LELAND EDSEL MOORE - July 25, 1924 – March 4, 2009
Leland Edsel Moore was called home to be with the Lord on March 4, 2009 at the age of 84 years. He was born in Wooster, Arkansas on July 25, 1924 and was preceded in death by his parents Oscar Leland and Bina Ford Moore and his only brother, Joe Moore. Edsel was a current resident of Placerville, having moved here the year before his passing. He first lived in El Dorado Hills at Sterling Ranch and most recently at Gold Country Retirement Community in Placerville.
Edsel leaves to mourn his passing a daughter and son-in-law, Ed and Karen Good, of Pleasant Valley, CA. and three grandchildren: Eric Edsel Glenn and wife Margie of Phoenix, AZ; Jody Michelle Leavell and husband Phillip of Hamilton, MT; and Cody Dale Glenn and his wife Shannah of Rocklin, CA. He leaves his first son-in-law Chuck Glenn of Forsythe, MT. and four precious great grandchildren: Alex, Kaylee and David Glenn of Phoenix, AZ. and Elijah Glenn of Rocklin, CA. He will be sorely missed by his one sweet sister, Valta Faye Burnett and two nieces Judy Lehman and husband Abe and Sheri Burnett, all of Conway, AR.
After Pearl Harbor, at the age of seventeen, Edsel joined the Navy and served as a radio-gunner on aircraft carriers in the Atlantic during World War II where he flew Avengers and Wildcats. He survived the sinking of the U.S.S. Block Island and came home on survivor’s leave to marry his one and only true love Barbara June Blower, his wife of 51 years until the Lord called her home in 1995.
Edsel was a district manager for Dolly Madison Cakes and an avid golfer. He served for many years as a deacon for the 1st Baptist Church of Pico, CA. He retired from Interstate Brands Corporation after 31 years. After retirement, along with his grandson Eric, he began a successful food brokerage business, Glenmoor Brokerage of Phoenix, AZ. He was a lifetime member of the U.S.S. Card and U.S.S. Block Island Associations.
He would like to be remembered as a Christian man who loved God, family and country. He had family devotions daily and believed in the power of prayer.
A celebration of his life will be held on March 20 at 3:00 PM in Mesa, AZ at Mountain View Memorial Gardens with military honors where he will be laid to rest by his dear wife, Barbara. Memorials may be made in memory of Edsel Moore to Gideon’s International or Marshall Foundation, P. O. Box 1996, Placerville, CA.
I sat on “The Cheese” in Washington Park this morning. I did an ample share of my growing up in a house directly across the street and in this neighborhood. It is almost hard to remember when my neighborhood was defined within these several city blocks. Back then, I distinguished between one area of town and another. Now I slip between zones superficially aware not of how big this place is, but of how proportional - part claustrophobic, part comforting - an optional itch under memories prying fingers. The whole town of Eugene now seems like one cozy denizen from another era, a place I can go, or not.
Last night I spent at my sister’s place. She and her husband went to Portland to celebrate their 22 years together. Before the kids woke this morning and went for coffee. I took Laura’s dog, Josie, with me. Josie loves car rides. I considered taking her to the dog park but her back leg is on the mend so she is pretty much three-legged right now. Instead we headed over to Washington Park, to the Cheese!
Josie ranged with a spry three-legged skip, nose to the ground tail swung high in the air, two ends of a tight-rope-walkers pole correcting her momentary loss of balance. I approached the Cheese and circled. After a couple of circumnavigation, a emotional megatransect or two, and poking my head in and out of the holes, I climbed up. Atop I sat down and enjoyed my hot coffee and the cool morning - pounded pewter skies, bud bare trees, green grass, coffee vapor and water present in the air but not yet organized enough amass and fall as drops. Memories, like the air this morning, drift invisible as odorless vapor in every direction. I inhale deliberately.
In one direction sits my childhood house. In another a house where my brother Steve kissed his wife for the first time. Below, in the belly of the Cheese, a physical sense of the hours I spent reading, hiding, playing, meeting friends, and dreaming. And around the edges the 800 meter loop where I trained with my Mom to run the 10K Butte to Butte.
In every direction there are memories, in every action and thought we build and shape more.
Steve’s son, my nephew Taylor, used to love to say “Cheese”. He didn’t say it with a big grin like someone was taking his picture, or in any obvious cheesy way. That isn’t his style. Instead he delivered “Cheese” without expressed emotion and often in response to what the adults around him considered serious conversation. I always chuckled. Sometimes his “Cheese” would be insistent. The more you wanted a serious response, the more resolutely but with whimsical melancholy he would reply “Cheese”. Taylor’s “Cheese” was disarming and funny and provided amazing way to put into perspective almost any situation or moment. Of course, to all this analysis he would probably respond, “Cheese”.
Back at Laura’s house I browse over the camera phone pictures I took of the Cheese. Isabel wakes up and almost immediately starts brewing up pancakes. She takes my order, (one Mickey Mouse head pancake and two snowman pancakes please) and I invite her over to look at the Cheese. Isabel says the Cheese used to be scary. It comes out in one long breath… “I love the Cheese but it used to scare me when you are little and you go with your mother who is chaperoning your older brothers elementary school outing and stand next to the Cheese and see all the older kids climbing and sliding down and worming their way around the holes you look up at it and it is huge and it is scary...and what is it anyway?! It has holes in it like that one kind of cheese but it’s yellow.'
Isabel goes on tell me she thinks the Cheese also looks like giant pencil shavings. She’s right. It does. It also looks like a beached whale carcass. A jet engine. Something from the imagination of Tolkien or Lewis or Seuss. And it look likes cheese too.
In reality the Cheese is a concrete structure; a cross between playground toy and 1960’s or 1970’s modern sculpture piece. It was out of place then and it is even more out of place now. Insurance would make this sort of playground toy impossible today. It is too big, too slick, to hard, too freeform and too odd. All those things of course, make it perfect.
I don’t ever recall ever being scared of the Cheese. But I’ve had some memories that have seemed overwhelming at certain times. As if I was living in those memories not simply remembering those things in the present. Memories, like an itch, are constant. Remembering, like itching, is optional. And extremely malleable. What can one day seem a memory of insurmountable size can be a playtoy the next. We view every memory from the present and so in one sense they are not memories at all, simply things we choose to remember in the present. Or as Taylor may say, “Cheese”.
For more on the Cheese see, http://wikimapia.org/6634244/The-Cheese or http://wikimapia.org/6634235/Washington-Park. I’ve posted my photo album at, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JOdAiHnoZI
