MEMORIAL
An Ode to the Bursar
87 Years, a Million Stories
One of the best traits of the Isphordings is that they’re extraordinarily easy to please. One time Jill and I were staying in some dumpy hotel down in Tennessee. We had arrived after a late-afternoon drive and we were starving. We came around a corner and way off in the distance we saw a red and white sign that simply said “Mexican Food.” Jill looked at it wistfully and said, “That looks delicious.”
Simple Pleasures
That easy-to-please nature came directly from Donny. The list of things Donny needed to be completely satisfied with his life was uncommonly short. A good filet, a cold Budweiser, a Ritz cracker with a heap of Jif on top, golf on Sunday with his crew, Sal and his three sporty, beautiful girls by his side, and maybe, just maybe a cigarette or two.
As anyone who knew him came to cherish, “simple pleasures” was Donny’s motto, his approach to life, and what he liked most to share with others. Donny’s greetings were simple, as were his jokes. They were just funnier that way.
Every time I saw him greet Ben Carroll it was always with the exact same three words, “You’re the man.” Ben loved to play along by replying back, “No Papa, you’re the man.”
Watching him interact with Ben and the other grandkids was to see him in his element. He loved telling them jokes, and seeing if he could trip them up with his latest question about world affairs or a new mathematical equation. “Lily darlin’, I got one for ya. What’s two plus two, minus three?” Hearing him celebrate a correct answer with a raucous high five was the highlight of any family dinner.
Donny helped a couple generations of kids get through Xavier. I can’t tell you how many people have told us that there’s no way it would have happened without him. Donny was a quiet observer, and a great listener. Whenever an XU student explained the reason they needed just a few more days before he cashed that check, he’d always acquiesce. It’s a minor miracle that Xavier is still in business.
The only extravagance Donny ever wanted was a Cadillac. He was so happy when he finally got one. When he bought it he made sure it was the biggest, goldest cruiser he could find. I always imagined him pulling out his wallet, made of nothing more than a rubber band, and paying for the entire thing in cash, licking his thumb between each hundred-dollar bill. While he had a couple other Cadillacs after that first one, eventually he switched to a Chevy Equinox, a simple guy car.
One of Donny’s favorite simple pleasures was every minute he got to spend in northern Michigan. And we loved being there with him. Donny was a champion chair napper. With his napping spot right in the middle of the front yard of whatever house we had rented that year, he made the perfect target for me and Bill and the kids to shoot water balloons at from the other side of the house. We’d fill up an entire bucket and launch one right after the other, sending Will, Ben, and Becker to the front yard to help us get really dialed in. Donny would just sit there with balloons smacking the ground all around him and literally never flinch.
I never saw the guy lose his cool, even after spending a week in sometimes cramped quarters with a bunch of kids running in a hundred different directions. Will and Ben were howling at the moon one night in a particularly beautiful house we rented in the south arm of Walloon. The master bedroom was right in the front of the house, next to a fire pit. After everybody else went to bed they built a bonfire that was so huge and so bright that it woke Donny up from a deep sleep. He sauntered out into the front yard around 2:30am, looked up at that fire, and very calmly said, “you guys might want to put that one out.”
Donny’s favorite person to talk to was Donny. One year at Walloon, while he sat in a white plastic chair in front of a house rented from the Corbett’s, wearing a bathing suit from Stein Mart, Jill heard him mutter to himself, “I wonder what all the poor people are doing?”
Despite his later-in-life physique, Donny was an amazing swimmer. So good that when he reported for duty in Korea they took one look at that lanky body and said, “This one’s a lifeguard.”
Bulletproof
But his life motto belied the fact that he was literally bulletproof.
Donny reveled in telling anybody who would listen the story about being in a bar in Korea when another guy at the bar took out a knife, opened the blade, and threw it straight down at Donny’s shoe, splitting his big toe right down the middle. I’m not sure exactly what Donny said to the guy in response, but I always imagined him looking at him with a knife sticking straight up out of his foot and saying, “What, that’s all you got?”
When you’re bulletproof you can eat, drink, and smoke whatever you want. Donny was the only human that any of us have ever met who, with a completely clear conscience could buy a cruller at Servatti’s, slather butter on top, have about six pieces of bacon on the side, and then go outside for a cig to top if all off.
I met Donny the old fashioned way, when Jill took me to visit them on Totten Way. I’ll never forget that introduction, mostly because of the ashtray on the counter that some artisan had carefully emblazoned with “Don’s Butts.” You know you’re a pro when you have a personalized ashtray.
Despite rarely getting his heart rate over 100 beats a minute, he outlived each of his siblings by roughly 30 years. The only place Donny truly hated was the hospital. Which is good, because he never spent a day there. It was through sheer force of will that he was able to pass away at home…in a comfortable chair in front of one of the biggest TV’s you could fit in the basement. Exactly like he wanted to.
Don & Sal
There are some couples that are so famous we all know them by their first names: Sonny and Cher, Johnny and June, and of course Don and Sal. Those two names fit like a glove for 61 years. When you look at their wedding photos you see a beautiful 22 year-old pixie and a dashing 26 year-old athlete. Both young at heart, nobody EVER called them Mr. and Mrs. Isphording; it was always “Don” and “Sal,” no matter who you were.
Donny and Sal weren’t the outwardly romantic type, but any time somebody would tell a story about the two of them and the “good old days,” Donny would get that mischievous glint in his eye and you could instantly tell how happy he was with their decision to spend their lives together.
These two were made for each other, and they loved taking care of each other. Sal’s gas tank was never a single drop less than halfway full. Sal had the blazer Donny is wearing today cleaned about three months ago. You can never be too prepared.
Donny and Sal practiced what today they’d call “free range” parenting. Back then, they just called it “parenting.” Thank God they did, because that’s how you end up with an Olympian, a Dancing Queen, and a Dude all in the same family.
Speaking of the Dancing Queen, while I know Donny hated to leave Sal behind, I’m guessing last Monday was the happiest day of his life. I think his absolute hardest day was when he had to say goodbye to Mon Cheri, his Jen Jen. When Sal left for mass on the 18th anniversary of Jenny’s passing, three days before he died, Donny said to Sal, “Tell her I’ll see her soon.”
Reunited last week, I bet they shared a big hug, cracked a cold Budweiser, and started swapping stories about everything that’s happened over the last 18 years. I can hear him getting all loud and excited as I speak.
Back to the Lake
If you’re looking for any of us this July, you’ll find us on the shores of Walloon, cooking steaks on the grill and drinking many Bud heavies in Donny’s honor. We’ll hyperventilate as we tell the story of the time a chipmunk ran straight up Donny’s pant leg while he was taking a nap and he very calmly shook it off (“get out of there!”) and went right back to sleep. We’ll all say “talk to me bones” when we shake the LCR dice. And we’ll try to swim as well as he did, but we won’t even come close.
