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This is an attempt six days later to recapture what I said, extemporaneously and without notes at the 1/29/05 Memorial Service:
"I speak in appreciation and in tribute to Louis' faithfulness, summer after summer, in addressing an unending sequence of maintenance projects at the old farmhouse in Cummington bequeathed to Jane by an Aunt for family use. With a list of things needing exterior paint so long that Louis had his choice of what to address each summer, it was always an adventure for us, in returning after a Sutro family visit of several weeks, to find where there was freshly-applied paint where there hadn't been before. These were taxing jobs which he undertook enthusiastically (one needs enthusiasm to tackle chores like that!) and from which he took much well-deserved satisfaction. It seems the more remarkable to me, after being reminded from the pulpit to-day of the visionary Louis was throughout his professional life, that he could devote himself thus, and so wholeheartedly, to such a mundane and repetitive task.
While my recollections of Louis go back to our four years together at Harvard and, dating from the time of their wedding pictured on the piano here today (at which I was an usher), our myriad of shared experiences during congenial family get-togethers in other venues, the mental picture of Louis which returns to me most readily is of him in that Cummington haven which we all so much then cherished, and all still love."
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