Gil had called me a couple of months ago to ask me if, when the time came for him “to be put down,” if I would do the service. The call was out of the blue, but because of our long-time friendship, I said “Certainly, as long as it is not too soon.” It came much sooner than any of us expected.
I received the news of his death within about an hour after it had happened, on Sunday evening, January 31. His son, Scott, called me the next morning to ask me if I would do the service.
I was honored to do it.
Gil was a transformative person in Mississippi history. He was known as a progressive voice for a two-party state. His biography gives the details: candidate for state senate in 1966 and 1967; for the United States Senate in 1972; for Governor in 1975 and 1979; and for Lieutenant Governor in 1983. He also served as Federal Railway Administrator under President George Herbert Walker Bush and was Chair of the Amtrak Board. His passions, outside of his wife, Deanie, and son, Scott, and grandson, Gil, were the future of Mississippi, politics, and transportation. He was deeply involved in many business ventures, including car dealerships, transportation, and property development.
The actual requiem Eucharist was Friday, February 5, at St. Paul’s Church in his hometown of Meridian. The church was full and the internment of his ashes was later that afternoon.
Here is the note I put on Facebook yesterday:
There was an appropriately eerie moment today. The presence of the Spirit seemed palpable.
I was honored to officiate at the burial service for Gil Carmichael, our friend of more than 50 years (and the man who was responsible for Nora and me meeting 44 years ago). We had a moving service at his home parish, St. Paul’s, Meridian, and then traveled to rural Clarke County, to his family farm home (named “Nora”) in the Desoto Community.
Keep in mind that Gil loved trains. In fact, in addition to all his many civic involvements, he was a one-time Federal Railway Administrator (under Bush 41) and chair of the Amtrak board. He used to ride the train between his home in Meridian and one of his car dealerships in Tupelo.
As we gathered for the graveside, for the internment of his cremains, a bagpiper played “Going Home” from the second floor porch of the 19th century farmhouse. As the eerie sounds of the bagpipe wafted through the air, a train moved slowly down a track less than 100 yards away. The engineer sounded two blasts of his horn as the train moved slowly down the single rural rail. It was a poignant moment that touched us all. It was unplanned but wondrously appropriate.
I was afraid to see who was the engineer on the train.
Rest in peace, Gil.
PROPERS: BURIAL OF THE DEAD, RITE 2
TEXTS: ISAIAH 61:1-3; REVELATION 7:9-17; JOHN 5:24-27
PREACHED AT THE FUNERAL OF GIL CARMICHAEL AT ST. PAUL’S, MERIDIAN, ON FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2016
ONE SENTENCE: The vision which Gil shared with us is like the vision God has for us: One of hope, unity, and promise.
I have heard it said many times that Mississippi is not a state, it is a club.
That statement seems so true today. We are all here because of our relationships with Gil – relationships which span time, distance and circumstance.
I would dare anyone to show me a Mississippian who had six degrees of separation from Gil. For that fact, I suspect it would be hard to find any Mississippian who has two degrees of separation from him. He was peripatetic… omnipresent… everywhere.
We are here because of what I would call Gil’s “hidden hand.” He touched so many lives – all of us – frequently in ways that escaped public notice. He molded and formed a generation of leaders who determine the course of our communities, our state, and our nation.
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In determining the origins of illness, doctors talk about Patient Zero. With Gil, we can talk about Catalyst Zero.
For many, he was a beginning.
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We all have our personal stories – stories of how he touched and transformed our lives. Each of you has yours. I have mine.
Gil was special to each of us. I recall that even when he was in his 30s, my family called him Old Gil, because of that thick shock of prematurely grey hair he already was sporting.
I recall how he sponsored me in the 1965 Soap Box Derby. My car was named for his young son, the Flying Scott.
He was, for me, like he was for many of us here: A second father, a mentor, an encourager, a guide, an advocate.
He represented the best we could be. He was a hero in the Coast Guard – and his heroism was noted in Life magazine of the day, and his actions are memorialized in the current movie, The Finest Hours.
He saw the potential which lay nascent in many. I am told of his walking through his car dealership one time and hearing a secretary say to a co-worker, “I want to sell cars.” Gil stopped cold, pivoted in place and said, “Yes you will – now.” And her life was transformed.
There is story after story which follows that same theme. You probably can identify.
Part of the reason that Gil was such a transformative person in our lives was that he was a visionary. He could peer over the horizon and see what was possible.
I know Gil’s loyalty was definitely Republican, but Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his slain brother, Robert, seems so appropriate: Senator Kennedy quoted his brother as saying, “Some men see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’”
That captures Gil so well. Gil looked into the future and saw how things could be. He did that in his recovery work after Camille in 1969, in his work with HOPE (Highways Our Pressing Emergency), and in his days on the political stump and in service to his nation.
He was an anomaly in politics. He saw no barriers – racial, gender, social or otherwise. He saw the raw human potential in individuals and in this state. He was a modern-day St. Paul. He lived Paul’s words from Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female.”
He cast off fear, bigotry, and classism. He sought unity rather than division. He embraced hope. He pointed toward the possibilities. He set our sights on the shining city on the hill.
We would all do well to emulate him.
We would all do well to emulate him because his perspective was informed by a deep and profound faith. It was not the shallow, public, facile stuff that passes for faith today. It was deeper and more profound – a tap root for his life.
Many years ago he posed questions to me that caused my own personal journey to go deeper.
He did the same himself – always probing, asking, seeking deeper knowledge of the one to whom we give thanks today. He posed probing questions to our state, to our leaders, to her people. He called us to more… to better… to what was possible.
He read, he taught, he prayed – seeking guidance that would not only allow his life to be further transformed, but would lead to a transformed world.
His words, actions, and motives seem so in-line with Isaiah’s words 2,800 years ago:
“The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…”
The loss of that voice of hope… of that visionary perspective… is the reason we grieve today. Yet we do so even as we hear the words of the Psalmist: Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? Neither he nor we can escape the presence of the one who creates, sanctifies, and redeems us.
And as we grieve for the loss of our brother, we are reminded, too, of the Good News of Jesus’ words from John’s gospel: “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
We are a people of new life – a resurrection people. The radical, transformative hope that inspired and motivated Gil is very present for him now, and is breaking in to transform this world. We all should embrace that hope, and cast out the fear which divides us. We can fight it – or we can live it.
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I will finish with two quotations which seem so appropriate in bearing witness to a life faithfully, fully lived and shared.
First, in his eulogy for his brother, Ted Kennedy said, “Those of us who loved my brother and take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us, and what he meant to others, shall someday come to pass for all the world.”
I can only say, Amen. We can hope. We can live that hope. We can be that hope for others.
And for those in the trenches – where Gil served his state and nation – there is that wonderful quotation from a fellow Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, from a speech in Paris in 1910:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Thank God, Gil was in the arena. And Gil was in our lives. We have all been blessed beyond measure.
