ROB ALVORD’S FUNERAL

Yesterday, September 24, 2011, was the seventy-seventh birthday of one of Freddie's oldest and dearest friends, Robert Alvord. It was also the day of Rob's memorial service. His death from cancer was not unexpected. In fact, Rob had called Freddie late one night during the week before his passing to tell Fred that he was dying. He wanted to say good-bye, and to acknowledge the importance of their friendship to him.

After Rob died, Freddie was called to the Alvord house for a consultation about the music for his memorial service. Rob had left a list of his requests, so Freddie handled the negotiations with the organist at the church. Some of the selections he most wanted the guests to hear would have involved a full symphony orchestra, so Freddie and the music director worked out a reasonable compromise.

The event, which took place on a Saturday morning three weeks after the cremation, was like a movie for me. The family, preceded by the verger who led them up the aisle in a group, filled up the first three rows at St. Alban's church. Their appearance did not shout money. It merely murmured "very rich, very old money."

They were in fact just a bit underdressed, confident enough not to do the conventional thing. Jacqui wore ivory silk pants and an apple green silk tunic. I suddenly felt dowdy in the black weeds I keep for such occasions, which at my age, I'm sadly finding more and more useful. This clan, lean and mostly blond, bronzed with year-around tans, crushed by their obvious grief, nevertheless walked in with the assurance of people who know their place in this world if not the next.

Rob grew up in a prosperous family of three generations of lawyers who represented the railroad industry. For all I know, the patriarch may have been a robber baron, but the Alvord money and influence allowed Rob to indulge in other things besides lawyering. He was enthusiastic about music, sketching and painting, and writing poetry. Some months before he died, the book of poems he had written to his wife, one at a time, every day since their wedding, was published.

Thus did the Robert Alvords perfectly follow the family plan of Thomas Jefferson, which, roughly paraphrased, explained his vision: I practice politics that my son may be a philosopher, and his son may be a painter.

Rob prepped at St. Alban's, and went on to Dartmouth and then Harvard Law. He married well, had several golden children, divorced, then married the beauteous Jacqui and produced with her two more golden babes, all of who were present at the event.

Our rector did not conduct the service. For that job, the family imported the priest who had been Headmaster of St. Alban's School after the halcyon days when Rob was already a legend there. The school, just next door, had already been established earlier as one of the major threads in this event. Of the five people who spoke on Rob's behalf, four reminisced fondly about the days they shared there. They all stressed, unselfconsciously, that they had tried to follow the precepts laid down by their very excellent school, but that Rob was without dispute the best among them. At the homily, the priest said that if Rob had been a student in the British public school system, of which St. Alban's is a slightly more egalitarian model, he would undoubtedly have been voted "Best Boy."

The priest then segued into his sermon by saying that when he got word that Rob had died, he was on an annual vacation with French friends at their country place in the Provence. When he told his hosts about Rob’s passing, the host descended into the ancient cellar of the house and brought up a brandy that had been bottled by his grandfather. The label, written in his grandfather’s hand, read Eau de Vie, 1954. The priest then connected the image to the Gospel story of The Woman at the Well by saying that "Water of Life" is what Christ offered, and that it was always flowing freely, gushing toward eternal life, and that it was available to all. Rob and his tribe seemed to have been splashed with a generous amount, buckets and buckets of it.

After the service, the congregation was invited to a reception at the Alvord residence a few blocks away. It was a large, comfortable place, Kennedy-esque, a little rumpled and full of large old antiques and large old dogs, who wandered forlornly among the guests, looking bewildered and begging for affection.

We stood in line a long time to speak to Jacqui because the chauffeur, an old family retainer, was weeping inconsolably on her shoulder. The second son finally rescued her by saying she was needed in the kitchen. I thought that a servant weeping at the master’s passing suggested a virtuous life.

Freddie remarked under his breath that he had seldom seen so many WASPs in the same place. I said,” This surely isn't Temple Emmanuel." I went on to say something like you're looking at the American Dream, the crème de la crème, right out of Edith Wharton, and Louis Auchincloss. Rob was to the manor born, was informally and without dispute voted "Best Boy" at St. Albans, lived by the ideals of his class—loyalty, generosity, strong sense of civic duty, reverence for family life. He had lived seventy-seven virtuous years, then died reluctantly but with grace and dignity, in the bed and house to which he was born, heaped with honors and mourned by his large family and army of friends. Lord now lettest thou thy servant Robert—a leader of men, a lover of life, and a jolly good fellow—depart in peace.