On January 19, 2010, my father in law of 27 years passed unexpectedly. Francis Jenkins, "Fran The Friendly furnace man"(retired 2003) went in the hospital January 11, 2010, to have his pacemaker changed out, which is a very minor procedure. At which time the doctors found his bloodwork to be way off. Subsequently, it was discovered he had acute Luekemia, which was manifesting over a period of ten years. After blood transfusions/ pacemaker changed, his body started shutting down and thus passed.
Here is my eulogy of "Fran" at his memorial service:
I was really blessed to have the privilege of two fathers.
My biological father passed in Dec 2000, and now my second, surrogate father.
I met Fran back in 1980 while dating my beautiful wife Lori. Fran was kind of intimidating at first, he being 240#s lbs and me 185#s. But he was a big teddy bear. He became my father in-law in August of 82. He really enjoyed life, his family and friends.
We really became close when my family moved to Shawano in Sept 1999.
I would help him with his furnace work until his knees hurt too much.
He then retired in 2002 or 2003.
At that time my business picked up and we took him along to do repoes.
Then it was to the point where Fran would call and say where are we going today or where we going tomorrow?
If it wasn’t serving papers on a road trip to LacDuFlambeau or Manitowoc or repoing cars in Eau Claire; He loved riding along as our reward for a good days work was lunch or dinner, wings, burgers, or brats and a beer or two.
Long surveillances were kind of taxing on Fran as sometimes he couldn’t pee when he had to as we couldn‘t go anywhere till the person moved.
One time while doing some work at the court house in Stevens Point I came out to the van and he said he used the bathroom, and he had to empty his pee bottle; being smack dab in front of the court house I just busted out laughing and we pulled into the adjacent parking lot and emptied the bottle. You have to understand, when Fran peed he dropped everything while standing.(and I could imagine him standing vanside and peeing into his bottle)
Oct 2008 was the last time Fran went on a road trip with me, it was to Marinette, WI.
It became too painful for him to walk around and I’m sure he felt being a burden, always using the bathroom.
I didn’t care about the peeing or the time he took.
It was just he couldn’t handle the pain and he was losing strength.
The only time we had lunch now was after a doctor visit.
I enjoyed his candor, his laid back style, his quick humor and his determination among a host of other attributes.
Wisconsin’s oldest repo man will be missed. My friend and my 2nd dad will be painfully missed.
Fran, Thank you for your daughter and family. I Love you.
Fran was 85.
Posted by Magnum Investigations Plus at 2/7/2010 3:28 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment