Pop Pop's Stories

When I was a kid, I thought everyone had the kind of family we had. Supportive, loving, and always taking the time to gather together. Not because family was a chore, but because spending quality time with loved ones is what it's all about.

It wasn't that I took our family for granted, it was that I didn't know it could be different than this. Eventually, I learned how truly lucky I was.

My grandma and Pop pop lived fully and embodied their values. They passed those values to their children who passed them to their grand children. I feel their guidance everyday.

Pop pop had a way of always looking to help people realize parts of themselves that weren't yet fully developed. Everywhere he went he listened to people and made them feel seen. If you listened back he would engage in conversations that could change your whole perspective.

In my young adulthood, I was fortunate to have spent many long conversations sharing stories and having him lovingly challenge my ideas. He was a strong role model, but never forced his point of view. Spending time with him expanded me in ways I'm sure so many people here can relate to. He passed along a way of affirming life that I deeply wish to emulate.

The main story I want to share today is one that many of you will remember well because you were there for it. It's the story of the biggest, most beautiful dragonfly I've ever seen.

While my grandma had ALS, she wrote a children book explaining death using the metaphor of the dragonfly. The life cycle of a dragonfly starts as an egg that hatch into dragonfly larva and live underwater. The larva live with their community under water, but cannot see past the surface above. When it's their time, they leave their friends and climb the water plants past the boundaries of their old world, to complete their metamorphosis into a dragonfly that inhabits an entirely new world of the skies. Now they can see past the barrier of the water's surface to their friends and family below.

The first summer after my grandma passed away, we all gathered in the same beach house we visited for family reunion each year. One evening after another fun day by the ocean, I found something in the garage. Somehow when the garage door closed, a huge dragonfly had gotten trapped inside and was flying around. I approached it and it landed. I've always loved catching insects as a kid, but I didn't have a bug net. I offered it my finger to climb onto and it accepted. I was amazed. It trusted me and clung on as I walked upstairs to show people this new friend. I had prior experience catching dragonflies and have always found them to avoid humans, but this one was acting in a way I had never seen before or since. It was beautiful and had some mysterious energy.

When I got to show my whole family upstairs in the house grandma had always loved to visit, the dragonfly let itself pass from finger to finger of each person in the room. We even took her outside on the deck and she did not fly away when given the opportunity. Finally, she made her way to Pop pop's finger and I then understood what was happening in that moment. Grandma had come back to visit her family at the beach. It made complete sense. I'll never forget that day. The story she had given us had come true.

Now grandma and pop pop are together again, watching over us from the skies, and it doesn't feel like they're truly gone. I am so glad to be their grandson.

It’s a hot Summer night in 1983 or 84, I am in our air-conditioned den relaxing since it the high that day was above 90 degrees and the night would be above 70. A very Gerry Voit rule. With my headphones on, I am in another world when suddenly there was a loud knocking on the den door and my sister screaming for help. A woman outside was pounding our screen door bloodied and screaming that a man outside was about to kill her.

Within an instant, my mother was in the living room and the woman was inside. My father Gerry immediately went outside to confront the drunken violent man. Not with a gun or with a knife or with his fists, but with firmness that he would not come inside, would not go home with the woman and that the violence was over. For hours that night, my parents de-escalated the explosive situation. Dad talking the violent man down outside and Mom and Regina comforting the woman. Later that night, Dad and Mom delivered the woman home safely to her children.

I had forgotten about that night until recently but it stands out in my mind of how Dad moved in the world almost every day in his life. A wisdom-seeker, a truth teller a poet and a peace maker, this 3rd son of a devout Catholic family was pegged to be a priest. But the vocational call of being a husband, father, grandfather, and godfather was too strong within him. I thank God for that and for the sentence I can say with complete certainty now: The best man I ever knew was my father, Gerry Voit.

I never lost my respect, love, and awe for my dad, or for how he lived his life. I know many of you in this room feel the exact same way.

His love was constant. But it's easy to forget he didn't start out as this finished product. He grew into that person over many years. He was always changing, and remarkably, he looked forward to each new phase. That included his final months down in Bethesda, which he absolutely enjoyed. He somehow welcomed each coming moment, each new relationship, each new connection. Crazy, right?

Part of his magic was how genuinely he embraced each transition. Regina and I jokingly called this his "self-brainwashing." But we said it out of pure love. Honestly, we both want that exact same ability for ourselves.

So, what was his secret? How did this marvelous person come to be?

Looking back, I believe a big part of it came from a choice he and Kathryn made. They constantly challenged themselves through dialogue and writing. Marriage Encounter. Jewish-Christian dialogues. Deep self-reflection through poetry. This is how they aligned what they felt inside with how they engaged the world.

And what they wanted most was for others to find their own path of self-discovery. For instance, Dad set up a fund for each of his grandchildren to explore a passion beyond traditional schooling. My wife, Nancy, called it the grandkids' version of Dad's "Navy Scholarship" because it was in the Navy where Dad began to chart his own path. And what grandkid or parent in their right mind would turn down a gift like that?

That brings me to a piece of his poetry which Nancy found in his files. This was written a month after Kathryn's passing, as he started looking forward again. I believe he would be happy if you were to consider these words…