Posts Tagged → Keith Oellig
The light that shines twice as bright lasts half as long
If you live long enough, you get to appreciate every minute alive more and more, because more and more, the people you know, love, work with, rely upon themselves fall prey to the end of all flesh. Some die unexpectedly and terribly, like my friend Dr. Holly Engelman, hit by a car while crossing Front Street in Harrisburg just days ago.
Others die of some unexpected disease or ailment. Several years ago, the state’s Furbearer Biologist, Tom Hardisky, had a massive heart attack while gardening. Tom was a friendly source of 24/7 inspiration and help to Pennsylvania trappers. And then one sunny morning, he was gone. In his early fifties.
My friend and fellow Dauphin County Planning Commission board member, Keith Oellig, died of a heart attack while stacking hay bales on his farm. In his mid fifties.
Live long enough, and the list just keeps growing. And today we add another to it: Janet Hodge.
Janet Hodge has been the long time webmaster for all of the web pages I own. She and I hit it off after just a couple minutes interviewing one another for the job, and the rest is history. Janet died a few days ago of a cancer she had been battling for a year. My web management needs are not so intense, and so her sickness resulted in just a couple delays here and there, with subjects that were not that important, anyhow. Her friendship was the best part of our relationship.
Janet Hodge is still shown on the Smithsonian Institute’s website as one of America’s living legacy people; a person who embodies some aspect of traditional American culture in a big way. To work with humble Janet was a big honor and enjoyment for me, and I will miss her technical support and her friendly camaraderie.
Here is her obituary, and some related links. Here.
Rest in peace, Janet Hodge. Yes, you died young at 66, but you also achieved more than most Americans could accomplish in two or three full lifetimes. And the light that burns twice as bright, lasts half as long.
Folks, don’t sit around wasting time; get out there in the world and leave your positive mark, leave a good legacy. Like Janet.
I took this photo in Rome. This is 1600’s street art, a reminder that death awaits us all
Keith Oellig, another American keeping America moving forward
Every day of his life, Keith Oellig was one of the few Americans who, rain or shine, kept America moving forward. He grew the crops and raised the beef that Americans across America take for granted every day that they simply buy and eat these products.
Raised on a central Pennsylvania farm with chores and work, work, work before play, Keith’s friendship was as strong as his nonstop work ethic. He was a dear and devoted friend to many fortunate people, including me, and he died unexpectedly last week from a life-long heart condition he managed as best he could until it caught him by surprise one last time. He was just 56 years old.
This essay is my way of memorializing this amazing human being, and saying goodbye.
Keith was a representation of everything the farming life is supposed to be – down to earth, honest, truthful, hard working, generous, natural, patriotic, devoted to community and fellow man. He served on many boards, including the Dauphin County Farm Bureau, the Central Dauphin East School Board, the Dauphin County Planning Commission, and others I can’t recall off the top of my head.
His heart was golden, always ready to do a kindness for someone, and the more distant the stranger the better. Almost every year he grew great patches of sweet corn and donated much of it to his church food pantry, and to any others in need. But they would have to pick it themselves. Straight out of the Bible, which is what inspired him, drove him, filled him. (Those friends who merely enjoyed sweet corn got the phone call that it was ripe about three days after everyone else in true need had had a shot at it)
Keith was politically active, but he had mixed feelings and thoughts about politics, because so much of it is divorced from the sacred walk of life whose values he cherished.
Every election he and I would run around his farms putting up signs, especially really big ones along the road frontages and both sides of I-81 by Penn National Race Track/ Hollywood [!?] Casino. And as hard as he worked putting them in, Keith would also grouse about career politicians, even about the person whose sign he was putting in. He even did it to me when I ran for state senate. Like out of a comedy movie: “Sure, I’ll help ya, and I’ll bet you’re going to be just as corrupt as everyone else. Now hurry up because we have a lot more signs to put in the ground.”
Keith and I worked as a team to fell dozens of dead and dying ash trees, and some oaks and poplars (see background), in an area where he wanted to expand the cattle pasture. I ran the chainsaw while he pushed with the front end loader. It was dicey and scary work, as his smashed windshield shows. A week later, a huge limb carved a gigantic V in that cab, but Keith just kept on, peering around either side of the destroyed metal and glass to see where he was going.