IT'S ICE CREAM CONE DAY FOR THE UNRUH CLAN

We eat cones of ice cream on March 8 each year in tribute to my father. My brother Murray began this tradition a few years ago.

Ed Unruh loved ice cream. I was ten years old when he took me to a junior hockey game. On our walk home we stopped in at an ice cream parlour and he bought us each a cone. We had no sooner reached the corner of the block when he was finished his cone, looked at me and said, "That cone tastes like more," so we turned around and went back for a second cone. So we emphasize more. Kids can dip their own, and more than one.

He loved Ice Cream. It was an inexpensive treat in the old days. A triple scoop cost .25, yes, twenty-five cents. My mom worked the counter at Avondale Dairy one year which served the family well. Into his senior years when we visited one another and we were en route anywhere, ice cream signage caught his attention, and he would suggest that we stop. No one objected.

Edward Richard Unruh was my dad. Born to immigrant Mennonite refugees from Crimea, Ukraine in 1915 and bestowed with English given names to mark his new homeland.  Proudly Canadian, in 1942 my father enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force while living within a pacifist culture. I was an infant. He and mom raised three of us, all sons. He had acquired a grade eleven education but no skilled trade. He earned a living using his body. He was 5 feet six inches in height but in his youth and into his forties he was a strong man. After his post WWII departure from the prairies, he found employment in Ontario factories, staying with one company for well over forty years until his retirement. He worked on an assembly line at Anthes Imperial building furnaces in St. Catharines. His three sons grew up, received educations and were able to move forward. At about his forty year mark in the company, we three asked him, "Dad, why did you stay there doing that hard work for all those years?" His reply was, "I did it for my boys." He aspired to little more than being a good man, a good husband, a good father, a good worker and a good friend. He was a man with a simple faith in God. He read the Bible. He trusted preachers. He raised three boys who became preachers/missionaries. He loved us, and he loved our wives and he loved our children, and he loved his great-grandchildren.  His legacy entails far more than a love for ice cream.

LEAVING A LEGACY - MAY THEY FIND US TO HAVE BEEN FAITHFUL

Both maternal and paternal sides of my heritage derive from a persecuted people group known as Mennonites who found refuge in Empress Catherine II's Russia and were permitted to establish themselves in colonies in Crimea. Stalin changed that. Researching my paternal ancestral tree has taught me that in every generation going back into the 1700’s, there was a missionary, a pastor, a church elder, a theologian/teacher. From a family of seven siblings living in Temir Bulat, Crimea in the late 1800’s my grandfather was one of three who emigrated to North America. Coming through the northern states to Saskatchewan where he settled with a new bride. In Hepburn, my father and I were born. I began my personal journey of faith when I was ten years of age. As I write in 2010, fifty seven and one half years have passed. I am more convinced today than I was as a boy that an exclusive trust in the Son of God is imperative. Further, the legacy of faith which I received has been nurtured far beyond a superficial institutional belief to something enduringly exceptional. I am convinced that I must leave my children and specially my grandchildren an example of faith and the prescription for making faith their own.

American recording vocalist Steve Green hit his stride during the 1980’s and one of his songs was ‘Find us Faithful.’ These lyrics speak my sentiments. I have linked two YouTube files where you can hear him singing this today, twenty-five years later, and also when he sang it as a young man. Of course the studio settings are a wee bit churchy and clichéd but appreciate this for the tune and the words.

Find Us Faithful - Steve Green
We're pilgrims on the journey
Of the narrow road
And those who've gone before us line the way
Cheering on the faithful, encouraging the weary
Their lives a stirring testament to God's sustaining grace

Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses
Let us run the race not only for the prize
But as those who've gone before us
Let us leave to those behind us
The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives

Chorus:
Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful
May the fire of our devotion light their way
May the footprints that we leave
Lead them to believe
And the lives we live inspire them to obey
Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful

After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone
And our children sift though all we've left behind
May the clues that they discover and the memories they uncover
Become the light that leads them to the road we each must find

Repeat Chorus

* Steve Green sings it for the Gaither Vocal Band
* Steve singing it as a younger man when the song was first introduced.
* A link to Steve Green’s Web Site and Foundation

Steve Green (born August 1, 1956 in Portland, Oregon) is a Contemporary Christian music singer notable for his vocal range (tenor) and flexible solo style. Over his twenty-five year career, Green has been honored as a four-time Grammy Award nominee, seven-time Dove Award winner, has had 13 No. 1 songs, and has sold over three million albums.