[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 103 (Monday, August 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 1, 1994]


 
                         JAMES FRED RIPPY, JR.


                      April 17, 1918-may 24, 1994

  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, the news media reported that the end came 
for Fred Rippy on May 24, but it was not the end at all--it was the 
beginning. You might call it graduation day, a day when the Lord 
beckoned for a faithful soul to come up and assure more smiles, more 
joy, and more love among the armada of heavenly angels. It is possible 
to imagine Fred's being fitted with special wings, perhaps, at his 
request, with tiny insignia reading Cadillac or Oldsmobile amidst the 
feathers or whatever angels' wings are made of.
  Please forgive my imaginative observations, Mr. President, but you 
would have to have known Fred Rippy to understand such fanciful notions 
about a man everybody in Wilmington, NC, loved and respected. Each of 
us who knew him best and loved him most can see him, in our mind's eye, 
persuading St. Peter that Heaven would be even a bit better if a fleet 
of Cadillacs could be secured to travel the golden streets.
  Mr. President, Fred Rippy was successful at everything he ever 
decided to undertake--as a Phi Beta Kappa at the University of North 
Carolina from which he was graduated; as a husband, father, 
grandfather; as a good citizen; as founder of Rippy Cadillac/
Oldsmobile. He sold a lot of cars because people trusted him and 
enjoyed doing business with him. He had a bit of Will Rogers in him--he 
never met a man he did not like. Which was vice versa with everyone who 
ever met Fred Rippy.
  My purpose today, Mr. President, is to share with Senators the 
splendid tribute paid Fred Rippy by his minister, Rev. Robert F. 
Bardin, whom everybody calls Bob. Bob Bardin, Fred's pastor at St. 
Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, choked up a time or two as 
he delivered his gentle, loving graveside homily on May 26. Years ago, 
Fred had specified no formal church service, just a gathering of any 
friends who felt inclined to come.
  I want Senators to have an opportunity to read what Bob Bardin said 
on that Saturday afternoon when hundreds of friends gathered to pay 
their respects to their friend, and to express their love for Marian, 
and the Rippy children and grandchildren.
  I was touched by the reaction of the throng as Reverend Bardin 
delivered his homily. There were tears, yes, but there were smiles 
too--and nods of agreement. I think you will see why, Mr. President, 
when you ponder what that young minister said about the remarkable 
James Fred Rippy, Jr.
  I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, that the text of the Service 
of Witness to the Resurrection be printed in the Record at the 
conclusion of my remarks.
  There being no objection, the text was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

          Witness to the Resurrection of James Fred Rippy, Jr.

                       (By Rev. Robert F. Bardin)

       Make a joyful noise to the Lord! So begins the 100th Psalm. 
     Life is filled with joyful noise, particularly when life is 
     as well lived as Fred Rippy lived it. The joyful noise of 
     life welled up in him, spilled out of him, drenching us with 
     gladness. Isn't that why the silence since Tuesday night 
     seems so soundless?
       Joni Mitchell sang of a paradox in one of her songs: 
     ``Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've 
     got til it's gone.'' So it is that this shocking silence in 
     the aftermath of Fred's death helps us to fully appreciate 
     the joyful noise of his life. In this quite moment, I want to 
     help you hear this joyful noise again, and to give thanks for 
     it.
       In the silence, I hear a song--one that some of you have 
     danced to, a song that Fred sang with his life and attitude 
     every day. If I were braver, I'd sing it, because it's better 
     when it's sung. But let me at least say it for you:

     You've got to ac-centuate the positive
     E-lim-i-nate the negative
     Latch on to the affirmative,
     And don't mess with Mr. In Between.

       You don't need me to tell you that our world is chock full 
     with cynical, whining Eyores, and with weatherfolk, who on 
     the sunniest day, will find and focus on the tiniest cloud on 
     the most distant horizon. The weatherman this morning said 
     that the greatest chance of rain all week would come on this 
     day. It had to be that way. So that in the silence of this 
     moment, we could hear Fred Rippy say, ``Don't worry, it's not 
     going to rain!'' In Fred Rippy's world, it never rained. And 
     if it did, then the rain came simply to make possible a 
     rainbow that would certainly follow. In the silence, we can 
     still hear the joyful and positive witness.
       Let me share another of the joyful noises from this life 
     that I hear in this silence, and you tell me if I'm right. I 
     hear the sound of children's laughter. And it sounds like 
     Joyce's and Fred's and Allen's. And it sounds like Jenny's 
     and Mandy's, and Daniel's, James' and Louise's, Allen and 
     Wren and Katie's laughter. It sounds like the laughter of the 
     children of Rippy Cadillac Olds employees, who were not 
     employees, but family, who could call him ``Granddan.''
       Mingled with the sound of these children's laughter is the 
     crack of the baseball bat echoing across the sandlot on 18th 
     street and the delighted sigh of a man with a Cubs cap on, 
     who pitched for both teams.
       Always the joyful noise of laughter, trailing behind him in 
     the golf cart with his grandchildren, following him and his 
     children on the first trip up the first escalator in 
     Wilmington, Swimming with him in the pool, walking with him 
     to the post office, standing with him in front of every 
     construction site in town, watching backhoes dig, giggling, 
     screaming mobs tearing up his yard in an Easter egg hunting 
     frenzy, simple things that don't make the papers. Silly 
     things, at least, silly for adults whose childlike wonder is 
     dead. But for Fred Rippy, children's laughter was part of the 
     joyful noise of life that trailed along after him wherever he 
     went. Can't you hear that laughter now?
       I hear something else, a rule called Golden, ``Do unto 
     others as you would have them do unto you.'' In modern 
     ethics, it is often revised, ``Do others before they do 
     you.'' There are plenty, of course, who can and do claim to 
     run their businesses by the Golden Rule, but whose way of 
     treating folks makes those promises sound like a noisy gong 
     and a clanging cymbal. But I can be a witness, that in his 
     business, Fred Rippy did the Golden Rule and didn't just 
     speak it. And while this is surely not the time or place for 
     a car dealer's commercial, I know that there are many of you 
     here who could say the same. Fred built Rippy Cadillac 
     Oldsmobile upon the solid rock of honest fairness. And in 
     this silence, I can hear the Golden Rule.
       And in the silence, I can hear many other things, joyful 
     things. I hear a heart that for 76 years beat out a rhythm of 
     love. Not the warm fuzzy syrupy sentimentality that the world 
     calls love, but genuine, unpretentious love. Love as real as 
     a promise spoken long ago to a young bride and backed up with 
     53 years of faithfulness. Love as real as Whitman's samplers, 
     delivered to school crossing guards and bank tellers and 
     library workers at Christmastime.
       Among the many things I hear now in the silence, is a 
     laughing Fred Rippy warning his doctor that he was never 
     going to die. He knew otherwise, of course, but chose not to 
     dwell on it, chose to leave his dying in the sure hands of 
     the One who had guided his living.
       In a way, Fred was right about not dying. For Paul, in the 
     13th chapter of 1st Corinthians says, that love endures all 
     things. . . that love never ends. Surely the love that flowed 
     from Fred Rippy's life lives joyously on in you, in you most 
     of all.
       We give grateful praise for this life, and to the one from 
     whom the confidence and the goodness of Fred's life came, to 
     Jesus Christ, who said, ``I am the resurrection and the life. 
     If a man believe in me, even though he die, yet he shall 
     live, and no one who lives and believes in me shall never 
     die.
       In the moments of anxious waiting at the hospital, we kept 
     saying, ``He's going to be all right. . .He's going to be all 
     right''. . . against all odds, ``He's going to be all 
     right!''
       And the news came, for death claims the good and the strong 
     as well as the weak and wicked and the rain of tears came. 
     But almost immediately, you could tell that this was Fred 
     Rippy's family and believers in the God that was his God. 
     Immediately, they began to trace the rainbow through the 
     rain. . .to repeat the promise, not made in vain, ``He who 
     believes in me shall never die.''
       If you and I only had ears to hear, we could hear behind 
     the silence that confronts us now, a great party of the 
     saints in the new heaven and the new earth. And the big band 
     is playing Fred's song. And the negative, has in fact been 
     ``e-lim-inated''. No more tears no more crying, no more pain, 
     the Bible says. But surely a place where children are 
     laughing and rules are Golden with love. The kind of place 
     where Fred is at home.
       Until the day that you and I will join him there, and until 
     then, hear and live by what he must surely be saying:

     Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all ye lands.
     Serve the Lord with gladness;
     Come into His presence with singing.
     Know that the Lord is God.
     It is He who made you, and we are His people,
     and the sheep of His pasture.
     Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with 
           praise.
     Give thanks to him, bless his name.
     For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever,
     And his faithfulness to all generations.

       To all generations . . . to you his children, his 
     grandchildren, and to all the generations who will follow 
     you, who will call on the name of the Lord, and who will call 
     the name of his servant, James Fred Rippy, Jr., blessed. 
     Amen.

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