team Baseball at Waukenabo, the struggles of small farming, the joys of grandchildren, backbreaking work, a thousand hours spent at high school wrestling meets, lazy time in the sun listening to the Minnesota Twins, coffee and visiting with so many wonderful friends and classmates, the mighty Aitkin Gobbler football team of 1956, simple pleasures of home and wife and cats, and ten thousand other things that make up the mosaic of a life well lived. If he were here today, Dad would encourage us to spend some time looking within ourselves, to the past, for there is wisdom, and pleasure, and treasures in our history, all hidden in our mind, waiting to be opened up like a birthday gift; one that will last forever.

Loyalty—I never thought much about loyalty before about 6 weeks ago. Then I asked Rod what quality in himself he was most proud of. He didn’t have to think very long before he answered “I think I was loyal to people, even when it was hard to be.” As I thought and thought about that I came to believe that for my father, Loyalty WAS Love. And further, that loyalty may be the highest expression of love.

Loyal to family; always being there for his children when they needed him most, taking care of his parents in their last months, always remembering birthdays, and special events, and never forgetting encouragement or a kind word or a helping hand for whatever family member was encountering difficulty. It was noticed, this loyalty; his sister Linda told me she considered him an “exceptional” brother and I know that Jerry, Charity, Michael, and Patsy feel the same way and that Rod loved and cherished them equally in return.

Loyal to friends: later in life a whole new world opened up for my father. He reconnected with his former classmates at the Palisade and Aitkin school reunions and from that point forward those friends of long ago became his treasured friends of today. He truly loved the connection and the camaraderie and the feeling that when he was with them no time had past. In speaking just the other day with his dear, dear friend Lenny Anderson, I could feel my father’s pleasure as Lenny spoke just as Dad himself had, of how grateful he was for their own reconnection and renewed friendship. I think it brought Rod great pleasure to be loyal and faithful to those people, to be a positive part of their lives and I believe in some ways it brought him full circle in his own life.

And that brings us at last to Judy; Rod’s wife and companion for the past 35 years. I could tell you many wonderful stories of the two of them, of a life of working together, of gentle adventures across the nation, of a happy and welcoming home. But one thing stands out, and it is a story for the ages. It also tells you everything you need to know about the kind of man Rodney Holm was.

In August of 1996, Judy was diagnosed with one of the deadliest forms of leukemia. She spent months in the oncology unit receiving chemotherapy, radiation, and eventually a bone marrow transplant. Day after day, night after night, week after week she fought the cancer in her blood while Rod sat vigil and slept in her room every night in a fold-down hospital chair.
He wouldn’t leave. 24 hours a day, every day for 4 months he was at her side, keeping watch all day and then sleeping in that uncomfortable chair every night, first at Brainerd, then at the University of Minnesota hospital where she received her bone marrow transplant. When asked to go out to dinner or take a break, his answer was always the same. “She can’t leave.”

He wasn’t leaving without her.

And at the end of that 4 months, sure enough, he brought her home. That, ladies and gentleman, is loyalty, and love and everything that is good in this life.

I think I’ll close the way he would have wanted. His good friend John Anderson always told him “never say goodbye, just say I’ll see you.” Dad liked this very much and when his time came, I tried to remember it when we would come to visit, or have one of our many talks on the phone. I so look forward to seeing him again when my time comes to join him in his rest.

So, I’ll just say for us all … “Well done Rod, it was a life well lived and you will be missed. We’ll see you.”

Rodney Dale Holm
May 13, 1940 - September 12, 2008