I have been at a loss of words to possibly describe my memories of my friend & co-worker. Someone is putting a book together for his family and asked if we wanted to contribute. My dad put this together and I wanted to put it here because it echos many of my fond memories.
Everyday he would ride right up to the door and hit the front brakes, lifting the back wheel up twelve inches or so. Rain or shine, blizzard or ten-below, he would stop just short of hitting the door to willie up the rear. I expected one day, when the brakes were cold and icy he would crash into the doors and fall in a crumpled heap, but he never did. I would shake my head and he would grin through his frosted beard.
When he applied with us, he had already had about 30 jobs. A bit of experience in a lot of things, but with the pattern of job jumping I thought he wouldn't stay here more than a few months, and if we had left him in receiving, that would probably have been right. But on the counter, working with people, he blossomed.
He liked people. Crazy, I know. I can see liking certain ones, but not all of them. It was amazing how he made everyone feel like they were important, no matter how they looked or smelled. Even the pictures he took were of people, or where people gather, like dinner tables and kitchens, and insides of houses. He thrived where people were: For the first few years he worked here, he would eat his lunch sitting on a five gallon bucket in the service area watching the mechanics work.
He got to the point that he was taking his lunch break at three or four in the afternoon. You might think it was because he was generous and let others go first, which may be partly true, but the main reason is we made him. We would think he had gone to lunch and wait for him to return to send someone else and he would come back to the counter and ask if he could go to lunch now. Come to find out he was out back with a customer. He threw off our lunch schedule so often he was banned to go after everyone else and gone and by the time he finally went it would be four in the afternoon. All day his lunch sat on the corner of the desk instead of the refrigerator. It didn't bother him, in fact he liked the reaction it gave others when he ate old, non-refrigerated, bacteria-ridden food. He even cut off part of an old buffalo head that someone had in the back of their truck and ate it just for a reaction. On his computer terminal there was a comic of a dog going up to the meat counter and asking the butcher: What do you have past the expiration date? How ironic because Rick was a creative cook. So he was both like Remy the chef in Ratatouille and also like Emile, his brother, who was always eating out of the garbage.
Meek is a hard word to understand. Most think it means abased or lowly, but that just doesn't fit with the description of Moses as being: very meek, above all men which were upon the face of the earth. Moses, who led millions for forty years in the desert and parted the sea and spoke with conviction and threatening to pharaoh? It doesn't sound like someone without self confidence, who is always down on himself. It has to mean something like someone who doesn't need to protect his ego, someone who doesn't need to be right all the time or have the need to prove themselves to others. Basically ego free. Rick is my example of meekness.
Not that he didn't have any pride, because he did. He had great pride of his family, often he was showing us what his kids were accomplishing. He had pride in his upholstery work, his cooking, his cowboy shooting, his all-year, all-weather bike riding, and his peter-pan attitude of not wanting to grow up.
I loved him for his example of gratitude, and the way which he bore his burdens without burdening others. I heard today, if you want to be humble, be grateful. Rick was. I regret that I put him off the last week before his surgery, when he tried to express his fears, because I thought they were unfounded. Looking back, it was unusual behavior for Rick and I should have paid attention.
The morning I got the news he died, I sat at my desk and wrote this entitled The Viking.
April 4th, 2014
One of my heroes died today; a man without guile, who taught me to understand the meaning of meekness. someone who had right to complain, but would not. He was optimistic, caring, generous and made everyone who he came in contact with feel as if they were the most important person.
How does the world keep going when someone like that leaves it?
How can the day to day keep rolling on without such an important cog?
It cannot!
It will have to run kiltered for a while until it can right itself anew.
In memory of Rick Hofland.
By David Andersen
