Andy's Eulogy

In July, Andy was diagnosed with cancer. Within less then three months it took his life. During the period of his failing health, I and many others had the opportunity to converse with him on his perspective about this situation. When I spoke to others about Andy’s condition, I could often tell whether they had talked to Andy themselves. Those who had not saw a terrible tragedy; but others who had spoken to him were comforted by his broad view of not just this life but also eternity and by his ability to face this challenge smiling.

Were I to begin this eulogy with Andy’s birth and end with his passing, it would not and could not explain his temperament over the last several months and it would not do justice to his great life. Those who know Andy also know he has the ability to be spiritual without being preachy. He can make just about anyone comfortable in his presence. He loves the sinner as well as the saint, and all the rest of us who are somewhere between.

With that, I begin with what Andy believes and what animates him, even now as his body is laid to rest and his spirit moves on. We lived with our Heavenly Father as His spirit children before we came to this life. He loved us, and we loved him. Because of His love for us, God prepared a plan for us to gain a body and have experiences here on earth so that we could learn to walk by faith. Andy grew and developed as a spirit child of God and made decisions that qualified him for great blessings. With other valiant spirits, Andy Hogge stood with Jesus Christ in defense of God the Father’s plan of salvation and against Satan who desired to thwart God’s plan. What Andy became there was the main ingredient for what he was in this mortal life. Because of his valiance in the premortal life, he was chosen to come to earth in this era, enjoy the blessings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, participate in family life at its fullest, and have a positive influence on others, one by one.

Andy was born in Sacramento in the Spring of 1963, trailing clouds of glory. (See Wordsworth.) Steve was almost five, and I was two. He quickly found his place in the family and enjoyed his childhood. He told me many times that he had everything a person could want as a child, especially loving and honorable parents.

All through his life, Andy loved everyone, and everyone loved him. As a child, he was the cutest, with those distinctive dimples, and the wittiest, even when he wasn’t trying.

Growing up with Andy in the household was like living a season of Leave it to Beaver. Andy had the ability to get himself in trouble and, at times, he was mischievous. But he always did so with a smile on his face, with those dimples showing, never with malice, and always with his shirt meticulously buttoned to the top.

Morrison Creek flows behind our parents’ home. Most of the time it is about 15 inches deep, but sometimes it is 15 feet deep. That creek always fascinated Andy. He spent hours down there with his brothers or his friends, exploring up and down the banks and in the stream. He learned to catch the crawdads with his hands. A pipe crossed the creek and usually the creek flowed under but not over the pipe. Andy became expert at lying on his stomach on the pipe, reaching under the pipe, and grabbing crawdads. He put the crawdads in a bucket until he was done, then he counted them and dumped them back into the creek so he could catch them again another time.

As he advanced into his teenage years, his fascination for Morrison Creek morphed into a love of fishing. Famous for not catching fish, he spent hour after hour on the banks of the Sacramento River or some other local waterway. I guess he had no malice for the fish either, because he seemed to enjoy his fishing trips as much when he caught nothing. Before he could drive, Mom would take him to Garcia Bend or some other point on the river and drop him off, with or without a friend, and let him fish there for awhile before going to pick him up. Getting his driver’s license gave him new freedom to go to new fishing holes.

Andy’s fishing highlighted his desire to be alone on occasion. It didn’t bother him to be out in the middle of nowhere, with no communication with the rest of the world – that was long before the day when you could take a cell phone just about anywhere and call home. But that desire for isolation was balanced by his desire to be with those he loved. Andy despised an empty home. On the infrequent occasions when no one else was there, he would go to a friend’s house. We could always find Andy; it was just a matter of checking all of the likely places.

Andy had a special connection with the elderly and infirm. They were drawn to him and he to them. When Dad was a bishop, which was much of the time Andy was growing up, we often visited people in the ward who could not come to church. I remember looking for something, anything, to do other than spend time talking to these special people. But Andy would sit next to the bed or sidle up to the person in the chair and show real attention and love.

Mom always had words of encouragement for Andy. She nurtured his most noble attributes. Dad’s relationship with Andy was quieter but equally motivating. Dad’s solid and faithful example was something Andy always noticed and often brought to my attention.

Andy didn’t particularly like school, but he did well, when he went. More than studies, he enjoyed his friends. He not only had his own friends, but he was also popular with Steve’s friends and my friends. My friends liked Andy more than they liked me. And he expanded his friendships to our extended family, spending time, especially in the summer, with his cousin Mark and his family.

One evening when Andy was no older than about 8 years old, Steve and a visiting friend decided to sleep in sleeping bags in the backyard instead of in the house. Andy wanted to join them, so they agreed, but without Andy’s knowledge they slipped a large toad into the bottom of Andy’s sleeping bag. When Andy climbed into the bag, the toad moved, touching Andy’s leg. Andy jumped up and out of the sleeping bag and ran into the house. Unfortunately, the screen door had not been open. Andy ran right through it. He also punched a hole in the front door on another occasion after we tossed him into the front yard in his underwear and locked the door. Steve and I played plenty of other practical jokes on Andy, and later Andy would laugh about how funny they were. But he would never retaliate. He bore no malice.

As a child, Andy showed an aptitude for music. He listened to Mom and Dad’s old records and sang along. His favorite was, You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog, which he would sing at the top of his lungs at the dinner table. On a trip to Salt Lake City as a family when Andy was still quite young, we went to the rehearsal of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Andy sat transfixed with the beauty and spirit of the music. When it was time to go, he didn’t want to leave. He learned to play the cello in elementary school and junior high. But his first musical love was the guitar. Hours he spent in his room, playing along with Doobie Brothers records. Every time I hear the opening bars of China Grove, I think of hearing it over and over again coming from Andy’s room. He rarely played in front of other people. Yet when he was about 14 years old, we convinced him to join the Galena Street East band. Occasionally, he would have a guitar solo in a show. Andy was good at these solos, but his buddy on the drums, Brad Burnett, or his friend on the trumpet, Michael Iuele, had to lean over and turn up Andy’s amplifier so he could be heard.

Many of Andy’s friendships as a teenager came from his association with the band and the performers of Galena Street East. In particular, he met Coleen Ford. Apparently, he liked her enough to want to show off a little. Taking her home one day, Andy hit the gas in his Oldsmobile Cutlass going up a freeway on-ramp, misjudged the corner, lost control, and hit the abutment, totaling his car. Fortunately, no one was injured.

Two of Andy’s idiosyncrasies combined to make high school very hard for him: he has never liked meetings (and school is basically an all-day meeting) and he very much disliked getting out of bed in the morning. Making it harder to go to school, he learned he could make some pretty good money, for a teenager anyway, by working instead of going to school. As soon as he learned there was a test he could take to get out of high school, he took it, passed it, and never returned.

You might think it ironic that today we hold a meeting to honor the memory of someone who did not like meetings. But there are two reasons, I think, that Andy wanted us to come here today: one, this service serves to comfort us, and, two, he probably would not have to attend. I say “probably” because the veil is thin.

When Andy was 16 years old, a little brother came into his life. David McMillan Hogge was born with serious genetic difficulties. Soon after his birth, our parents adopted him. David required 24-hour care, and Andy helped with that care. Through David, Andy learned much about loving whom you serve and the importance of the plan of salvation for a little boy who had no chance to live a long and full mortal life but, nevertheless, came to this earth as a son of God and an heir to exaltation. David died just 11 months later, but he left a permanent impression on Andy’s heart.

Not long after David passed away, Jason, Amy, and Joycey joined us, completing our family. Andy, especially in the past few months, has had a special insight into how we fit together as a family – every one of us having his or her place, eternally.

Rebellion was never Andy’s propensity. The extent of it was moving out of Mom and Dad’s home and into the basement apartment at Grandma and Grandpa Stowers’ home. Never one to be forced to conform, he intentionally left it undecided what he would do with his future. One day, lying in bed at the apartment and thinking about his life, his failure to move forward came crashing down on him. He realized that, although he wasn’t doing anything wrong, he also wasn’t doing anything right. He needed to overcome stumbling blocks, such as avoiding meetings and sleeping in, and become a better person, for himself, not for anyone else. As he recently described it to me, he made some commitments that day that, though hard for him, allowed him, over the next 25 years, to become what he is today.

That day he went home and shaved off his beard. When Mom gave him a questioning look, he said, “I can’t have a beard if I am going to serve a mission.”

Endowed with power from on high, Andy labored honorably in Idaho as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sharing the Gospel and lifting lives. Within about a year after he returned from his missionary service, Andy made the best decision of his life. Somehow, he convinced Coleen to marry him. She had just finished her coursework at BYU when they were married in the Spring of 1985 in the Oakland Temple. They headed for Los Angeles where Coleen had an internship with a retailer and Andy sold jewelry. During the time they were in Southern California, Andy attended school briefly at a junior college. But the world, not a building, was Andy's classroom.

Andy had an entrepreneurial inclination. For many years, he ran his own business, installing flooring and carpets and cleaning carpets. It was hard work with long hours and took its toll on him physically. A few years ago, he accepted the opportunity to work for Jewell Restoration as an estimator. He found there the ability to apply his numerous skills to help an already successful company maintain its prominence. He also found in the work a degree of financial success and associations with people who respected his considerable business and interpersonal abilities.

Through his missionary work and work with the youth of the church, Andy became an interesting and effective teacher of the Gospel. He taught early-morning seminary for several years and had many other opportunities to instruct. When a lesson was needed and no one was available, Andy was ready. And his subject was more often than not the plan of salvation. Where did we come from? Why are we here? And where will we go after this life is over? The answers to these questions were important and clear to my brother. I have felt impressed to tell you that Andy’s skills in teaching the Gospel will be utilized to their fullest in the Spirit World.

Andy spent many hours earning a living and a few more playing golf or enjoying the outdoors with friends, but his real desire was to be with his family. Melanie was born while Coleen and Andy were living in that same Stowers basement apartment where Andy had made the commitment to live a meaningful life. Natalie, Madelyn, and Neal came along after Andy and Coleen bought a home in suburbia.

Coleen is a bright, educated, caring, and determined person. One of the great blessings of Andy’s life has been that, when he had to be away working or was lacking in enthusiasm to do such things as lead family prayer or scripture study, Coleen took up the slack. Mainly, they have worked as a team, building a loving family and helping their children to become the great people they are today.

One of the great traditions and memories we have as a family is camping together each summer at Mendocino on the northern California coast. It gives us a chance to get away from the pressures and deadlines of the world and concentrate on being a family. The smell of the ocean, mingled with redwoods, and the chill of the air sitting around the campfire have become for us unifying and uplifting sensations. As Melanie describes it, Andy was serene when he was at Mendocino.

Natalie remembers her father as a warm and caring person. When something went wrong in her life, Andy would not get upset. He would calmly help her work through it. I think she may have been referring, in part, to the time she wrecked his truck.

Madelyn appreciated the time Andy dedicated to his children. She enjoyed having her father watch her play soccer.

As an only son, Neal saw a side of Andy with which the girls did not have as much experience. Four-wheeling, hunting, fishing, and roughing it brought together father and son.

A week before Andy passed away, Neal turned 12, ready to be ordained a deacon. Declining rapidly and having difficulty speaking, Andy doubted he could participate. On Sunday, however, Andy got out of bed, put on slacks, shirt, and tie and sat in a wheelchair in the family room. He placed his hands on Neal’s head and, with much effort, conferred upon his son the priesthood and pronounced an inspired and eloquent blessing. Bishop Jensen then blessed the sacrament, and Neal passed the bread and water to his father for the last time in his mortal existence.

Over the past few weeks, Andy spent every last ounce of energy to complete his mortal mission. Although glory awaits, our God-given desire is to cling to mortality. Andy’s dear wife and his children ministered to him in the most holy sense. I could feel the thinness of the veil and the sanctifying presence of the Holy Ghost in their home. I truly felt I was standing on holy ground.

Andy’s life has followed a pattern that I should note here. The ancient prophet King Benjamin said, “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”

In this passage are four important verbs relating to overcoming the world and coming unto Christ. I call them the verbs of exaltation: yield, put off, become, and submit. Yield to the Spirit, which influences us for good. Put off the natural man. Become a saint. And finally, submit to the Lord. As a teenager, Andy recognized he needed to improve his life, yielding to the influence of the Spirit. He moved forward affirmatively, serving a mission and marrying Coleen. Weakness by weakness, he worked to make them strengths. And finally, he submitted to the will of the Lord. This last attribute has enabled him to meet adversity with cheer and hope. His progress in this pattern was not always constant; none of us is perfect. But the general upward trajectory of Andy’s life was unmistakable.

A few years ago, I went to a funeral with my parents. It was for our next-door neighbor, Bob. The minister addressed the family and said that, although Bob was a good man, we don’t know where he has gone or whether there even is an existence after death. Bob’s wife and daughter hung there heads in despair. The family had invited Dad to speak at the funeral. He got up, and he also addressed Bob’s family. He said, “I know where Bob went.” Bob’s wife and daughter perked up and listened intently as Dad explained the plan of salvation.

I am here to say, “We know where Andy went.” “Now, concerning the state of the soul between death and the resurrection . . . the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body . . . are taken home to that God who gave them life.” (Alma 40:11.)

Andy has moved on to the next phase of an eternal existence. He has work to do there and will continue to progress as he prepares for the rest of his family to join him. Eventually, he will be reunited with his family and resurrected unto glory, all thanks to the atonement of Jesus Christ.

I love my brother and will miss him until we meet again. May the Spirit of the Lord comfort us in our mourning. May the Lord give us strength to overcome the natural man and claim the blessings the Lord offers.