Glen's photo from Stars and Stripes Article. I am back at work today and I have to say that I feel so blessed that I was able to go, and so blessed that all six of Daddy's children were there together.

I took a lot of pictures while there - of the town he lived in and some of the funeral too. John is working on uploading them to a place where we can all view them.
 
The service was really beautiful. They have a church in town that is about 350 years old and when someone in town dies it lets out a bell ringing to let the townspeople know that someone has died. They do this again right before the funeral.  
 
The customs there are a bit different so I will try to explain how it all went. All the immediate family carried a red rose throughout the entire service. First we left the house and walked to the church. During the service the pastor talked (in German mostly) about what happens to us when we die, and how daddy is now home. Then we sang a song in German called 'Bewahre uns, Gott' (Preserve us, God). After that he read from the 23rd Psalm in German where he would read one line and everyone else would answer back with the second line, etc. The we prayed, and then played a song of our choice. We were all united that the song be 'Sing Me Back Home' by Merle Haggard. Daddy was so well-known for his country music singing that there was not a dry eye in the church.
 
After that the pastor talked some more about Daddy, some in English but mostly in German, about his life history, born in Darlington, how many brothers and sisters, joining the military, his first marriage and the four children from that, moving to Germany, then marrying Helena and having Bryan and Leslie, and how he had made Presberg his home for the past 20+ years.
 
During this time the caskett was at the cemetary - they have large structure where it is covered and it sits there with flowers. When the church service was over we all walked through the streets of town to the cemetary (it is a really small little village) and to this structure. The pastor said some more words there by the structure, and the Honor Guard from the Air Force was there and did a really touching ceremony, first with folding the flag, then with the gun salute, and then then they played taps.
 
After that the pall-bearers took the caskett to the grave site and lowered it into the ground. The family then, one by one, went up and threw in our red roses. Then the towns people lined up and one by one they approached the grave site and the women threw in rose petals from a basin there and the men took a shovel from a bucket of dirt and threw in a shovel full. This took quite a while and I have to say was really something to see.
 
When everyone was finished, and the family paid their last respects, we all walked to the cafe in town for coffed and cakes.
 
Just writing this all again makes me very tired all of the sudden. At the cafe we met with some friends, Benny Perez and his wife Brigitte, who we have known since we first moved to Germany in 1973. None of us had seen them in years, and we were talking about the weather and the fact that it had started raining when we started to the cemetary. Brigitte said in Germany they have a saying 'It only rains on the good ones.'
 
Daddy was a good one.