Ben Ady

Ben’s life will be celebrated by family and friends and his memory will live on always.

You may view Ben’s obituary at the link listed below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k15wRG7XxpiwTQ0XIm9zBAPhM1CcG2HGI3H34RU4WM0/edit?usp=sharing

You may view Uncle Jack’s obituary written for Ben is at the link listed below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15i0-hC7_NnKvMeVzbW1gtXyozYAAuFZlZS8rxY4RWVc/edit?usp=sharing

You may view Ben’s memorial slideshow at the link listed below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PGKmVyRmVQ

You may view the virtual cemetery the family created for their dad and mum at the link listed below:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=vcsr&GSvcid=740921

Arrangements are under the direction of Lakeshore Mortuary, Mesa, Arizona.

Lakeshore Mortuary

1815 S. Dobson Rd.

Mesa, Arizona 85202

If you have any questions or need assistance, please call (480) 838-5639.

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Writing in praise of my dad, Ben Ady, following his death at the age of 67, September, 2016

by Benjamin Ady

Here’s what my dad was to me: suffering and joy, anger and playfulness, darkness and light. He was, as Leonard Cohen puts it, a broken hallellujah.

My dad suffered more physical pain during my own lifetime than anyone else I’ve known, from the heart attack when I was 6 years old through multiple heart surgeries, decades of uncontrolled diabetes with all that entails, two shoulder replacements following years of being unable to raise his hands above his head, many years of completely disabling migraine headaches that lasted for days at a time. He also suffered mental and emotional anguish including PTSD from his participation in war violence in Southeast Asia, multiple hospitalisations in psych wards, many years use of prescription antidepressants, and these last 8 years of intense grief over the loss of my mum, whom he had always expected to outlive him. He told me many times over the last decades that he had never intended to live past the age of 40, and that he was frankly disappointed at his own longevity and the additional suffering that came with it.

Despite all that shit, my dad was playful, giving, present, loving, kind, and supportive towards me, and proud to bits of my success. Along with my mum, he created endless delicious memories for me in a childhood filled with birthday parties, holidays, long road trips right across the U.S.A and Europe, visiting the rocky mountains, disneyworld, cathedrals in France, legoland in Austria, tulip fields in Holland, salt mines, Carlsbad caverns, hunting and fishing trips to Eastern Washington, on and on the list goes. He laughed, he hugged, he gave gifts and loved and worked endless hours to fund the whole thing.

Especially when I was younger, my dad used to sometimes get *so* angry, usually at other people, and occasionally at me. But he never once struck me in anger, which I find frankly astonishing, and which I suspect many people can’t say about their dads. I remember the time he got the most angry he’d ever been at me--when I’d struck and hurt my own little sister, when I was about 11 and she about 7 years old. He turned red with rage, and left the room. He came back about 15 or 20 minutes later, and calmly explained to me that as a boy who was approaching puberty, I was becoming much stronger than I realised, and I must now become much more careful not to hit or hurt other people, as I could injure them badly as I grew stronger.

My dad delighted in and encouraged me in helping him build and maintain automobiles throughout my childhood--so much so that as an adult, I was able to work as a professional auto mechanic for a number of years having never had any formal training. Even as a small child, he’d patiently show me how to remove, take apart, fix, put back together, and then he’d let me do it, although doubtless it made everything take much longer. When I was in my teens, my dad and I built a high performance V-8 engine from scratch and installed it in a beat up looking old GMC full size pickup along with a souped up automatic transmission, all of which became mine. Looking back it seems a bit foolish to have given a 17 year old kid such a crazy powerful vehicle, but I must say driving that truck was hella fun.

My dad was a committed Christian and churchgoer, as were my mum, my sister, and me, from the time I was 9 years old right up until he died. As children we attended church services twice on Sundays and home prayer meetings every single week, all in an independent, fundamentalist, Baptist church, where we read, studied, and memorized only the King James Version of the Bible. As an adult, when I realised and told my dad that this church has been spiritually abusive towards me, and explained to him what I meant, rather than siding with the church, which had been his own main community for many many years, he never even hesitated. Instead, he sided with me, and he left that church community and joined a different one--a move which was surely emotionally wrenching for him. Looking back at that, I have to say I am frankly astonished at the intensity of the love and support he expressed to me in that decision--that his love for and connection to me was more important to him than his love for and connection to the major source of community in his life for many years.

I had wanted talk about my dad’s love for my mum, just a little. But it became too complicated for me to write. So let me just say this: given what I know of both their backgrounds, it is frankly astonishing to me that my mum and dad were able to stay together for all those years, and create a loving, gracious home full of such laughter and delight for my sister and me. It’s a delicious miracle, really, and testament to both my mum and dad’s tenacity and deep capacity for love and relationship right through the middle of a lot of personal and family insanity. I’m grateful for this miracle.

Finally, I think I have to say my dad was the most generous person ever knew. Throughout my childhood and my adult life, if he ever saw people in need, he would give of both his time and his money to help them. He always did this with delight. He used to always say to me “You can’t take it with you”. So he made sure not to leave anything on the table. Instead, he left a legacy of a lifetime of people who experienced his in-the-moment generosity and kindness. I’m profoundly grateful, and I think very lucky, to have had him as my dad.

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Eulogy for Ben Ady,

written by Jack Young, as prepared for presentation at Ben’s memorial service, September 2016.

Hello, I am Jack Young, Ben Ady’s brother-in-law. Ben and I met in Altus, Oklahoma, both of us in the Air Force, shortly after I met his wife’s little sister Carol. First thing he did was warn me that “If you hurt that little girl you’re going to have to deal with me!” Guess I didn’t hurt Carol after all, because she married me, and that is how I became a member of Ben’s extended family.

His first career was the Air Force and its airplanes. He was a crew chief, the primary caretaker of one airplane at a time. He did some repairs, a lot of inspections, and managed the efforts of others who worked on his airplane. He would then, as Air Force crew chiefs always do but don’t say, “graciously allow the aircrew to operate his airplane”. In his own eyes, that experience, the responsibility and trust placed on him, was a formative one and the statuette of the crew chief has been with him continuously since the day he received it.

After we had all settled down in Washington, Carol and I went on various short trips with them, like Hulda’s Lilac Farm down south of here, the tulip festival up north, a long weekend in Conconully – oh, that was a weekend we shared with the Tripod Fire, off in the near distance. Firefighters filled the campsites and the front of the park there, so we spent our time on and around the lake. Lots of restful time there – can you imagine Ben actually relaxing? He did up there, and we talked of forestry and fishing, a few other things we knew little of, and then about family, love and life in general. Ben showed a depth of thought and understanding that sort of surprised me. He had always been thoughtful, but not usually so deeply and widely. Golden days, reflective and thoughtful times, with smoke from the fire thinly veiling the distance, as if showing how uncertain the future could be.

About a year after Sue passed on, Ben invited me on a trip to California in that truck and trailer he and Sue had used on their trip. We were going to Fontana for the big NASCAR races at the end of the summer. It was a lot of fun for me because I got to drive that big Dodge dually with the Cummins diesel and five speed stick, hauling the fifth wheel trailer behind. I think Ben was rather concerned from time to time as we swooshed through northern Oregon across the mountains and down toward Death Valley – in end-of-summer heat. There was no worry about the truck – the concern was the trailer tires. They had run a little hotter than Ben liked before we got to the hot part, and he was a little worried. We asked a trucker at a gas station what he would recommend and he said we should avoid the valley. So we backtracked, recrossed the mountains, and headed down good old I-5, toward the famous Grapevine. Late on the third day, in the tail end of rush hour, I just had to stop and use the bathroom in the trailer. When I was back in the truck, I got my first look at the Grapevine – right in front of us. We had to start on a grade that got progressively steeper – in heavy truck traffic, all of them running a little over the limit to make the grade. Most of those truck drivers are nice guys. But there are limits… Ben just laughed and said something about ‘can’t take a joke’. We got to the camping area, and I was driving again. I started to jump out when we got to the parking spot, and Ben said, “What are you doing?”

“Letting you drive. I have never backed up such a large rig; I can’t see what I’m doing.”

“Well now’s a good time to start” he said, and I gave it a shot. The people around us, sitting out on lawn chairs with cool drinks in hand, were of course watching. Pretty soon they were laughing. Oh well, it was still fun. And Ben did finish the job…

The Ben Ady I knew was a solid man whose light and delight was his wife Susan, who did his best with their children, who helped all comers even to the point of rescuing his father-in-law and bringing him to the Ady house near Sultan. He was at peace with his decision and his maker at the end.