Rudolph Edwin Luukkonen

Before I start talking about Rudy… I’d like to thank some folks; First, the staff at Sherbrooke Community Center- they made Rudy’s final months far better than we could ever have hoped with their devotion and kindness. I’d like to thank my sister, Anna, for all she’s done for Rudy as well. My partner, Marie, has been invaluable in helping me sort out and manage Rudy’s finances and care over the last few years. My Nephew, Adam Mckee, deserves perhaps the greatest thanks of all; He stayed with Rudy, and cared for him, and allowed us to keep him his own home for far longer than anyone expected. Adam was there to feed Rudy, to bathe him, and never faltered or failed to do whatever it took to keep his great uncle safe and healthy.

Rudolph Edwin Luukkonen passed away peacefully at Sherbrooke Community center on Monday, April 13th at 93 years of age. Rudy was attended by family and friends over the last week as it became apparent that his days were coming to an end. I felt privileged and lucky to have a week off to spend at his bedside, and my Dad Joe, my sister, Anna, brother John, and nephews Adam and Mackenzie shared this time as well.

John Donne wrote that we should “ask not for whom the bell tolls- it tolls for thee”. He meant that we should think of ourselves as connected- that every man’s death diminishes all of us- that when people we love die, a bit of us goes with them. I believe the reverse is true as well; the people we love leave something of themselves with us when they pass on. A bit of us dies as we mourn, but something of our loved one stays with us in our hearts to comfort us.

Now- that’s enough about his death- let’s celebrate Rudy’s Life! Rudy lived a long and interesting life- even if it wasn’t always an easy one. Born to Edwin and Anna Luukkonen in 1922, he grew up on a small farm near Birsay, Saskatchewan. He graduated from high school with marks that would have won him scholarships to the career of his choice in today's age. He studied physics and chemistry by correspondence, wrote the departmental exams and achieved perfect scores. In the1940's however, there were few scholarships for farm boys, so through the war years, as two of his brothers served in uniform, Rudy laboured on the family farm and then helped the war effort as a logger in Northern Ontario. Rudy was always good with animals, and horses in particular seemed to love him. Grandma used to laugh as she recalled one incident when Rudy was just a toddler; she was plowing the garden with a one horse plow, and did not see Rudy sitting in the path of the horse. The horse didn’t miss a beat tho’; he gently grabbed Rudy’s collar in his mouth, lifted him over and out of the way, and kept right on plowing! Rudy had a lot of stories about his days working with horses, particularly in his lumberjacking days in Ontario. But Rudy was a dab hand at operating and fixing all sorts of machinery too; he could build a radio or rebuild and engine- and there was no repair task on the farm on around the house that he couldn’t tackle.

For a man of slim build, Rudy was remarkably strong and possessed of enormous endurance. I remember shoveling out granaries with him on the farm, when I was a teenager and he was in his fifties or older- he could move about twice as much grain as could I, and with seemingly effortless grace. And he could do it for a LONG, LONG TIME. At eighteen, that annoyed the heck out of me- because I wouldn’t quit until he did- and I know he enjoyed watching me trying not to gasp as the shovel got heavier! He’d always take pity on me tho’ and suggest a water break long before I suspect he needed one himself. I

In the years that followed WWII, Rudy became a journeyman gas fitter he loved to talk about his meeting with Colonel Sanders on 8th street as he worked on a gas oven installation in the KFC there. During the growing season, he worked on the farm, and eventually acquired several quarters of his own land. In the sixties, Rudy and Grandma spend some winters in the USA. While working as a television repair man in Arizona during one of those visits, Rudy contracted the Hong Kong Flu. He came very close to death, and the experience made him value a healthy lifestyle. He was ever experimenting with recipes for healthier home made bread and buns. (He still enjoyed a good apple pie with ice cream from time to time- after all, he was health conscious- not crazy!) Although he was never anything but polite, he did manage to gently needle me about my own increasing waistline- and whenever he saw I was working at getting fitter, he encouraged me.

Through the 1970s and 80s Rudy continued to farm alongside his brother Walter, and later his younger brother Joe. He was a shrewd farmer, and while never a cheapskate by any means, he had the learned frugality of a generation that survived the dirty thirties. He hated to waste money, and he was willing to work to avoid spending it unnecessarily. I remember escorting him home with a new tractor about 1985. We drove out about hours north of Saskatoon; I thought we’d be loading the new tractor on a flatbed. Nope. I was to drive his car back to the farm and he would bring the tractor. A lovely almost new International Harvester. The drive to the farm took me about 4 hours as I recall. He pulled into the yard, with a big grin on his face about six hours after that! I think it wasn’t just about saving the trucking fee- he just wanted to drive his new tractor!

As Rudy scaled back his farming- he continued in his long time hobby as a radio amateur. He was part of an active ham radio community, and was one of the team that build the ham radio weather network that reported on conditions across the province. Rudy loved logging his conversations with other ‘Hams’ in the province, across the country, and around the world.

Along the way, at age 81, he developed a new obsession! Golf! I was visiting him one day, and I mentioned as I was leaving that I intended to go to the ‘driving range’. Rudy asked what that was- and looked a bit interested when I explained. Since all addicts love to recruit, I invited him to join me. At the range, I tee’d up a ball and handed him a five wood. He took a mighty swing at it, and knocked it down the middle about 150 yards- his eyes lit up like a kids’ beneath a Christmas tree decked with presents and turning to me, he said… “I think I can see the fascination in this!” The next week when I visited him again, he’d bought a set of clubs and a pull cart… for five bucks at a garage sale. I did say he was frugal didn’t I? That was the start of the best golf partnership I’ve ever had. Rudy and I would play Silverwood- his favorite course- 3 or more times a week all summer. By June of the first season, he’d purchased a season’s pass and by the end of the season a brand new set of Jack Nicklaus senior golf clubs. He was erratic with his irons and preferred his favorite club; a value village 3wood he’d paid five dollars to take home. He generally hit that one down the middle, and he putted fearlessly- so for every triple bogie he scored, there’d be a par or a birdie on his card as well. Our playing partners often refused to believe his age when he told them. One grey haired 65 year old actually got angry when he discovered Rudy was actually 20 years his senior! I was too polite to laugh- but I think the poor fella saw through my coughing fit.

Rudy was likely the most popular man in our family. He had a way of making friends, often it seemed Lady-friends! My brother and I were talking about the kind of advice one should give a young son about impressing the ladies. John joked about fancy cars and style. I said just this- and it’s good advice I think for all men from 18 to 80; just do what Rudy did: When you talk to a girl, pay attention to her; be interested, be polite, and be kind. That’s how you win hearts, minds and friends. Of course for Rudy, that wasn’t a ‘strategy’; it was WHO he was. He was never short of lady Friends. At Uncle Walter’s funeral, we were astonished to see a half a dozen women nobody knew in attendance- we wondered about it through the service- but all became clear when they flocked to Rudy’s table at the luncheon that followed. A couple years later, a friend of mine’s mother developed a bit of a crush on Rudy after meeting and talking to him just one time. A month after that, I ran into my friend and her mom at Tim Horton’s. The elderly lady- a woman of sharp intellect and great manners in her own right- hastened to tell me that she’d seen Rudy in Tim’s the day previous. I asked her---- did you say hi to him? “No!” She said with evident disgust- “I wanted to… but he had his harem with him!” I suppressed a smile.

Of course, if you want to attract the opposite sex, it also helps if you love dancing as much as did Rudy. Every Saturday night, he’d don his best suit- often in various shades of green with matching green socks, shoes and tie, and head out to one of the single’s dances he enjoyed for decades. Through these singles groups and dances, Rudy found a multitude of friends- it seems that people know him where-ever I go in this province! I was astounded to learn that my first land lady in Kindersley, Angie Deschner, had known him for years! That I was his nephew was pretty much the only reference I needed to succeed in renting her basement suite!

But remember this... Rudy was never, as the kids today say, ‘a player’. He was a gentleman in the best sense of the word; if he had lady friends, it was because he was a gentleman. His long time lady friend, Roz, was the sort of quality person that Rudy both attracted and deserved. He missed her enormously when she passed on at all too young an age some years ago.

So, Rudy was rich in friends and his hobbies, but one element of his ‘bucket list’ went unfulfilled for years. Although Rudy loved automobiles- in his entire life, he’d never had a brand new car. At 84, he decided that had to change and Rudy and I started our second shared hobby- auto shopping! We became a familiar sight at the local new car lots each weekend as we shopped –looking mostly at large Lincolns and Grand Marquis types despite my hints about BMWs and Porsches- for the next year! Rudy finally selected a special order 2005 Grand Marquis- and we waited several months for it to come in with increasing excitement. When they called to tell him it was in, he astonished the dealership by making them wait two weeks for him to pick it up; the streets were too messy with early spring mud and snow to suit Rudy. When the big day arrived, I wasn’t surprised to see him dressed to the nines, from his shined shoes to his stylish tie! I drove him down to MERLIN Motors, where he posed for a picture beside his dream car- with a smile as bright as the flash of the camera!

In the years that followed, Rudy joined me as I shopped for my most recent vehicles- tho’ he had to scrutinize my last prospective purchase from the front seat of my car as we parked in beside it; his body had begun to fail him, and he was frail and afraid of falling.

Rudy’s health declined fairly rapidly from that point, and he increasingly suffered from dementia brought on by normal pressure hydrocephalus- a build up a spinal fluid in the skull. This slowly eroded parts of his brain- costing him his vision and moving him further and further from the here and now and into a world of his memories and imagination. Through it all, the essence of Rudy remained- he was unfailingly cheerful, polite and eager to chat. The wonderful people at Sherbrooke Center all have their own ‘Rudy’ stories, and the love they had for him shines through as they share these memories, often holding back their own tears. Rudy truly was much loved- and he earned that love and respect every day with his gentle nature and manners.

In the last months in particular, I’ve thought about all the ways Rudy enriched my life- we shared a bit of farming, a lot of golf- and a love for cars and conversation- but this is the most important gift Rudy ever gave me; he showed me how to be a better person- and if I am a better man than I once was, and I HOPE I am- it’s at least in part because this wonderful uncle filled so much of my life. It’s very hard to let somebody that special go- but his body became his enemy and nobody could wish the life he had left on the worst of us- and Rudy was the best of us.

And so, we say goodbye now to a brother, an uncle, and my best friend, Rudolph Edwin Luukkonen. I know we can go on without him; I know he’d want us to. And as the days turn to weeks and months, and then to years, our sorrow will soften while the warmth of his memory endures. As Shakespeare once wrote of a dead king, ‘he was a man, take him for all and all; I shall not look upon his like again.