Teachers rate pretty high with me. Maybe it's because my mom was a teacher for most of her adult life. Or maybe it's because my wife has a math ed. degree. Regardless, I have always admired teachers who can take complex things and explain them in simple terms.
Carl Raymond Augustus Rice understood complex things. He worked on the Manhattan Project. He shared a patent on an ion separator. He retired as an Industrial Engineer with McDonnell Douglas. He could talk about Pascal's Line as easily as many people talk about their children.
But when I met Carl Rice in the summer of 1993, I did not immediately think of him as a complex man. The manner of his handshake, his greeting, and immediate acceptance of me (even though I was romantically pursuing his granddaughter at the time!) led me to believe he was a genuinely simple man, one worthy of being called "Grandpa" by many, even by a non-family member like me.
Grandpa loved complex things, but he always found simple enjoyment in them. For instance, he could identify many species of birds, whether by sight or sound alone, something that seems complex to me, but it was simply enjoyable to Grandpa (maybe that is why two of his granddaughters married men with the last name of Bird).
Grandpa could take a complex meal of meat, potatoes, vegetable, salad, bread, and more and make it simple - just mix it all up into one mash on his plate. "It all goes in the same pit!"
This amazing mind that could see through logical fallacies better than I could see through clean windows loved coming back to simple sayings designed to elicit laughs - "I haven't eaten since the last time!"
Games were a favorite for Grandpa. Just when you thought he was winding down late at night, he'd suddenly say "How about a game!" And it was always the "Bound to Win" team against the "Can't Be Beat". Yes, Grandpa was a simple man in all the right ways.
Because he possessed such a great mind for complex things, and yet had a simple enjoyment of life and people, Grandpa couldn't help himself - he had to teach. He taught Physics and Math for a couple of years, but the teaching environment he thrived in most was his 6th grade Sunday School class. Grandpa loved taking the complex ideas of theology and Scripture and making them simple enough for budding young minds to grasp. For over 25 years, Grandpa taught the 6th grade boys Sunday School class at the Greenville Free Methodist Church. But he didn't just teach the class and pass them on. He stayed involved in the boys' lives. He knew where they went to college. He attended their weddings. He told corny jokes to their kids.
There were other teaching environments, as well. Grandpa and Grandma hosted a college Bible study for students from Greenville College at their lake home for many years. Grandpa loved taking a grandchild or great grandchild out on the lake in the fishing boat where they would be a captive audience to his stories of growing up in South Africa and the lessons he'd learned through life. And of course, there were always teaching moments at the game table - whether it was Skip-Bo, Five Straight, or Boppity-Bop-Bop.
People can be complex. Their pasts, personalities, and passions can deeply affect who they are. Yet Grandpa loved them. If you were breathing, Grandpa wanted to like you. You weren't complex to him - it was simple.
As I sat through Grandpa's funeral on Tuesday laughing with my wife's extended family at the stories told, or tearing up over a touching moment, one thing became very, very clear about Grandpa. This complex man who knew so many complex things had many passions in life (if alliterated they would be family, fishing, friends, food, and fun) yet one passion rang out over all of them. The center of Grandpa's life was simple - it was Jesus.
Greg Groves, the minister who gave the message during the service used 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8 as his key passage. It was very fitting to have Greg speaking because he had been one of those 6th grade boys so many years ago learning under the teaching of Carl Raymond Augustus Rice. And now Greg is the youth pastor at the church where one of Grandpa Rice's great-grand-daughters is in the youth group. Greg saw Grandpa throughout the years living out 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8:
"[W]e were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us."
Grandpa truly share his life. Whether it was with his wife of almost 65 years, or leading a group of 6th graders to Chicago, or hosting a collection of college students, or engaging his grandkids and great-grandkids in another game, Grandpa shared his life. And in the process of sharing his life, he shared Jesus. Grandpa loved to tell people the gospel, but he didn't have to. He lived it.
There is so much more I could share about Grandpa, but that would make this post too complex and deny the message I want to convey. Grandpa possessed an amazing mind and a capacity to learn that he held onto until the very end before a heart attack and stroke claimed his body. But it is not his complexity that will be remembered. It was his simplicity. His "simpleness" had a power to it - a power that could befriend you, encourage you, rebuke you, and forgive you, all in one sentence.
Carl Raymond Augustus Rice: husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, friend, teacher, game player, fisherman, engineer, mathematician, reader, but most of all - disciple of Jesus.
