Eulogy for my dad
I delivered the eulogy at my dad’s funeral today. I have included the text below.
It feels fitting to us that dad would arrive today to that incredible song (You’ll Never Walk Alone) - the song he heard more and sung more in his life than any other.
It is the song he introduced to me on my first trip to Anfield on 7th March 1984.
He spoilt me from the start - starting with a European Cup quarter-final against Benfica. A game we won - and a midweek game at which I fell asleep, aged five years and ten months!
On behalf of my mum, Sheila; my sister, Lucy and her husband Andrew and daughter Annabelle; and my wonderful wife, Aileen, and darling daughter, Aoife, thank you for being with us today.
I am going to take a few minutes to talk about my dad and his life - and to share one or two things about him that we as a family feel are important.
The rest of the service is all dad: his wishes, his songs, his simple, quiet way.
Victor Joseph Richard Jones was born in Garston on new year's eve 1937.
He was the fourth child of four - with three sisters: Jean, Dorothy and Lily.
Dad was named after his dad, and his dad’s best friends - there is a photo to commentate his name which was often recalled.
He was the youngest child by 10 years - something that Lily - at that time the youngest - never quite got over. He was doted on by his sisters and his mum, Doris.
He passed the 11+ and gained a scholarship to the Liverpool Institute. His nephew, Norman, who he cared about deeply, despite his Everton tendencies, also went to that prestigious school. A school made famous by one or two other great scousers, who could knock out the odd tune!
Dad was massively into sports - recreating his own Olympic Games with his friends on Russell Road: using every available space, alleyway and piece of pavement to set up the events.
He loved cricket, swimming and outdoor pursuits. He never lost his love for the outdoors and for nature; loving being outside; in his garden; fly fishing on a river or lake; and, in later years, sitting watching the world go by with mum at Crosby Beach.
He joined the police cadets from school and spent several years in the force. It was there that he met Marjorie - also a police officer - and they married. In one of life’s coincidences, they lived, like my mum and dad many years later, in Formby - at that time, in Burlington Avenue.
Marjorie died - young, suddenly and tragically - in Spain - in Rosas, a town Dad loved. At the time, Dad said it was the saddest thing that he had experienced. He was then a widow in his forties.
After the police, he had moved to work at Littlewoods, where he started as a clerk and then became a buyer. By the end of his time there he was head buyer of men’s knitwear.
In his work, he travelled all the over the world, spending time in Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand. After Littlewoods he was involved with, and then opened his own businesses - at one point employing over 100 people. This business he grew from scratch - from our front room. He worked hard to build his businesses but never so hard that he wasn’t home for dinner and to be around for family time - and be with his darling wife, my mum.
They met in 1983 and were married - after he proposed on his birthday in Scotland - a special place to him - the following February.
Theirs was a deep and meaningful partnership. They loved each other completely - and got through many tough times together - with lots of business and health pressures thrown at them. But they always remained on each other’s side; supporting each other; loving each other; having each other’s back.
He was a romantic man. Dad picked mum roses from his garden - roses he grew for her - until his last days. He always sent her two cards on her birthday, at Christmas and on their anniversary - one was romantic, one would be funny.
He was still doing this - buying two cards - until the week before he died.
The things that mum and dad shared more than anything was time.
They were always together.
They ate dinner together every night.
They sat together in their conservatory or garden.
They watched TV together.
They went out for coffee, lunch and dinner together.
They were always together.
They were always together because they loved each other so much and didn’t like being apart.
One of dad’s more frequent lines or stories was that he only married my mum to get me!
I was not born with him as my dad but he was every bit a dad to me and more.
He took me everywhere and supported me in everything I did as a child. Watching me play football - and often losing badly at football - sometimes getting into - let’s call it a “robust exchanges of views” - with the other team’s managers or parents as we - nice, naive boys from Eccleston - got hammered every week against street wise boys from Huyton and Haresfinch.
Dad introduced me to golf - something that means the world to me and is such a big part of my life now - and a love of classical music, opera and reading - one of his great passions. I loved our weekly trips to the library as a little boy and our Thursday movie nights when mum went out with the girls. Through these nights he introduced me to other great institutions: James Bond and Indiana Jones.
But it was his love for his city - our city - and his football club - that bonded us the most. Dad took me to my first game - and I took him to his last.
His last game at Anfield was on 5th April 2017 - his first was in 1953 - 71 years ago. On his last night at Anfield, we had a meal and got to meet the great Phil Neal. Dad told Phil all about his crucial penalty in Rome in 1977 and his own night singing and drinking in the Trevi Fountain after our first European Cup win.
Dad’s story of St Etienne - that year’s quarter final - in which he ran from the Kop to the Anny Road to swap a scarf with a french fan after the game is the stuff of legend. Like so much of his memorbalia - including programmes from many European Cup Finals he attended - I have that special scarf. It’s a scarf I take with me to only one game a season if I am lucky - a European semi-final. Thankfully, I’ve been very lucky enough to take it to several games - and seen several wins.
But there was one piece of memorabilia that dwarfs all else.
Dad - who let’s not forget was the head of men’s knitwear buying for Littlewoods - owned and regularly wore a bright red, plunging v-neck golf sweater with a massive badge on the chest. The badge read: “Liverpool FC: supporters all over the world” and he wore it only for big games. When I was leaving for Istanbul for the 2005 European Cup Final - our first big ears final for 21 years - he handed it to me to continue the family tradition of it being present for these European Cup finals. He gave me a piece of advice too.
He said, when you get into the ground, take a few seconds to look around and read the names on all the flags - see all the places from across Liverpool that people have traveled from and remember what they have given up, saved up and sacrificed to be there.
When I arrived in the Ataturk Stadium I did just that, walking pitchside and doing a full 360 degree view of the stadium. It took my breath away and I called him.
I said: “You were right, dad”.
I don’t remember what he said through his tears and mine. But I remember that moment as if it was yesterday.
That was one of the few times I saw, or heard, dad cry. The first was as we came to terms with Hillsborough.
We were season-ticket holders at the time and handed our match tickets for the Upper Leppings Lane to a friend of my dad’s as he and mum had planned a long-standing weekend away together.
The friend never recovered and neither really did dad. We continued to go to matches together - the last few of that season were beyond difficult with empty seats and missing people all around us. The occasional orange or packet of sweets left on seats or on the ground for lost or distraught fans.
Dad felt Hillsborough so deeply that it still brought him to tears at its mention 35 years later.
Whenever we sang You’ll Never Walk Alone again after that day, we both knew who we were singing for.
In 1988 - on the 7th April - my sister, Lucy was born. As much as dad loved me - and he did love me - his little girl - his “magic” as he called her - made his life complete.
Dad loved the Peanuts comic strip with Snoopy and joked that if Lucy (named after Lucy’s character in Peanuts) had been a boy she would have been called Charlie Brown.
Lucy was then - and continued to be until his last days - the apple of his eye.
He was so proud of her and so invested in her and her life.
He called himself “dad’s taxi”; loved doing anything he could for Lucy, including the hours and hours he painstakingly took building and decorating a beautiful doll’s house for her when she was little; helping her move into university, her flat in Liverpool and home in Formby; he talked about her again and again and her achievements and qualities. He adored her.
When Lucy was born it was Grand National weekend. Dad, not wanting to be away from his precious new daughter, but also wanting to watch the National, smuggled a portable TV into the hospital in a huge sports holder. As we left - we got some curious looks - perhaps fearing we were hiding more than a TV in the bag.
When Lucy was nine we nearly lost my dad to a brain haemorrhage - three majors surgeries in three days in Walton Hospital and then a blue-light, middle of the night admission during his recovery for emergency gall bladder treatment. The scene of Lucy throwing herself on to his bed in hospital seemed to give him strength to go on - which he did - as did their lovely relationship.
When dad spoke at Lucy and Andrew’s wedding he was so proud and so full of love and emotion.
She really did mean the whole world to him.
As did Annabelle and Aoife - and Andrew and Aileen - all the As!
Dad was besotted by his two granddaughters - and could be found often just looking at them and smiling when no-one was watching.
Now he wasn't perfect - none of us are.
Despite having the best posture in golf, he had a lousy short game.
As Aileen’s uncle Rob shrewdly observed recently, he wasn’t someone who “talked out of both sides of his mouth”, which meant he was honest and straight but also sometimes shared his strong views on the world - sometimes inspired by his newspaper of choice, The Daily Mail, a little too freely for my tastes.
He had a habit of getting football players names wrong - adding extraneous s’s on the end - Nicky Butt, Phil Babb and Michael Owen became Butts, Babbs, and Owens.
He didn't know where the iron was - but always needed his handkerchiefs ironed by mum!
He was hopeless at keeping a secret - including telling everyone at Haydock races that mum was pregnant when he had agreed just five minutes before not to mention it yet.
He told mum about Andrew’s marriage proposal despite saying he wouldn’t - and you could never give him the eye or kick him under the table - he would say “what are you kicking me for?” and give the game away.
Famously he got himself and mum lost on the way from our wedding ceremony to the reception - thinking he knew best, he left before the wedding cars and inadvertantly did a tour of the north of Ireland with a distraught mum - arriving three hours late!
And like so many dads of his generation, he loved a dad joke or comment. His favourite being to make a mock “thank you” speech whenever we were out on New Year’s Eve - thanking everyone for coming out to celebrate his birthday.
But, dad was many other things.
He was so supportive as a dad and father-in-law.
He was a quiet man, who abhorred a fuss.
He loved reading and book shops.
He loved the music of Les Miserables - no-one has surely played a cassette more in a car than he played that soundtrack.
He loved puzzles - especially sudoko - and quizzes, especially Trivial Pursuit, which he took very seriously.
He loved doing DIY and had better-stocked tool kits in his garage than you’d find in B&Q - and he loved building Lego for us as we grew up.
He loved gardening - growing all sorts of stuff including rhubarb, raspberry, tomatoes - at times having a vegetable patch and his beloved green house.
He loved making football pitches, cricket wickets and tennis courts for us in the garden.
He loved the outdoors - and he loved Scotland.
But most of all he loved his family - saying that he had everything he ever wanted - his family close to him.
The last few years have not been kind to my dad or my mum and yet together - just like everything they did - they dealt with his dementia. His mixed dementia diagnosis of vascular and Alzheimer’s meant that it wasn’t just his memory that was fading but it was his physical health and mobility.
Despite the cruelty of the disease and the toll it was taking on mum - something dad hated to see - he remained upbeat and positive - trying to make the most of time with his beloved Sheila. They still went out - although this needed more planning and handling - and there were only a few places that dad felt comfortable and safe in - but they still spent time together. Every day. All the time.
It was a quieter, sadder time - but it was still time together - with plenty of laughs and love.
Every day:
“Morning love”.
“Morning love”.
He forgot a lot of things, but he never forgot his Sheila. The love of his life.
And when he left us, it was fitting that they were together again. Just the two of them. At home. At peace.
To paraphrase Senator Edward Kennedy: my dad need not be idolised, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life.
To be remembered simply as a good and decent man.
Who loved his family.
His city.
His football club.
And his family loved him.
And we know that although he has gone as we say our goodbyes today, he leaves us with a legacy of love and a message for the future: a message that we will never forget and will always remember him by.
He said over and over again that this life is not a dress rehearsal and that we should make the most of every day on the planet.
Dad - we will remember and will go for it - no dress rehearsal; no wasted time; making every day count.
Dad - we know how much you loved us - and you know how much we loved you.
Dad - you’ll never walk alone.