Lloyd Thompson 5/4/1929 - 8/27/2011

Remembering My Dad

(transcripted from my audio recording of Dad's funeral service)

DON HARAGAN'S EULOGY

"That was beautiful, Kelley. Your dad would have been very proud."

"Um, I would have popped up these little stairs just like Kelley did when he came up here but I noticed when I walked in that there was no rail on these and I was afraid if I tried that, that we would witness one of those embarrassing moments that John was talking about a little while earlier so I went to the end and came with the rail."

FRIENDSHIP

"Lloyd Thompson was my good friend for, for more than 40 years, and I'm truly, truly honored that Lisa and the family would ask me to share some personal observations of Lloyd and perhaps some light-hearted memories of that friendship. You know, a lot of memories, um, are memories of, big memories for the people who are sharing it but when they talk about funny stories, a lot of the stories you might tell may be very funny to you and to, perhaps, uh Lloyd, but maybe for some of you out there they may not be so funny. We might give it a try."

"You know I think in a very real sense our friends reflect the choices that we make in life, our values, our ethical standards. And in that sense, being Lloyd's friend makes me feel very, very special. Responsibilities to God, to country, to family and to community were always accepted by Lloyd as 'given's. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and he loved a good practical joke. I always appreciated the fact that he laughed at my jokes even when they weren't very funny, but he also sympathized with my problems, many times when they really weren't so bad."

IF YOU KNEW SUSIE

"Lloyd had a beautiful voice, you've been hearing it this afternoon, and he loved to sing. Our first connection, it probably won't surprise you, was through music. Lloyd was one of the first people I met, I say that, "when I came to Lubbock", actually I've known Lloyd, uh, a little before Willie and I moved to Lubbock. He was a barbershopper here in Lubbock, and I was a barbershopper in Austin and we knew each other through contests that we would go to but I never got to know him really well until we moved to Lubbock and I started singing with the Singing Plainsmen barbershop chorus and Lloyd had been singing there for a while. And then we started singing together in a quartet, this was back in the early '70s, and we'd rehearse at various houses of those in the quartet, and very often we'd rehearse at my house and we did a song back in those days, 'If you knew Susie like I know Susie, oh, oh, oh what a gal'. And I had a daughter, at that time my younger daughter who was just a toddler, she wasn't even talking yet, but the only time she saw Lloyd was when she heard that song 'If you knew Susie'. And so she started calling Lloyd, "Susie". And at the time she would see him it was 'Susie', and truthfully it wasn't until later in life that she learned his name was actually 'Lloyd'."

"PUNKIN" CAKE

"Some of the other things that we always did at those rehearsals, other than sing, was to eat. We always had refreshments and, and my wife Willie, one of the things that she would bake was a pumpkin cake. And, very early, we discovered that Lloyd's favorite cake was pumpkin cake, so she very often would cook that for him, and when Lloyd would decide that he was ready for another pumpkin cake he'd sneak over to our house and he'd put a can of pumpkin on our porch. And Willie would walk out to get the mail or something, and there would be this can of pumpkin, and the message was, 'where's my pumpkin cake?' It wasn't 'pumpkin' to Lloyd, it was 'punkin' cake. Willie actually visited Lloyd the day before he died, and he was lying in bed and he hadn't had a whole lot to say that day; his eyes were closed. But we were in there talking to him and I think he, he listened and he heard everything that was going on, and Willie walked in and said 'Lloyd, it's Willie'. And his eyes popped open and he said 'Where's my pumpkin cake?' True story. 'Where's my punkin cake…' Lisa tells me that the last bit of food that he had on his lips before he died was a piece of Willie's pumpkin cake."

FISHING STORIES

"Another thing, as you've already heard, that Lloyd enjoyed was fishing. In fact, I think he'll be buried with his rod and reel, in his casket. We used to fish a lot, Lloyd and I and Lowel Caddel. We didn't fish nearly as often as we, we should have, but every time we did, we had a, we had a real good time, and on one of these trips, you know I wasn't really, I would never admit this to Lloyd, but I really wasn't the fisherman that he was, wasn't really the fisherman that Lowel was but I like to get out on the water, get out in the boat and put my line in the water, and I said, one time, I said, "You know what I think I'm going to do, I'm gonna put my line in the water and I'm gonna get me a cool drink, and I'm gonna lie back and relax, and hope that a fish doesn't disturb me". Lloyd really thought that was, that was great, and we were talking about that around his bedside, again, the day before he died, and we were talking generally about fishing and Lowel started reminding us about that story that day when I decided that I'd just put my line in the water and hope I wasn't bothered by a fish, and once again Lloyd's eyes popped open and he said 'Don Haragan said that!'"

"One of our favorite fishing stories that we've told lots of times, I don't think I've told it to most of this group, was when we were fishing, I think it was our trip to Arkansas, and my brother was fishing with us on that trip, so I remember there was four of us, there was Lloyd, there was Lowel and and me and my brother Pat, and we were having our usual contest, Kelley said a little bit about that; the contest was who caught the first fish, uh, who caught the biggest fish and who caught the most fish, but it had to be a bass! You couldn't just count any fish, it had to be – a bass. So, we were fishing and Lloyd was fishing out of the front of the boat, and my brother Pat was fishing in the back of the boat, and Pat was the first one to hook a fish! And he reeled in that fish, and held it up and he said, 'First fish!' And Lloyd turned around and he said 'That's no bass; that's a drum!' 'No' he said, 'that's a bass!', he said. 'That's a drum, it doesn't count'. And so Lloyd turned around and started fishing again, and what my brother Pat did, instead of taking the fish off the hook, he acted like he was taking it off the hook, and he just threw the same fish back in the water, but it was still on the hook. And a little bit later, he said 'I got another one! I got another one!' Reeled it in, held it up, and Lloyd turned around and he said, 'Now that's a bass!'"
"We've sure had a lot of fun out of that story, and the one who always laughed the loudest, as you might suspect, was Lloyd."

FINAL OBSERVATIONS

"With Lloyd what you saw was always what you got. He was always the same person; he never tried to change to fit the occasion. And his friendship with Lowel and with me and with many of you and so many others was absolutely unqualified; call on him, and he'd be there."

"You know, I think some people make the world special just by being in it, and Lloyd Thompson, in my mind, was certainly one of those people."