[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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