Eulogy for Nicholis Gatanis
written by the sons and daughters of Nick & Middie
written by the sons and daughters of Nick & Middie
Hello everyone - thank you all for coming today. And thank you to the Riverview United Methodist Church for providing the services and space for celebrating our father’s life.
For those who don’t know me, I am Donald Gatanis, the 7th of 8 children of Nick and Middie. I am speaking on behalf of all of my brothers and sisters (Kathy, Bob, Beth, Paul, Helen, and Doug) and celebrating with you today the life of our father, Nicholis Gatanis.
Hopefully I can share a few stories about our Dad today that will leave you with a sense of who he was and how important he was to us. And how much we loved him.
So, when I say “Dad” it’s almost impossible not to say “Mom and Dad”. You can’t say one without the other. You can’t think of one without the other. They loved each other and they loved and lived for their children. And we loved them both dearly. They were (to borrow from a recent movie) “everything everywhere all at once” for us. They showed us how to appreciate what we have, earn what we need, and take advantage of what we are given. So, although today we speak about our father’s life — and how he cut the cloth of our upbringing — our mother was the needle and thread that sewed us together.
Dad came from a VERY large Greek family. He was also the 7th son of 12 siblings - and the bonds he maintained throughout his life with his brothers and sisters were strong. He loved to talk about his family and we, as kids, loved to hear his stories around the dinner table. We soaked them up — we were wide-eyed as we listened to detailed stories of Dad growing up during the Depression and playing in the streets of Deepwater, New Jersey — and then having to live in a tenement house on the lower east side of New York City where he also spent a short time in an orphanage while his father earned money selling apples from a cart on the Bowery. Then there were - what he called - his “potato peeling days” as a Navy gunner aboard the USS Princeton that was docked off the coast of Cuba after World War II had ended. There was also the brief trip to California after he left the Navy to see if he could break into movies and become the next Cary Grant (to his dismay he quickly realized there were hundreds of Cary Grants roaming the streets of Hollywood). And then how he and his brother Harry decided to head to Florida together in 1948 to “make it big”. Well, he made it big alright, he met and married our Mom…Comella Louise Bryant…in 1949 in Miami.
Dad worked as a linotype operator for the Miami Daily News and the Daily Racing form. He was a printer – a labor-intensive career that he was devoted to and was proud to be a part of. One of the things that Dad was able to do very well was to draw connections between things and give them more meaning through the sum of its parts. As a printer, Dad often talked about the origins of “moveable type”, the invention of the printing press and how that changed the world… the printing of the Guttenberg bible, newspapers, books and literature — printing was the culmination of a craft that Dad mastered to define his place in society, history, and religion. It was fulfilling work. And while he set the lines of type in hot metal for the presses to print the news stories for the early morning papers it often meant working late night shifts. But somehow he was always there at the dinner table and again in the morning when we were all headed off to school.
Between 1950 and 1966 Mom and Dad had 5 boys and 3 girls. Nicky, the second child, sadly passed away when he was only two. But we were all born and raised in Miami, until 1972 when we moved to Tampa to live near Mom’s sister and best friend Bonnie.
Dad was often asked “why did you have so many kids?” He would say that he wanted as many kids as Jesus had disciples and he wanted to name each one of us after them. But Mom had something to say about it, she stopped at 8 kids.
Mom and Dad – with the seven of us growing up during the 60s and 70s – negotiated the rapidly shifting landscape of American culture, politics, sport, leisure, and the economy. We saw how he was consistent in his beliefs. He loved to read books about history and politics — Dad was a “straight ticket” Democrat – and made sure all of his kids were Democrats (or else!). We could see how Dad was also devoted to the Methodist Church and took great pride in teaching Sunday School lessons. And we saw how much his meticulous work on the annual Gatanis Family Calendar meant to him - and I think all the Gatanises loved him for it. It definitely made us smile and chuckle each time we received it in the mail around Christmas or New Year’s. We felt a family connection through the calendar, even though we rarely got to see each other.
We think the way that Dad excelled as a parent was not to tell us how we should live or tell us what to do. None of us kids could ever remember having a “father / son” or “father / daughter” talk. We didn’t get advice from him. He didn’t lecture us on right and wrong…. Dad showed us how to be good citizens.
Dad demonstrated to us how to be good kids – and eventually good parents in our own right. He showed this to us through his hard work. His confidence. His humbleness. His devotion to God. His sense of humor and how to not take things too seriously. He showed us how to build a deck. He showed us how to fix a car. He showed us that no matter how many golf balls you hit, they don’t always go where you want them to go…..He was there for us, supporting us, at our football games, soccer games, track meets, and theater performances. And most of all – he showed us love. He loved his wife, our Mom, more than anything. None of us can ever remember Mom and Dad having a fight. They might have, but they never showed that side to us.
But mostly Dad loved each of his children as individuals – for who we were — and he never judged or criticized us. He gave us clues - don’t get me wrong – like the t-shirt I got for my 16th birthday that just said in big letters “B.U.M.” across the front…Dad was, let’s say, subtle.
And over the course of our lives we all went on to do very different things…we became librarians, artists, computer technicians, administrators, designers, marketers, researchers, human resource officers — and he was proud of each of us. And he loved us together – as his family.
We learned a lot from Dad – about love, laughter, discipline, family, and all the things that we needed to make our own paths and find our own happiness. So we thank you Dad. For everything you showed us. We couldn’t have asked for more from our father and we will love you forever.
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