Paul Nadenicek is my uncle. He passed away Wednesday, July 3, 2013. Below are remarks I intend to make at his funeral Saturday.
I don't know that I'm necessarily the best person in the family to do this. Obviously, we all knew Paul and have our memories of him. I'll just say a few things I'll always think of when I think of him. The first thing for a lot of us, of course, was his music, and I'll talk about that in a minute. First, though, I want to say a few other things I'll remember about him.
One thing I remember about Paul is that he loved baseball and rooted for the Minnesota Twins. That always gave us something in common to talk about, because of course I love baseball and the Twins, too. In fact, I remember when I was a little kid, Paul would always get me a spring baseball preview magazine. And of course, this was before the internet a twenty-four hour sports channels and all that, so those baseball preview magazines were a big deal. I really enjoyed them, and I appreciated Paul getting them for me.
Paul would do stuff like that, especially for his family, because his family was important to him. He was kind of the keeper of the family records, especially of his parents. But he kept up with his family, too. He wrote lots of letters. He wanted to know what everyone was doing. It was important to him to be able to do that.
Paul was a very intelligent man. He read a lot, and he read a wide variety of stuff. There were a lot of times when something would come up and he'd say, “I was reading this article the other day, and it said that...” and he'd give some little fact that I'd never known before.
He read the Bible a lot, too, of course. He studied the Bible. He could quote scripture easily. In fact, he could quote the Bible a whole lot better than I can. You give me a scripture passage, and I'm going “Uh, yeah, I think that's in the Old Testament someplace. Um, Proverbs, maybe?” Paul would say, “That's Proverbs 21:9. But what it actually says is...” and then he'd go on to quote the verse exactly—the King James Version, of course. He always wanted to read or hear the Bible in the King James Version.
Paul had a very giving spirit. He gave what he could give. Sometimes it might be a small thing, because he never had a whole lot of money. Other times, it might be giving of his service or of his talent. But he wanted to give. He enjoyed giving.
And that brings me to Paul's love of music, and especially of the guitar. I don't think Paul was ever happier than when he had the guitar in his hands and could make music. Music was his passion. Times when he'd come to visit us out on the farm, he'd usually bring a guitar with him and play something for us. If he did not bring the guitar, he'd play something on the piano. He just loved to make music.
There were times in his life when he played for lots of people, and there were times when he played for just one. I remember a couple of years ago, shortly before we moved away from North Sioux City, I stopped to see Paul and I asked him to play something for me, because I had not heard him play for a while. He reached over, picked up the guitar, and played a piece of jazz music. I asked him what it was, and he said it was not anything. He was just making it up. That's such an amazing talent he had, to just pick up the guitar and start playing a tune on the spot like that.
I don't think it really mattered to Paul who he played for or how many there were. He just wanted to make music. That's why it was so wonderful that, in the last years of his life, he was able to sing in the church choir and play in the praise band. It meant so much to him to be able to continue to share the gift of music God had given him. I really think that's what kept him going and helped him live as long as he did.
In a sense, you could say that God put Paul on this earth to make music. That's not the only reason Paul was put on earth, of course. But what I mean is that I think, when we're really passionate about something, it's because God has put that passion into our hearts. God gave Paul a passion for music.
Paul got his first guitar on his fourteenth birthday. He kept playing the guitar almost until his ninety-fifth birthday. Think about that. That means Paul made music on the guitar for over eighty years. That is such an amazing thing. And a few days ago, not very long after Paul finally got too weak to play any more, God called Paul home.
My wife, Wanda, wrote a poem about Paul that I'd like to share with you.
Tip your hat to the man
With a guitar in his hands
Stars of heaven
With guitar number seven
His spot in church
Treasured memories perch
A helping church congregation,
Paul's passionate sensation
A man who always knew his part
Whether in praise team
Or choir to sing,
“How Great Thou Art”
The letters he wrote assert,
Family comes first
Imagine heaven's jubilee
Giving was his creed
Whether talents or time
Paul would shine
A couple of weeks ago, I got one of Paul's guitars. I cannot play the guitar, but I'm going to learn. In fact, I'm going to have my first lesson Monday. I'll never learn to play like Paul did, of course. I don't even consider that a possibility. But I'm going to learn to play a little. And when I do, I'm always going to think of Paul.
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