Kip Prenkert's Funeral
Wakarusa Missionary Church
12 February 2009
Robby Prenkert
The Walk You Remember
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
My dad had a distinctive walk. I suspect that some of you noticed this.
His heels scarcely touched the ground when he strolled from the garden to the back door, down a wooded trail in Ludington, from his car in the parking lot to his spot in the bleachers (omnipresent book in one hand) to watch me play some game.
At times it looked to me as if he were treading delicately on the earth, trying to avoid leaving any imprint in the soil, tip-toeing gently but purposefully to his destination.
His tip-toe walk became more pronounced at times. In the driveway shooting hoops, after he'd made twenty or so in a row, realizing he was "on," he would get an extra spring.
Once when I was very young, we were in the midst of witnessing some dramatic comeback in one of his church league fastpitch softball games at the prairie campgrounds. He was cheering a big hit that drove in a couple runs, extending the rally. He walked past me as I sat, taking it all in on the bench.
On the bench, an awestruck boy who only ever wanted to be like his hero. On the bench but allowed to be a part of the team, witnessing his father nearly levitate, heels five inches off the ground, his face aglow with a joy that can only be known by grown men at play.
My dad had a distinctive walk, and I have a theory about it.
I can see my dad, left hand on left knee, gloved right hand on right knee, waiting and watching from his spot in Right field. He had the uncanny ability to know exactly where a flyball hit his direction was going land a split moment before the batter made contact. They call that getting a jump on the ball.
I can still see him pivot and run, dark hair blown off his forehead, eyes glued to that ball—running. Running on his tip toes. Gliding, it seemed, on the top of the grass.
Many years later I played outfield, too—and I realized something that my dad showed me rather than told me, for that was more his style. I learned that if you run on your toes and not your heels, you land, with each stride, much more delicately. Land on your heels and your head jars and the ball you're chasing starts to bounce, making it considerably more difficult to catch. But run on your toes and you'll see the ball fly smoothly toward its home in the deep pocket of your glove as you make that final graceful reach over your shoulder to grab the inning ending out.
When he was a boy, he spent hours just tossing a ball up in the air and chasing after it to make a catch. He and his closest friend, Mike, spent countless hours hitting the ball to one another, chasing down flies. At an early age he learned to run on the balls of his feet, and that must have carried over into his walk, and all the days of his life my dad tread lightly on God's earth and this kept his eyes clearly focused.
My dad had a distinctive walk, but I don't know if you ever thought about why.
At sixty five, he still had that spring in his step. I suspect he kept it after knee surgery, back surgery, prostate surgery, heart surgery, multiple kidney stones, and who knows what other aches and pains that inevitably come with age—I suspect he kept it not simply because he had learned how to chase down a ball the way they teach major league outfielders to do it, but because he loved being alive.
He kept that soft bouncing walk because he knew my mom and one way his passionate and voluntary love for her was involuntarily, habitually evidenced was by a spring in each step. You walk with a woman like her for more than forty years and you, too, would retain the spring.
My dad had a distinctive walk, and I want for you to know and remember this.
My dad was an outrageously joyful person, even if he did not express it the same way others might have. But you could see it if you watched his walk. With each step his head bobbed heavenward. Because he enjoyed life, the abundant life offered those who know the ONE who is the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE.
When I was a boy all I wanted to do was to shoot a basketball like my dad. I wanted to hit a ball the way he did; I wanted to chase after and catch a ball and do it with his grace and style. I still do.
I do not think I walk quite like him, but I have learned a great deal about walking rightly by watching his "walk." All of us could learn something from the joyfully contented way he walked humbly with his God.
We are sad today and we mourn our loss. But we are also comforted, knowing that now dad runs on those toes without ever growing weary, and walks without ever growing faint.
I know one thing. My dad, like his LORD, would like nothing better than for each of us to "walk on" faithfully, humbly, joyfully, until we, too, are called home.
