Eulogy for Mark Buechley 1946-2016

Today, April 21st, is the two year anniversary of my dad, Mark Buechley's, passing.  He was a a great dad and an intentional mentor.  For those that are interested in understanding who he was and the legacy he left, these are my notes from the eulogy I was privileged to deliver at his celebration of life.  It was an adventurous life indeed!

With gratitude,

************

• My dad grew up roaming the hills of Oakland CA with his two brothers. They loved to play pick-up football in the park.  They were active, scrappy, tall and lean.
• They were taken care of, but largely left to their own without real emotional connection with their parents.
• His father was brilliant, but he was also distant with a hard demeanor. Considering that his father had been abandoned at the age of 10 to lead his family, we can see how that might show up later.
• My dad wanted a connection with his dad, so before he was 8 he learned contract bridge and they competed together in tournaments.
• He told us that by early age, he knew he was on is his own in this world
• Against his wishes, his parents moved to Santa Monica. He lived with his uncle his senior year to graduate from Skyline High in Oakland, CA’
• In his parents’ eyes not going to college or being an academic was equivalent of not being successful. Each brother took a different route.
• He was willing to go to college, but mostly he just wanted to GO.

SOCIAL UPHEAVAL

• The 60’s it was a crazy time to be launched into adult life, especially in the SF Bay Area. We heard stories about the Filmore Auditorium, the Avalon ballroom and the really loud concerts he’d attend.
• It was in this season of life my dad seemed to develop a personality trait that was cause-driven.
• He worked as a longshoreman at the Port of Oakland (until he could not stand the corruption of the Union)
• He threw himself into the hippie lifestyle, even to the point of telling the draft board exactly what they could do with his draft card. He wasn’t being dramatic, and he was willing to go to prison over his conviction.  Right or wrong.
• He served as a sergeant of arms at a black panther meeting with Hewey Newton.
• His commitment to individual conscience was being formed
• He was down for a good cause, and he was “All-In”.
• He met my mom in the Bay Area and soon they were married on the verdant hills of Moraga, CA.  The groom wore a flowing purple cloak and the bride…she wore a white eyelet dress.
• He took a trip North, finding his way to Alaska, spending some time on a commercial fishing boat and visiting friends there.
• However, is growing appetite for adventure would create its own set of complications.  Something he had to manage his entire life, I’d say.  He really wanted to experience ‘all this life had to offer’.
• My parents and my older brother spent some time living above the water on Cannery Row, in Monterey CA. When I say above the water, I mean literally…if they were to drop their breakfast it would land in the Pacific.  They later moved in with friends in Berkeley.
• Right about then he made a decision of great import. He announced he was hitchhiking to Alaska by himself.  My mom had a different understanding of what marriage was supposed to be.  So, they headed different directions.
• Sometime during this season, my dad’s journey brought him to beautiful Southern OR to visit his older brother, Eric, was who was living with his girlfriend in a remote mountain cabin.

COMMUNE

- It was there he met some loggers who spent their spare time seeking out hippies in the wood for the purpose of introducing them to the good news of Jesus Christ.  Logger Evangelists !?!?

• Something in that message resonated with my dad and he began to spend more time with these people at their property in Azalea.
• One night during a time of corporate prayer He had a powerful vision where he saw himself coming home to God’s family. The Lord also told him in a prophetic word that my mom would be coming back to him and that he’d have confirmation of this the next day.
• So immediately he decided he’d log into Facebook to see what she’d been posting about…Remember the setting. Late 60’s, southern OR, still staying at a remote cabin in the woods.
• But the next morning someone came rolling into camp with a message for him, delivered through the local grapevine and the one phone in that area. My mom was on her way back to him.
• This is another trait of my dad’s life. He was never far from the miraculous.  I think He really enjoyed pushing into things to the point that only God could deliver the victory.
• This experience and the return of my mom led him to bring her to what eventually became a Christian commune. A place where everybody shared their possessions for the good of all.
• It was he place where they raised their family over the course of 20 years.  
• The commune valued hard work. He worked in the construction business and eventually started a tree trimming business, first serving residential customers, but eventually focusing on serving power companies and clearing vast sections of power line right-of-way.
• It was at the commune that he began to get a sense for who he was as a man and also as an entrepreneur. 
• Eventually he outgrew that pond, or perhaps he sensed that we would outgrow the pond.  In either case we left for a new start.  With just a handful of possessions and a van, he started over at 40 years old.

BUSINESS PHASE

• He borrowed money from his brother Eric for a house down payment.
• By house, I mean a mobile home.  To be sure, it was an upgrade compared to where we lived at the commune.

-  Local banks wouldn’t lend to since he had no assets.  A customer and friend connected him to Chetco for a $40k loan to buy the very business he had built at the commune.

• He took a break from “Churchy” stuff for a few years. Something he was prone to do from time to time usually after someone disappointed him.  Because he lived all-in…sometimes his disappointments were hard to process.  These were the tides of his Faith journey.  But those, tides always brought him back to Jesus and the simplicity of the gospel.
• He decided to venture into construction rather than trees. Mostly out of deference to his sons, I believe.  Cutting trees is really tough.
• Shortly after that decision, he got a fortuitous call. Would he like to build a cellular site?  Sure!  What is it?  
• Over the next decade he built business from a pick-up truck up to the point where he had offices and crews all over the western states.
• The projects were intensely scheduled and could range from a SF rooftop to mountain tops in Oregon, CA and all of the Hawaiian Islands.
• He got to play with helicopters, and massive bulldozers, and cranes. He was in hog heaven and his entrepreneurial juices were raging.

 - During a tough financial pinch, he called me to share how the Lord had spoken to him again. “Knowing what to do with money will be more difficult than getting the money”.

-  In 1997 through another miraculous turn, the man from Glide was invited on a US Trade Mission, with Secretary of Commerce Bill Daley.  He traveled for several weeks with executives of billion-dollar companies, met with Presidents of countries. He loved to tell the story of motorcades and being treated like royalty throughout Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.  They were shocked in Brazil when they were pushed aside like mere commoners, only to later discover it was the Brazilian national soccer team boarding the plan.

- In 1998 he sold the business and entered into yet another chapter of life.

ADVENTUROUS GRANDPA

• For him business was an adventure.  So…it should come as no surprise that he did not retire, though he easily could have from a financial perspective.
• Buying land in far off places like Montana and Costa Rica was something he enjoyed because he could combine his love of new places and adventure with his love of taking on projects.
• He chartered fishing trips for family and friends. He bought horses and became my mom’s stable boy…as he like to put it.

- He named the streets of his development in Winston after some of his grandkids. Wil Way, Danielle Drive, and Ryan Road.

- He was an optimist.  He tended to believe the best about projects and about people. He would often remind us that he never met a con man he didn’t like.

• The problem for him was that his projects kept getting in the way of his adventures.
• Development land has its ups and also its downs. Over the last decade his development lands were down.  Rather than cry over spilt milk, in the last few years he fired up another tree business, tackling projects along I-5 and Hwy 42.  In his late 60’s he didn’t relish working again, but he simply wasn’t going to sit around and complain.  He was a man of action, and I will always admire that.
• Of course, in his last business venture he met a whole cast of characters that he was able to influence. Somewhere along the line he became an intentional dad.  Not just to me and my brothers, or our wives and kids…but to anyone he came into contact with.

Today, you’re going to hear from many people who will fill in many of the gaps in this story I just told.  I’m going to close these remarks by highlighting a single character trait that, for me, defines my dad the best. 

I will always remember that my dad was courageous.

He had the courage to stand up.

• to stand up for himself when he didn’t agree with the program.
• to stand up for others when they needed his protection
• to stand alone. He would not look the other way and pretend he didn’t notice an injustice.

Courageous in his faith.

Two scripture that were often on the lips of my dad.

Matt 10:32

- “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.

He took this verse literally.  He was unashamed, even if it made him look like a rube.

John 10:10.

• “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

This verse highlights the active part of my dad’s relationship with Jesus.  He knew Jesus was the source of all that is good and that despite all of the places he could seek for hope or fulfillment, the highest fulfillment came from walking inside the purposes God by walking with Christ.

Courageous in his relationships.

- He was an intentional mentor.

If he liked you, he’d encourage you.  If he really like you, he’d call you out on something, not to make you feel bad, but to call you to your best self.  He would not look the other way and pretend he didn’t notice.  He would take action to reach into people’s life. You’re going to hear a lot about that today.

• And finally, He had the courage to be real, to be authentic.

Each of us had a unique relationship with my dad. Yours doesn’t take from mine and mine doesn’t take from yours.  We both get memories to carry with us.  In some ways my dad and I also operated as colleagues.  He was launching from a commune about the time I was launching from high school.  Many business growth and life lessons were experienced together.  Consequently, he didn’t bother holding a lot back from me.  Nor did I feel I could only show him my best parts.  He was my best friend.

One of the things you may recall from my earlier remarks about his childhood was the absence of felt love from his father.  My dad and I had a chance to make one last trip to Costa Rica in January.  Over 10 days we reconnected with many of his business associates and projects across the country.  They would come when he requested, with tears in their eyes, knowing it would likely be the last time they would see Don Marcos.  On this trip I was an observer of the kind of impact he had wherever he went.  I was also tour guide and care giver.  It wasn’t an easy trip, but it was precious.  People who are suffering with a terminal disease can vacillate between completely dependent and a slightly hostile…and quickly.  Several times on the trip he’d sense I was getting offended and he’d say “you’re mad at me aren’t you”.  I’d start to deny it but he’d say…”Ah come here…I love you my Seth”.  He always wanted to make sure I knew my father loved me.

I helped him settle into bed one night on our trip.  We were chatting about life and he shared with me how he had struggled over the years with the idea of grace and with receiving the Father’s love.   We prayed together and shared our love for each other. It was beautiful.

I was with him in the oncologist office the day he and my mom decided they weren’t going to do any more chemotherapy.  He cried in a way I’d never seen him cry before.  He didn’t cry because of pain, or despair.  He cried as he shared with the doctor and us how amazed he was that his Heavenly Father was revealing His love to him in a personal way.

Later, you're going to hear a powerful video he recorded right after he was diagnosed with cancer.  I know the backstory leading up to the video being recorded, but I wasn’t sure of the intended audience.  Personally, I think he recorded it for us, for this day.

As we reflect on my dad’s life there are many storylines.  I hope you will see the see the story of a boy reaching out for the love of a father.  As his story unfolds we learn not only did he find that Fatherly love, he lived his life giving that Father’s love away to us, and to people we may never meet this side of eternity.