Choose.a.page

..and.click:..........

Home Page

How to Find Us

What We Believe

What We Do

Our Minister

Sermons

August Calendar

August Newsletter

Board News

MEMORIAL SERVICE:

Charles “Pete” Forcey.[1]

OPENING WORDS: Winston Churchill said, “I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”

I thought of Pete when I read that. For if there is anything we can say about Professor Charles Budd Forcey, it’s this: Pete was prepared when his life ended. Although his end was hastened by a bee sting, that did not change the calm and dignity with which he spent not only his final days, but his final hours and minutes.

            I like what Gilda Radner said about life’s ending. As you remember, she was taken by breast cancer when only in her 30s. After learning that, she wrote:

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.”

And so we invite you to join in this celebration of the life of one we knew and loved: Pete Forcey.

OBITUARY

Charles Budd Forcey, Professor Emeritus of American History at Binghamton University (SUNY), died on February 8, 2008 at age 83.  His death was precipitated by severe anaphylactic reaction to two bee stings while eating in a restaurant while on holiday in Mexico.

Professor Forcey was born in Sewickley, PA in 1925 and received his preparatory education at the Lawrenceville School and undergraduate from Princeton University. He completed his Masters in American History at Columbia University under the mentorship of Richard Hofstadter, and his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin under the mentorship of Howard Beale. 

His professional career included teaching at the University of Wisconsin Extension at Wausau; Miami University, Oxford, Ohio; Columbia University, Rutgers University and Binghamton University, where he taught from 1967 until his retirement in 1991. 

“Pete” as he was known to friends and colleagues, was active in professional and political organizations. He wrote the influential and widely reviewed and praised Crossroads of Liberalism, which focused on the “Progressive Era” in American history from 1900-1925. He also authored an American history text book for public schools entitled, A Strong and Free Nation, and edited many publications. He was in the US Naval Reserve from 1943 – 1945, serving as a lieutenant in the Pacific.

He is survived by his beloved wife of almost 41 years, Linda Rennie Forcey, also Professor Emerita from Binghamton University, and their son, Charles Budd Forcey III.  He also is survived by his children Blythe Forcey Toussaint and Peter Cottier Forcey with his previous wife, Pamela Cottier Forcey, and his stepchildren Sally Nash Dougherty, Peter Adam Nash Dougherty, Peter Adam Nash and Margaret Nash Myrick.  He greatly enjoyed his ten beloved grandchildren:  Brenden, Elizabeth, Connor and Claire Dougherty, Ezra and Isaiah Nach, William Myrick and Kal, Liv and Alla Forcey-Rodriguez.  He also is survived by siblings Barbara Frank, Evelyn Gosko and Harry Leonard Forcey.  He was predeceased by his parents, Dr. Charles Budd Forcey and Evelyn Morsing Forcey and half brother William Forcey.

While teaching at Binghamton, “Pete” and Linda, with he help of their blended family restored an 18ll farmhouse and passionately tended its maple trees, gardens and field beside the Susquehanna River. Pete was a Fulbright lecturer at Xavier University in the Philippines, and spent a sabbatical year with his wife Linda and all six children near Nimes, France. Subsequent journeys took Linda and Pete for extended stays in India and Senegal, and later to ports around the world through the semester at Sea Program. They moved to Florida in 1999 where they enjoyed several years of avid sailing in Punta Gorda. They moved to the Shell Point Community in 2004.

HOMILY.

Four score and three years ago – has a sort of American history sound to it, doesn’t it? – Pete Forcey came into this world. And from the perspective of 2008, what a life he lived! He had one of the finest educations America offers, and he taught at some of its greatest universities. He had two wives, six children – his, hers, and ours. He wrote books, his very first of which received substantive reviews in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and scores of others. He lived, and loved, taught thousands of students, did so many things right, made his share of mistakes, and then as the bible speaks of Abraham, Pete died: “full of years” – 83 years plus.

            When given the opportunity that I have today, to be part of remembering someone so influential in America’s past, I always take time to read Rabbi Harold Kushner’s statement about the impact that we make in life. He writes:

“In the physical world, every time I wave my arm, I set the air in motion and the reverberations never stop. In the realm of the spirit, every time I dry a tear, hold someone’s hand, cause a face to light up with understanding, I have set something in motion which will never stop. It will have consequences that I will have caused, but will never know about. And the words I have written and spoken, the hearts I have touched, the hands I have reached out to…will live on.”

At my request, Linda was kind enough to share with me some of Pete’s work. I especially enjoyed thumbing through his books and imagining Pete the young radical, the liberal, the scholar penning each word and carefully rewriting paragraph by paragraph until he had a 350 page masterpiece.

Linda shared with me an experience they had last year. They returned for the first time to Columbia University, for an alumni event. In the process of standing and conversing with others, someone informed the provost who was master of ceremonies, that Dr. Charles Forcey was present. He made his way to them, and proceeded to tell Pete that his book, The Crossroads of Liberalism, had been the most influential book on his life of any. And when the banquet started, he made a point of departing from the program to introduce Pete to the audience and repeating once again the gift he and his book had been to him.

I got to know Pete and Linda when they came for the first time to services at All Faiths, though they lived in Punta Gorda. I visited them in their home there, and then when they moved to Shell Point.

Here’s something that I’m sure Pete would want me to pass on to you about his response to my sermon. Without exception, he always said, every Sunday! the sermon of that day was the greatest he had ever heard! Please remember that. I will miss Pete’s continuing affirmation, his humor, his wit and sophistication.

When I visited Pete for the first time at Health Park following his accident in Mexico, his daughters Blythe and ----- were there as well. Though Pete was drugged heavily, and his speech somewhat slurred, with needles and mechanical devices of all types seemingly in every orifice, there was nothing that could dim his sense of humor. He laughed and we laughed. And neither could it anyway dim the visible love he had for the two beautiful and articulate women present who were his children.

And when I returned another time, his son Charles arrived from the airport after me. They hugged, and even though he had a tube in his mouth, the love they shared was so evident.

When push comes to shove, and life’s days are counting down, what could be more important than having the children of love, the children raised from year to year, with the ups and downs, the ins and outs, and then to be doubly blessed with your children’s children.

I think it says something about Pete that so many of those he loved are here today. But I think it’s especially important that Pete’s first wife Pam is here as well. When she chose another path in her life, she did it with dignity. So much so, that when she learned that one of Pete’s former star pupils had divorced, she sent her a note. In it she wrote that she and Pete were also divorced and she was sure Pete would appreciate her contacting him…which Linda did…a contact which lasted as we heard 41 years.

And what a love they had. As we get older, it seems that tears are closer to the surface, but for Pete, when he spoke of Linda, nearly always, tears of love would fill his eyes. That’s not to say their marriage was perfection…there were serious struggles…but one thing never changed and was never lost…an enduring love that was precious to the end.

Though I want disclose it verbatim, a few hours before he died, Linda was talking to him, and he was coming in and out of consciousness. She asked him lovingly, “Is there anything you need or want.” With characteristic humor and ribaldry, he made a totally loving, but off-color remark.

As his time ebbed away and he passed into unconsciousness, he lay on his bed in Hospice at Shell Point. Linda said she looked at him through the eyes of love and could only see one thing: He was so beautiful.

Life can be beautiful and Pete’s was no exception. It was indeed a “beautiful life.”

CONCLUSION.

More than 1,800 years ago, on the battlefields of the Roman Empire, the emperor Marcus Aurelius retired to his tent exhausted after a devastating day. The barbarians from the North were advancing, and back home in the imperial city of Rome, a strange new religion known as Christianity was shaking the empire to its foundations.

As was his custom each night after battle, the emperor went to his desk to write a meditation on life and living. They’re collected in the little book we know as, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

But the Emperor Aurelius was sick, the battle was going badly, Rome was in turmoil, and he realized that he physically couldn’t keep writing each night. So with death staring him in the face, potential defeat facing him from the North, and chaos growing in the South, he penned his last meditation, Book 12, number 36 (which I’ve adapted for our memorial service in honor of Pete):

Hark, friend. You have been a citizen of this great planet for lo these many years.

       What matter how long you lived on it. If you have obeyed its laws and lived within its boundaries, then the length or shortness makes no difference.

Where is the hardship if nature that planted us here, orders our removal? We cannot say we have been sent away by a tyrant or an unjust judge.

No, we left the stage of life as fairly as an actor does who has fulfilled his role.

But we might say, but I have only gone through four acts and was not held over for the fifth. That may be true, but in life sometimes four acts are the entire play.

Now the One who ordered the opening of the curtains for our first scene back in Sewickley, Pennsylvania in 1925, has given the sign for closing the entire play last February 08. We are neither accountable for the opening nor the closing.

 Therefore, retire well satisfied, for the One by whom you are dismissed is satisfied, too.

BENEDICTION.

Let us stand for the benediction, which comes from the words of poet Carl Sandburg:

“Loosen your hands

 Let go and say good-bye.

 Let the stars and songs go.

 Let the faces and years go.

 Loosen your hands and say goodbye.”

Goodbye, Pete. Shalom. Salaam Aleikum. Amen. And blessed be.