Bill and Margaret

"In my father’s house are many mansions, I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again to take you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” 

From baptism to burial, and every celebration of life, the mission of every priest in a pulpit or behind a podium is to proclaim Christ crucified and resurrected, Jesus come to show and tell us how to live into the Godly image in which we are created; and to offer the hope of eternal life in one of those mansions in his Father's house.

Depending on your understanding of the Christian faith, you may visualize this afternoon, as I do, Bill Lee at last in that heavenly mansion with Margaret Baker Lee. 

You may or may not know me. Born and raised in Panama City, and growing up in St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, I am Thomas Carroll Weller, Jr., called various names over my life, Bubba as the oldest brother; Carroll Junior after my father: Tom as my college computer named me. In my Navy years, Commander Weller. For the past forty years, Father Tom. Bill and Margaret Lee were our across-the-street next door neighbors on West Beach Drive. They were wonderful just because of their lovingkindness, but also because from Time to Time Bill would knock at our back door with an armload of fresh collard greens he had just cut in his garden.

 

If I share some of my memories of Bill and Margaret, maybe your own memories will be stirred and bring joy to your day.

Bill, who, when Linda needed help with azaleas, Bill scheduled a full day, came over and cut and rooted over a hundred tiny azalea cuttings that grew successfully, and in the next few years Linda planted azaleas all over our property, and gave azalea plants to friends and loved ones.

Bill and Margaret were beloved neighbors to my parents for years before Linda and I moved into our old family home.

But my family history with Bill Lee goes way back beyond that. The 1936, 1936, hurricane destroyed my grandfather’s fish house, the Bay Fisheries building that was out on a pier where the jetty was at Frankford Avenue and West Beach Drive on St Andrews Bay. LandMark Condominiums are there today. If you don’t remember it, there’s a picture of that old fish house on the wall in the entryway at Harrison’s restaurant on the downtown marina.

Anyway, the 1936 hurricane destroyed that tin building and left everything on the Bay bottom. Bill Lee and a brother came down to the scene, dove up tin sheeting and dragged it ashore. On one dive, Bill found my grandfather’s adding machine and brought it up. My grandfather removed the cover, washed the salt off in fresh water, set it out to dry, and went on using it - - one of those old adding machines that you punch in the numbers, and pull the crank to register the transaction. That was 1936, Bill Lee was eleven years old. Our St Andrews families go way back!

My grandfather was still using that same adding machine in his office in a different fish house ten and twenty years later when I was growing up in St Andrews. 

All his life, Bill Lee was doing a kindness for someone. Bill was ten years older than I am, and ten years wiser, gentler, kinder.

Bill and Margaret in the nursery business all those years. 

Bill helping the city decide what weekend to designate Azalea Festival, and not laughing when the city chose a different weekend and got rained out. 

Bill helping the City of Panama City Beach with their selection and use of plants along the highway, and waving to me as he got in his Ford pickup to drive out to the beach and look after those plantings. He was so conscientious.

My mother in the real estate business helping Bill and Margaret Lee with the purchase of their new home at Oakland Terrace right after World War Two. So many things over the years, and you have your own memories of Bill. 

My family memories include Margaret and Betty Baker, red-headed teenage girls at St Andrew’s Episcopal Church when I was a young boy - and memories of the Baker family. Mr Baker coming straight from work to Wednesday evening church suppers in his U.S. Postal Service uniform. The collard greens Mrs Baker brought to our covered dish suppers at church all my growing up years. My mother never cooked collards at home because she did not like the aroma of them cooking, so growing up, Mrs Baker was my only source of collard greens. 

As he aged after Margaret died, Bill was an obedient soul: one day I saw him heading somewhere in his Pontiac Bonneville, and I asked him whether he’d seen some new building out on 23rd Street, He said,

 “I’m not allowed to drive on 23rd Street. The girls are strict about where I’m allowed to drive, and it’s just around here." He loved that Sara and Catherine looked after him.

But, again, my best memories will always be of Bill and Margaret Lee as the kindest neighbors anyone could ever have. And I like to visualize them together again in another life, where, as Jesus promises, there are many mansions. 

And now, as you remain seated, in peace let us pray to the Lord.

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Homily preached by the Rev Tom Weller at the funeral of Bill Lee. Sunday afternoon, May 19, 2024, Panama City, Florida.