He lies just a few feet from a field on the family farm. Next to him are Aunt Gloria and an infant son. Three sons survive.

Seven months earlier, we held services for his older brother, my Uncle John, in the church a few yards away.

My mother is now the last of her immediate family.

I don’t want to put any undue pressure on my Uncle Harold, who is married to my father’s youngest sister, Aunt Jean, but he is my last surviving uncle. Please stay well.

I’ve had 10 uncles.

One on my mother’s side died of diphtheria as a toddler. On my father’s side, there were two I never got to know well.

But the others — uncles Charles (June), Carl (Pap), Orion and Lloyd — I knew very well. Uncle Fred’s funeral reminded me of how important my uncles were to me as I was growing up. They would be embarrassed to hear this, but I looked up to all of them because they took the time to care.

Uncle Fred, a rough but generous sort, took me everywhere in his Army surplus Jeep and bought me toys my daughter now plays with. He teased the devil out of me.

Uncle John went to college, and because of him, it was assumed that I would, too. When my friends were reading Boy’s Life, he was buying me subscriptions to Time and Newsweek and Psychology Today. Right up to his death, he was buying us subscriptions.

A favorite

On my father’s side, Uncle Lloyd, married to my father’s sister Anna, was my favorite.

A big man with a big laugh, he coached youth baseball and owned an automotive body shop, and employed a lot of the cousins during summers. He died young, 40 years ago this month.

One of the things I will never forget him for was pulling a baseball uniform out of the boxes he was sending back after a ball season. It was my first full uniform, one of those gray, flannel jobs, with “Hubley’’ stitched in red letters on the front. I carefully removed the stitching and wore it in my league, where we only had team shirts to wear with our jeans.

When I wanted to buy my first car, I went to Uncle Lloyd and asked him to talk to my father. He did. I got the car.

My uncles alway seemed to understand me, even when my father didn’t. And as an uncle, my father was the same.

At my father’s funeral, a cousin told of how my father took him under his wing after his mother, my father’s sister, died, leaving three small children. He told of how, when my father began dating the woman who would become his wife and my mother, my father did not forget his nephew, but would take him along on visits .

Standing by Uncle Fred’s grave, I remembered he used to hug me and then rub my face nearly raw with his stubble.

He did it until my grandmother made him stop or I cried “Uncle!’’

Monday, I cried again for my Uncle Fred.

A philosophy

Ten-year-old daughter Abigail, while we were cleaning up after communion last Sunday, threw back a shot of grape juice (we’re Methodists) and exclaimed:

“Eat, drink and be married!’’

And that’s what Eric Stark, our renaissance staff writer (Real Estate, Travel, Sports, etc.) and Cindy Bateman, from the newspapers’ business department, will be doing today.

Our best to two of the best.

Marv Adams invites your questions. You can send them by e-mail to madams@lnpnews.com or mail to: Sunday News, Box 1328, Lancaster, Pa. 17608-1328.
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