Excerpts from Community Memorial Service December 15, 2001 Pastor Mitch Watney Thank you so much for coming today. We want to welcome you warmly to this memorial gathering. We are here today in honor and in memory of the four men who are lost at sea this last Tuesday off Yaquina Head aboard the F/V Nesika. It should be obvious that this tragedy has affected us all, our whole community. Because we know the men who are lost, because we know this hardworking fishing community; and because we live here beside the wide, awesome and sometimes wild body of water we call the sea. This tragedy, this event reminds us how vulnerable we are and how tentative our existence can be. No one has been more deeply shaken than the families and the loved ones of those men who are lost and the fishing community who risk their lives regularly in this way. We gather today to give honor and to remember and to seek strength and hope. Gathered in this community, gathered to care and support one another. Let us pray. Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth, it is written that in the beginning you, O God, preparing to bring this world into existence, that your spirit moved over the face of the waters. We ask now that your spirit would also move among us. Bring comfort and hope to our spirits; that as we grieve this tragedy and suffer this loss that you might bring nurture and healing as we seek to remember as we must give thanks for our young men who are lost at sea. Give us this hope we pray, O God, that these dear ones are not lost to you and that your spirit still moves with them still. Help us in your wisdom to give them into your almighty hands we pray. Amen. As we gather today to share memories you will have an opportunity, some of you, to offer a memory and to give thanks for these men. We must also recognize that we each have different ways of seeing and different ways to believing and different ways of bringing hope. Today may we share from our hearts and from our own experience and from our own hope as we seek to bring comfort and to be thankful and to bring peace, each in our own differing ways. May we all honor the uniqueness of each as we share together. Jeff Feldner: Like some 200 of us or so from the Newport fishing fleet, I was at sea on Tuesday when the news came on the radio that a boat had gone down. I'll tell you a little bit what it was like. The deck didn't stop moving and the desperate effort to get the crab pots off the boat didn't stop. The deck chatter stopped, it got colder, the sky got darker, and the seas looked bigger. And this was even before we heard which boat it was. It felt just like getting hit in the chest with a crab pot. And it always does. Like all of you I've now had a few days to try to cope with my feelings about this and I've asked to share some of the thoughts with you now from the perspective of the community of those who were lost. In our case, the community of the fishermen. This is an honor for me and I realize that it's probably an impossible task to do. It's impossible to verbalize the pain and fear and the absolute awe that we feel when someone goes down at sea. But there are some feelings that I think that all of us who work on the ocean share. I first realized at least one of these a few years ago when I was asked to give a talk over at a class at OSU when I was working up an introduction and I was going to talk about why it is that we fish. I mean, why would an otherwise sane person do something that's this dangerous and this hard and faced with these kinds of uncertainties. And I started writing down the usual things, you know, the independence and the lifestyle and, you know, the sort of purity that comes with being able to do something real. But I realized there's something else that wasn't there -- something else that I hadn't gotten. And it's something that you really can't verbalize but it's something that everyone who has fished, anyone who's really worked on the ocean feels, and it's the sense of absolute rightness about what we do. It's inside, it's visceral. There's a certainty about it that I've never heard one fisherman or woman deny. And it happens on a day like today, it happens on a day like Tuesday, any day when you're out there and, you know, the wind is blowing on you and the sea is up and the fish are biting and you just feel like there is absolutely nothing better. I mean, you are so focused, your, the clarity is just incredible. You feel like you're absolutely doing the right thing, you know, inside. It feels like our species evolved doing these things and at those times we feel more alive. In a sense we feel closer to God then. And there's a price that we pay to be that alive. And we all know that price with the same certainty that we know how good it can be other times. And that price is the absolute acceptance of our mortality. The sea can take us just like that. There's, it's kind of a cosmic equation that has to be balanced. If, to get that close to God you have to accept that God can take you back. This isn't new, this isn't new knowledge. Every person earning a living from the sea knows it. Everyone who's ever worked at sea has known it for thousands of years. And those four men who we lost on Tuesday knew it. Somehow I think it's that shared vision of just what's right, how good it is, as well as the acceptance of our humanity and our mortality creates a bond, a really powerful connection that fishermen have. We have it with all fishermen, we have it with the seamen from years ago that we don't even know, and it's an especially strong bond here in our community. It's something that I feel even in a roomful of stressed out, cantankerous fishermen just aggressively arguing about the price of fish or the manner of executing the fishery or whatever. And there are times in those places when I look around and I look at these people and I realize that I really like these people. And it isn't that I just like those guys -- I am those guys. I'll always be those guys. And they all as a part of me. They're fathers, husbands, sons, nephews, our peers. These men are our brothers; they're our brothers-in-arms. And that's why it hurts so damn much to lose them. Alan Eder: My name is Alan Eder. How can we console ourselves upon the loss of anyone near and dear to us, much less those who are taken long before their time. When people who are loved and cherished so much and by so many, how are we to make sense of them suddenly vanishing from our midst? How can a loving God who created us take us away seemingly at whim? These and so many other questions have been agonizing churned over and over in the minds and hearts of all of us gathered here today to honor the four good men who perished last Tuesday when the NESIKA capsized. Benjamin Alan Eder, beloved son, brother, nephew, cousin and grandson was named after his father's father whom he never met. He came to know his late grandfather both through the recollections of others and eventually through the blossoming of his own character and personality so much akin to those of his namesake. Armed with boundless energy and enthusiasm, Ben had already accomplished much in his short life. To contemplate what might have been had he lived four times as long as his mere 21 years simply boggles the mind. Although he didn't spend too much time in houses of worship, he relentlessly probed and wrestled with the mysteries of the notion of God. His grandma Betty, a Catholic, relates an exchange they had when Ben was just a young boy. Gesturing toward the sky he asked, "You don't really believe God is up there, do you?". "Yes, I do," she replied. According to Grandma Betty, he concluded the exchange by shooting her an impish glance of disbelief. Ben was too young then to know the word agnostic, which, as he grew into a man, he later used to characterize how he thought and felt about God. He wasn't sure whether or not God existed and if He did, where or what God was. For the celebration of his 13th birthday, his grandma Edie took him on a trip to Israel -- the first of Ben's many world travels. Before Ben went he asked his good friend Derek, of this very church, what he could bring him back from the Holy Land. Water from the River Jordan was Derek's desire. To fulfill his friend's request, Ben asked his grandma to take him to the river where he carefully collected samples of the special water for Derek and others who had requested it. Thoughtful and sensitive to others as he always was, he knew that faith was something very real to so many people that he respected and that intrigued him. In fact, in addition to the essentials that he took on this last trip was a thick paperback book entitled "Islam." It's not that Ben was aspiring to become a Muslim; rather, it was simply another step in his attempt to solve the perplexing puzzle of who we are and why we are here. While he may not have been affiliated with a religious denomination, Ben regularly worshiped at the ruthless, roofless -- although also ruthless at times -- the roofless house of nature. There he experienced his deep connection with the unity of all creation. Perhaps that explains why he once drove from Portland and back just to share the sunset over the ocean with someone who hadn't ever witnessed this wonder. He wanted not only to drink in Mother Nature's precious gift again himself, but also to enrich the life of another. Which he did routinely with his trademark passion, the trademark passion with which he approached all aspects of life great and small. Nowhere was his investment of his entire being more apparent than when he was fishing. Many aspects of commercial fishing had an irresistible lure for Ben -- the multifaceted nature of being a fisherman, weatherman, engineer, electrician and plumber all rolled into one -- plus ample opportunity to work his butt off like nobody's business. And Ben understood well his father's joy and connection when it all came together. Ben was an exemplary older brother. The extraordinarily close and exceptionally caring relationship he and his brother Dylan shared made me want to have children of my own. My sons are just mad about their much older and bigger cousins. I can't imagine better role models and more loving cousins than Ben and Dylan Eder. In closing, let us recall a t-shirt he often wore, which said all: Attitude makes a difference. Ben was ever eager to contribute, and his attitude was always, always overwhelmingly positive. On that note, I leave you a quote from the great Winston Churchill: "When you're going through Hell, keep on going." Peter Jordan: My name is Peter Jordan and I grew up with Ben. I kind of want to tell you a few stories and relate them back to certain things (???). At the beginning of last January we were, I was heading south from Guatemala City to meet Ben in San Jose, Costa Rica. You see, the school year before took its toll on us and we decided before we ran out of steam it'd be a good idea for us to take some time off. During my five-day bus trip to San Jose I stayed a night in Managua, Nicaragua. This was the same night that El Salvador was devastated by an earthquake. For all Ben knew I was in El Salvador. I gave him my general itinerary and that was to head south. Upon arriving in San Jose I checked my e-mail which I hadn't done in about a week and Ben sent me a message the day after the earthquake. I'm going to read this message to you: "Hey Buddy. Haven't heard from you in a couple of days and I'm worried about you and where you were during the earthquake. I'm arriving in San Jose on the 16th and I plan to e-mail you every day. If you don't respond or show up I'll head north and begin searching through building and through building for you in the rubble." Without a doubt in my mind, Ben would have done that. He would have done it for anybody. It was his sense of responsibility that was above anybody else's. If a need was present he'd be there to fill it. Ben and I had many agreements when we were growing up. For years we had an agreement that no matter have likely his immune system would reject it, I owed him a kidney. Although he was a very responsible person, he's incredibly generous. He would always be the first person to cover the extra on a restaurant bill and he at any moment he would listen to people's problems. On countless nights Ben and I would march in each other's room and spend hours frustrated, spinning out monologues about how we were so pissed off at the injustices in the world, things that made us mad. Ben has been my best friend and confidante since Mrs. Lesley's 4th grade class. And we've had so many fond memories together. One that really sticks out is when we were in grade school and Ben, Dylan and myself were crafting spears on the beach, building shelters, for one whole day we were barbarians. All this time I had known that he was, how fascinated with the world he was in just seeking knowledge. I would definitely describe him as a Tolstoy-type character. These last four years, though, the introspective and considerate side of him which I loved so much came to bloom. The ideas he embraced developed into a philosophy of life that impacted everyone he knew. Reading was not enough; he had to experience the world for himself, and he worked hard every summer and break so he could follow his dreams. He had a boundless curiosity; he wanted to learn as much as he could. I'm sure somewhere deep in his mind he use to store all his experiences to the finest detail like we've all seen with his ingenuity and craftsmanship which would one day be a great book where thousands of stories (???) to us. This is how Ben wanted to live his life: he wanted to live it simply but fully. And all along being the guy who marched in the house with food in hand, ready to eat a good meal, drink a fine bottle of wine, and talk about the state of the world. Last year traveling with Ben was the last time I spent a significantly quantity of time with him. And I realize, like I had many times before, how much I admired him. There are so many mental pictures in my head of him gazing out into the ocean where ever we were -- we spent most of our time on the ocean -- writing in his journal or staring into the sky with a book broken open on his chest, considering the people of (???) Brazil, and how they aren't that much different from the hardworking people in his home community. Ben changed so much and he had his finger on so many things. In spite of how much he changed he never forgot about his home and the people he loved and respected here. The experience he shared with the crew of the NESIKA and the MICHELE ANN he brought back to us at Reed College as a unique perspective of a lifestyle that encompassed hard work, danger and an environment so different from our own. Ben's incredible energy and fascination with life has infused all who knew him with desire to learn, learn, learn. | |||