Beaver Bowline | Eulogy for Jeanne Robertson

i don't get behind these very often this is definitely a celebration and she wouldn't want it to be anything but that so it would tick her off if we didn't make it just that so um i'm not going to make a lot of eye contact today because i'll probably get emotional and that's not a pretty sight um i've also typed what i'm going to say because i got to stay focused so i don't cry i'm sure mom's looking down on me right now and saying good lord beaver if i taught you nothing about speaking it's been a crazy week me it's been a crazy week mom cut me some slack uh patrick and i have been in discussions all week about what we wanted to say today and before i go any further i'd like to say what a complete godsend he along with tony jane norma lynn tom leslie countless others keith have been not only this week but really for years my appreciation really can't be articulated again patrick and i came to the conclusion that it would be a layup and actually pretty lazy and boring if we just got up here and rattled off mom's professional accomplishments of which there are literally hundreds and maybe thousands that's harley news and most of if not all the people in this world and watching online which we appreciate you being here know about those anyway uh today i'm going to drill a little deeper and share my experience after having a front row seat to what was a simply incredible human being in life whenever people ask me about my parents my first response is that i hit the lottery i have two great fathers and bailey and jerry and of course mom and they all love me and always have my back even when i didn't make it so easy for them to do so this is probably going to shock a lot of you here today but as a teenager i could be somewhat of a challenge uh actually mom was saying recently that as a 55 year old i'm also still quite a challenge but i also knew where i stood and i always knew they had my back mom would be the first to tell me when i screwed up and her punishments were the stuff of legend from months-long groundings i think i was pretty much grounded from 1981 to 84. but mom always pointed out that somehow i always managed to show up at all the parties even though i was grounded then she made me memorize the entire s.a.t verbal section which i crushed math was my problem but she always told me that while she might be angry with me you know god helped the person that said anything bad to her about me she didn't play that she was always in my corner no matter what and that was you know that was an incredible feeling to always know that um one more thing i've always wanted people to know people to know about mom is she and i kind of had a running joke and i mean even when i was young because i remember mom every day was up at 4 am every day i would hear her before school i might wake up in the middle of night she's walking the floors in the kitchen she's rehearsing her story she's working on her timing if i you know was lucky enough to maybe even go downstairs in the middle of night she would i was the audience you know i would tell her what i thought worked and what didn't and she and she listened some of the time uh you uh you should see literally the thousands of notepads still at the house tony and i were talking about the other day that have her notes of how she comes up with ideas and and you know she was she was a little bit um she never really threw away anything i'm not gonna say she was a hoarder but i found all my baby outfits this week and like two of my retainers at the house so you know it's possible that she may have been right there she wrote ideas down non-stop all the way through last week i mean she was still working in bed when she passed away mom was a grinder and it was just funny because people would always come up to her and say you're just you're just a natural well yeah i mean she had a lot of talent um more talent her pinky that i've got my whole body but she made sure it wasn't wasted she worked harder at her craft than anyone i've ever seen to make sure she could use it for the betterment of people that was her mission there were two loves for mom family and elon you'll also notice that when i talk about mom i also include jerry because that's just the way it was they were a team and i really couldn't talk about one without the other this morning to clear my head i wanted to kind of be mentally right for this it's been a long week i took a walk and i walked through elon's campus just because i thought you know that would ground me and get me focused on her love for elon and the things that she's done and you know i passed jim swan or tennis court named after her father you know alumni gym and robertson core where ryder and i are both played she was so proud of that um the allen and normal white bell tower the shar center which is also robertson court the new track and field facility and the new turf football field i mean those are the really cool material and physical things that that jerry and jeannie did for elon but they pale in comparison to the thousands of positive and uplifting interactions that mom and jerry had with elon's students not just athletes everybody and faculty and administration i just can't even fathom the number of lives they touch mom and jerry loved elon lastly on to family i've touched upon how mom loved me she was most happy when i was happy from my business accomplishments to my personal life she's welcomed my fiance nisha and her son tyler and our family with open arms and was truly excited for our future but let's face it i was chopped liver when it came to ryder and gray once they showed up when i would a typical phone call used to be prior to them you know hey mom hey beaver how's it going really tell me all about your day blah blah blah that was our conversation forever now it was you know with ryder and gray being on scene it's uh hey mom how you doing i'm good beaver and then she'd say how's it going and i'd say well you know i mean works decent yeah that's cool um now ryder had the thing with the car gray had the thing with this test uh and so i realized that she had moved on and i love that one tattoo i have i have a funny story about tattoos um so from the time i was in the crib till now mom lectured me on the perils of tattoos and how i was it was going to take me down a bad road so and if i ever got a tattooed by god she was going to disown me put me out of the will hire a hit man it was over so uh so of course i never got a tattoo which somebody find hard to believe but i don't have a tattoo and of course when ryder and gray were born i preached to them from an early age you know that i didn't want them to get the tattoo because she would disown me she would kick me out of the wheel she would hire hit man uh of course they know they now have they both have tattoos so uh the first one ryder got a beaver on his butt uh i guess i could say that sorry uh ass whatever um so and i said ryder why why would you get a tattoo of a beaver on your butt and he said well you're always on my butt he said something else but and i kind of thought that was cool in retrospect but uh and then he got the world's worst tattoo in vegas which i know he regrets because i sure do when i see it and then gray recently also got a tattoo so you know i'm thinking and the word got to me that mom found out about the tattoo ryder got through but gray didn't social media so i get a message that moms want to get in touch with me and talk to me about these tattoos so i know i'm getting ready to receive heavy fire and so i put on the helmet strap up because it's i'm getting ready to get crushed and this is how i know how much she loves them so nervously i give her a call and uh she says i said mom listen you know yeah they got a tattoo and i knew about it and mom says well you know bieber it's a new world out there son and i'm like really okay okay new world take the helmet off we're good uh so anyway uh you know they could do no wrong in her eyes and i know she's super proud of the young men they are i am they're unbelievable i i hit the lottery with them as well so what a life and i'm the luckiest man in the world to have been her son now we're gonna miss her

Channel: JeanneRobertson

Views: 216,185

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Id: zzzTFdb_FaI

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 04 2021