A Cathedral for a man of the earth
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
Memorial services don’t necessarily have to be held in a church or even in a building. Weldon Thomas Heard, 86, a veterinarian and a noted expert on poultry, who died Saturday, July 26, at his farm in Lookingglass, wanted his service in his son, Rex’s sheep pasture in Lookingglass. On Friday, August 1, his friends, neighbors and family gathered there to remember the good things about Heard’s long and rewarding life. He was my friend — a man who truly followed St. Francis of Assisi’s model by not only loving animals, but by preaching the gospel in his daily living using words only when it became necessary.
That attribute of this man was quite evident as story after story was told, some with choked back tears, about his deeds of kindness and love. But, as he would have approved, it was not a somber service. Mingled with the tears there was also laughter in this celebration of his eight decades of life.
Weldon was a story teller whose yarns could rival any story told by James Herriot and
many of those stories were written and published during his lifetime. As a writing instructor at Umpqua Community College, I read most of his stories, but so help me I couldn’t improve on them and there was little red-penciling on any of the manuscripts he submitted to me.
His son, Rex said he discovered a story among his papers that the family had never seen before. He started reading the story as part of his dad’s eulogy, but it so touched him he couldn’t finish. I recognized it as written in Weldon’s downhome style and made more poignant because it was a story about his daughter, Lynn, who died years before from cancer.
Weldon’s youngest daughter, Brooks, whom her dad called Bo-Bo, also started telling her remembrance with tears, but as if Weldon had steadied her with his hand on her shoulder she calmly continued with story after story, many humorous, of her father’s demonstrations of love, not only to her but also to all her siblings. The hundred or so mourners who gathered in that sheep pasture, also shared their remembrances, some could barely get their story told without tears.
He was a man who touched many lives. He was born in Lake City, Calif. and grew up in Ashland, Ore. He earned his degree in veterinary medicine from Colorado A&M in 1950 after serving in the U.S. Army in World War II. Before he graduated, however, he fell victim to tuberculosis and was confined to bed for more than a year.
Typical of his tenacity, a classmate, John Annis taped all the lectures for Weldon allowing him to keep up and to graduate with his class. He went into veterinary practice in Colorado with Annis. When he retired he moved to Lookingglass to be near relatives. At the request of another classmate, Dr. Don Bailey, he worked in the Bailey clinic in Roseburg for seven years while raising Suffolk sheep and pure bred Australian Shepherds on his ranch in Lookingglass. He was a nationally recognized expert on poultry or as he would say, “anything fowl.” Among his favorite chickens were Black Minorcas.
He was once offered $35,000 for a pure bred Suffolk ewe, but refused the money in order to keep the genetic line in his own herd. He wrote several books on his family history and in Mark Twain style, related the humorous exploits of his veterinary days. It is my fondest hope that the family will gather up all of Weldon’s writings and produce a book.
That sheep pasture in Lookingglass last Friday magically became a cathedral of towering firs and oaks where the bright afternoon sun flickering through the tree branches sparkled like stained glass windows. Mementos of this man of the earth sat placidly on an altar of hay bales.
Weldon was certainly there, if only in spirit.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)