Dewey remembered: bumbling toward Bethlehem - Carlyn P. Dewey - Obituary

His full name was Carlyn P. Dewey, but everybody, including his wife Anna, called him Dewey. His firstborn, Mary Anne, gave a reading at his funeral that was taken from the book of Job, the part in which Yahweh asks his servant where he was when Yahweh laid the earth's foundations, decided its dimensions, dammed up the sea; whether lightning flashes will come at Job's command, whether it is Job that makes the horse so brave and causes the eagle to soar. Job answers, "I have spoken once, I shall not speak again; I have spoken twice, I shall not speak again."

What made the reading exactly right was that Job in fact did speak again, and again. So did Dewey; he was a humble man, but he gave the Lord a lot of lip. He did the same for the president, whoever it was, for the postmaster general (he was a letter carrier much of his life), for the successive mayors of Kansas City, Missouri--for anybody who could right wrongs or help the needy and didn't, including me (I was, for a while, his boss, in a sense, and, in a way, his landlord). Good and faithful and insistent servant that he was, I'm sure he had no trouble getting Yahweh's full attention; he also knew how to get through to earthly powers. Once he sent a postcard--to the White House, I think--that was made of plywood, measured four feet by eight feet, and cost something like forty dollars in postage. The story made the wire services and ran in papers across the country. Dewey often made news on purpose, sometimes by accident; a Kansas City Star photographer once caught him unawares giving away his overcoat to someone on the street. He bugged the Star at all times; I'm sure he was a pain; but on being told that Dewey was gravely ill, the Star's editor arrived at the hospital in ten minutes.

Dewey's youngest daughter, Bernadine, gave a eulogy that seemed artless but was heartwrenching. He knew himself as an ordinary bloke, a little guy, but he did things on a large scale. That includes his family: besides M.A. and B., there were Elizabeth (Dady), Cecilia, Joseph, and John. Bernadine recalled that when he built a kite for his kids (and mine) it was huge and its tail was long; when it was ready he piled them all into his beat-up car and took them to Swope Park. The string broke, the kite sailed off--with Dewey and the kids in the car in instant pursuit across the city. When Dewey installed a swing on the ancient elm in our yard it was strung from a very high branch; riding it was like soaring.

What he or his family needed but couldn't buy he invented. Not all the inventions worked, but he bumbled away, made do, eked out. Fourth of July rockets were out of the question, so he tied sparklers to arrows and shot them into the night sky. To celebrate the Feast of Saint Nicholas in proper style Dewey arranged to hire a horse, donned a robe of sorts, put a homemade episcopal miter on his head, and came riding up our driveway bearing gifts, just like the good bishop. He was late, the horse was skittish, we all nearly froze waiting for him on the porch, but Saint Nick became more real than Santa Claus.

He was a Catholic of his times, the fervent forties; he knew about the Young Christian Workers, Friendship House, the Catholic Worker, Integrity, priest-workers in France; when he learned that a group of us, even more impractical dreamers than he, were trying to start a Catholic daily paper in Kansas City he first volunteered to help, then quit the Post Office and joined the staff, using his postal lore to help run circulation. The Sun Herald did get launched but folded after five months, and he went back to his old job. It's more than likely that he knew the griefs and sufferings of everyone on his route, and helped where he could.

Before Dewey died I had seen him very seldom over a span of forty years. I first felt tears when I learned he had spoken of me often on his death bed, and that he had always prayed for me. I cried again when the funeral director, obeying Mary Anne, opened the casket for me and for an old black woman who, like me, had not been at the rosary the night before. Dewey's eighty-four-year-old face was as handsome as ever; what made me cry were his gnarled and calloused hands. Dewey loved the Latin, so we sang the Kyrie, the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei. I cried some more then, and when I saw his widow weeping. Anna was his perfect wife: dry, practical, witty, tolerant of this holy fool; living with a saint requires a supersaint. Anna, to my knowledge, seldom wept, but now she had good reason; she had lost him. I had other reasons. I realized, at last, that I was crying for myself. I had neglected him, and disappointed him; I was not enough like him. I hope he's still praying.

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