Greg's Eulogy

I have been away for a few days attending a memorial service for my late father in law, Gregor Hetzel. I was able to give the eulogy, and was so pleased to be able to do it.



It was hard for me to do and I did have a problem getting through the beginning and the end parts especially, because those were the serious parts and the hardest to say. However, I had fun with the middle stuff and treated it like any other talk I would do, with humor and respect.


After the service itself, my wife played the piano with a loving redition of "Pennies From Heaven", a song she explained, that her father sang to her as a small child, my sister in law read a piece she wrote about her father that brought me to tears and after that (two tough acts to follow) it was my turn.

Here’s the text and I hope you can enjoy the piece, even if you didn’t know him, and maybe you can get some insight in to the man:



Thank you for freeing up some time out of your busy schedules to come here today.

I’m sure Greg would have appreciated it.

All of you here may have known Greg as either Sandy or Margot’s father, or Nancy’s husband; and some of you may have known Greg as an uncle, or as a cousin, or as in my case – a father-in-law.

But, I think, out of all these relationships, the common denominator which everyone in this room will agree on, is contained in the most descriptive title, friend.

Greg was a friend to everyone he met.

He had an irrepressible desire and ability to make new acquaintances wherever he went, even if for a short time.

When I suggested to Nancy that I do a eulogy, my wife and my daughter strongly reminded me, “Dad, remember, this is a eulogy, not a roast”.

So, in keeping with that spirit, I will say that I knew Greg for 26 years, and all but the last few were an array of wonderful, crazy experiences. Seldom was anything “just the same old, same old” with Greg. Every day was often a new adventure.

When I met him, he was already moving away. I don’t remember how long he stayed in Michigan after I met him, but it wasn’t more than a few months! But even those months were an experience.

In those days, when we first met, he was fully into his photography experience. He was the Paparazzi before we even knew the word. He was the ultimate intrusive photographer.

There was a table full of us eating dinner in Greektown, in Detroit. Greg was there and decided to memorialize the experience as only he knew how. Dissatisfied with the photos he could take standing in the aisle looking at us, he walked up another level, explained to the patrons at the other table that he was a photographer from the Detroit Free Press and asked if he could use their table. They reluctantly agreed and he moved their things out of the way and stood on their table to take the photo.

Margot tells me a story that when her parents went to see them in New Zealand, they traveled to the South Island by car, and the car had a sun roof. They had driven to the top of a mountain and stopped, in the middle of a cloud bank. Greg stood up through the sun roof, and went about photographing the insides of the clouds.

Greg would always visit us with tools. He was well equipped to fix his car, the plane or my house, any time he arrived. He also loved shopping for tools and other hardware store items.
Every time he had a new job to do he would go off for an unknown amount of time to the hardware store to look for something. When I fist met him I realized I had seen him many times before and it took a while until I realized, because we lived so close together in Michigan, only about a mile apart, we shopped at the same hardware store. So the source of my recognition of Greg was Damman’s Hardware Store in Birmingham, MI.

I rebuilt the inside of our closet in 2000. Greg and Nancy were visiting and he offered to help me with the construction phase, just basically installing some new rods, some shelving and painting the place. He had his tools and he was with me.

We were in the closet and I already had the parts. I began to mark the walls and he stopped and looking at me, very confused. When was I going to the store? When did we go off and get stuff? He could not imagine we simply had everything already, and were just going to put it all in.

I completed the job that morning, and a very disappointed Greg helped me, of course, but really saw a week long adventure dwindle into one and a half hours of direct, purposeful experience.

He loved to save things and put them in the basement or the garage.

Greg loved to collect things...

But, I never could figure out the theme of what he was collecting...

Nancy called me and said, “We have 500 ties!” I assured her we’d take of it when I arrived, thinking she had exaggerated. However, I was wrong, there were 500 ties!

He was interested in everything... and knew a little bit about everything he was interested in, and he shared his knowledge and experience, freely, with all.

That’s the kind of Man Greg always was... a helpful man... One who was always willing to lend me a hand, even when you didn’t need one.

We went out to dinner shortly after we moved to Calgary, Alberta, and had our bonding experience.

We parked my car and walked several blocks to the restaurant. The dinner was wonderful, and Greg and I said we would walk back and get the car, as it was -20 Celsius, and we didn’t want Nancy and Sandy to freeze.

Neither one of us could find the car for an hour or so, and we had no real protection beyond a light weight coat and he had a hat and gloves. I believe one of us fell down although at this point in history I can’t remember which one of us it was, but we bonded. Nancy and Sandy were planning on going home with the restaurant owner and calling the police later, but we arrived with a bit of frostbite, joined as brothers of the arctic.

We were together in Anaheim California at Disneyland on Christmas Eve, 1995, for my son Josh’s wedding. My family and I were in the pool at about 4:00p.m., right after we arrived, and Greg and Nancy appeared. We were in the pool our bathing suits (having just come down from the Alberta deep freeze) and I can still see Greg with his wool jacket, scarf, hat and gloves, staring at us. It was then I knew we were form Mars and Greg and Nancy were from Venus.

In running around Disneyland for a day or two, it was fun to see how Cruella DeVille took a liking to Greg. She picked him out of the crowd, and he of course became her friend immediately. She was a costumed actress playing the part of the mean woman from a Hundred and One Dalmatians, but Greg clearly melted her heart.

He always did erratic and unpredictable things, and one of my favourite ones was how he would disappear for periods of time and we would discover afterwards that he had gone to get a haircut somewhere or another. His excuse had to do with wanting a different barber but not wanting to hurt his barber’s feelings by telling him or not going, but he could justify all this by having his hair cut in strange places, usually near my house

For Greg, breakfast was always a buffet, if possible.

Many of my best memories are going to restaurants for breakfast with Greg, and his ordering five or six different items which was easier than trying to settle on any one thing. He would have some hot cereal, and egg, some bacon, some toast and a coffee. This was often the kind of breakfast Nancy served him, just not in the giant restaurant sized portions he received at his own personal buffet!

He often would order what I called the wrong food in the wrong place; He was the one who ordered the fish sandwich at White Castle!

He was kind, warm and loving. He was caring and charming. He was the king of conversation.

One night in Calgary he spoke to me about his retirement investments with Fidelity. He wanted to discuss these investments, and of course I was not the correct person to talk to but he had an 800 number to call. He assured me they had a 24 hour hot line with people just waiting to answer your questions.

When I went up to bed at about 11:30 p.m., he had called Fidelity. When I came down in the morning at about 7:00 a.m., he was still on the phone! Now I will admit there was the possibility that he had gone to bed and woken up and called again, but I don’t think so! He was the king of conversation.

He was a most honest man and always assumed others were the same. This was a wonderful trait that also sometimes got him into trouble. He was the only person I’ve ever met, and you will have to pardon the ethnic stereotype I am about to continue, he was the only person who knowingly purchased a used car from a Gypsy, an orange Volvo with striped seat covers!

Toward the end of his life, when we were visiting him in the nursing home, our group came into his room. He seemed happy to see us, smiled at Nancy, wasn’t quite sure who Sandy was, sort of recognized the girls and said, right off the top of his head, “Oh, hi Arthur, good to see you!”

In my last visit, when he could not remember my name, he said, “You’re the guy that fixes the houses!”.

He was a loving husband, father and grandfather, a wonderful father-in-law, and he is surely missed.

He gave of himself freely; a friend to all he encountered.

I believe Greg wanted to be needed....to help.....and he was always there when he was needed.

Greg can rest easy. He has helped us all.

We’ll miss you friend.