Daniel William Caldwell November 14, 1939 – December 23, 2022

Friday, July 14, 2023 we held my father’s Celebration of Life. As the oldest sisters, Julie Marie Caldwell Rundall and I shared the podium and took turns sharing the following life history of our Dad…

To honor our father and his love of new technology, we had ChatGPT write his eulogy. I would highly recommend we each go home, have chatGPT write our own eulogy and then reverse engineer our lives to be what it says. Although it was lovely and would have brought a tear to Dad’s eye, it was rather impersonal so…you will be getting the Elizabeth and Julie Chat version instead.

Truly this life God has given each of us is precious. The things we learn, the people we love, and the moments we share have an impact on us both here in mortality and in eternity.

Our father, Daniel William Caldwell had a life full of these blessings that will continue for eternity. He has left us with a legacy of making life’s everyday experiences joyful, learning new things, hard work and play, never ending optimism, and faith in Jesus Christ.

Dad was born and raised in the sweet little town of Meadville, Pennsylvania by his loving parents Roger and Violet Caldwell. Being the first born AND a son, his mother would iron his diapers and his clothes for quite a while. He was self admittedly spoiled as the only boy in the family and sometimes expressed sadness for that favoritism shown him over his sisters. He loved his 3 sisters; Nancy, Darlene and Donna. They lived on a small farm so everyone worked hard to take care of the animals, land and each other. Dad, as with many older brothers, loved to tease his sisters. One such evening when his parents were out he went outside the house and scraped the dining room window with a tree branch scaring them to death. They called their father who came home to find some very upset girls. Dad said they all had a good laugh about this, but maybe that didn’t include his sisters. Although this didn’t necessarily endear him to his sisters, it was perhaps an early example and the beginnings of his desire to make things exciting for those around him, misguided as that was.

His grandfather used to say, “Danny could fall into a ditch and come out with a new suit of clothes”. He always found and focused on the good around him and sought and saw that good in others. He was blessed with the gift of an optimistic outlook on everything even in difficult times.

When Dad was 7 he got sick with a bad case of the mumps. This disease damaged his hearing and created both challenges and opportunities in his life. Dad chose to take the opportunities and didn’t stay focused on the disadvantages. He got his first set of hearing aids when he was in high school, true to his nature, he continuously looked for ways to improve his hearing, and later built a career of this.

Dad recognized the need for education. His ultimate goal was to attend college so he wouldn’t “have to be a farmer”. He told me one time that a big motivation was that he never wanted his kids to have to wear socks with holes. Surely plenty of his holes (and ours too) were due to running around in our socks and enjoying life, but it was his desire to do all he could to care and provide well for his family that drove him to improve himself and work hard.

He started his college education at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina to become a Baptist minister. There he struggled and had lots of questions that could only be answered by God. So, his search took him temporarily away from college and on the road to California where he worked and met new people. Some new friends invited him to attend a dance at the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. His interest in this church grew and he began to read the Book of Mormon and met with the missionaries to ask his questions. He was encouraged to pray and ask God for himself about the things he was learning. With that connection to God, he knew that he was being guided to join and embrace this church. After joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he served a mission to the Eastern States Mission which included Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut and Nova Scotia, Canada. There he was able to serve others and teach about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ just as he had been taught. On the last day of his mission, he baptized Elizabeth & Bruce Coleman and their daughter Ethel and son Cedric.

Before he left for home at the end of his mission, a kind and generous member of their local branch gave Dad $100 to do something that would bring him joy after his mission. He used that money to buy an airplane ticket for Ethel to fly to Pennsylvania and meet his family. They were married 6 months later. (Thank you, sweet lady!)

Having started their own family and with new college goals, this time to attend Brigham Young University and study Sociology, they headed to Provo, Utah. There we, Elizabeth & Julie, were born and within the space of 10 years Dan, Kristy and Pate were born in Washington and Roger was born in Arizona as we moved around for Dad’s work.

One thing that was important to Dad was to build happy family memories and for Christmas’ and summer breaks Dad would drive our growing family from places we lived back to northeast Pennsylvania. Always drawn to family and home, we would leave the West and travel through the endless cornfields of middle America towards the lush green hills surrounding Meadville, Pennsylvania. We had wonderful times celebrating the 4th of July riding the Blue Streak roller coaster at Conneaut Lake Park or gathering around to open a mountain of Christmas presents with all our Caldwell family.

Earning his bachelor’s degree from BYU in Sociology led him into a career working with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Native American education focused foster program. This job was both rewarding, and emotionally difficult for him to see their struggles first hand and not have a way to help them overcome those struggles. We had several foster children live with us and we love the memories each one brought to our family. Dad always wanted to help people be happy and have good experiences in their lives, so this struggle eventually led him to seek other career options.

When I was in 6th grade we moved back to Meadville, and for us kids it was fun to be able to get to know Grandma & Grandpa Caldwell, Great Grandma & Grandpa Mook and Aunt Donna & Uncle Bill. We loved playing with Jackie, Mark & Michelle and other cousins when they came to visit. We also loved exploring the area where Dad grew up. But for Dad it was much harder. He wasn’t able to get a job as a social worker so he worked multiple jobs to take care of our growing family.

He was devoted to providing for us all and making our lives fun while teaching us to work hard. One example is that we helped with his newspaper route early in the morning before the sun came up. Dad would drive slowly down the road with the passenger side van door open and my job was to throw out the papers to each house with a subscription. After all that work, we got a donut and hot chocolate. Then he would leave for his 2nd job as a school bus driver before he would go to his 3rd job selling hearing aids. At the end of the school day, he would drive the return school bus route and go back to do any work needed at the hearing aid store to finish the work day.

Dad enjoyed sharing with us the fun of his hometown. We went fishing with our grandpa and cousins on Tamarack Lake and argued about who would have to gut our catch. We were creepily fascinated by the ducks walking on the fishes’ backs trying to get food at the Pymatuning Reservoir and enjoyed 4th of July celebrations by driving Grandpa’s mower all over their backyard and feasting on Grandma Caldwell’s delicious family feasts.

We loved picking fresh raspberries and walking with Dad to the back part of Grandma and Grandpa’s yard to sneak a peek at the beautiful deer near the trees. We would often walk with Dad to Great Grandma and Grandpa Mook’s house for a visit with guaranteed ice cream and cookies from Grandma Mook’s bottomless peanut butter cookie drawer.

Despite his not wanting to be a farmer Dad & Mom wanted us to experience the joy of animals so we always had some animals around including, more than one baby goat named Isabel, rabbits, mean chickens, dogs, cats, hamsters, guinea pigs and rats – some domestic and some creepily occupying a mystery location in our Meadville barn.

Living in Pennsylvania near family was such a blessing of time together, but things never seemed to work out financially for Mom and Dad so God led them back to Arizona and to succeed in selling something he knew a lot about…hearing aids.

With a new but tentative confidence in his ability to sell hearing aids Mom and Dad planned our most epic cross-country trip ever! It was of course in our brand new (to us) 28-foot motorhome that became known as the Rainbow Rover because Mom painted a rainbow nature scene on the side AND we all got matching rainbow t-shirts for our adventures. We had a portable electric organ with a full encyclopedia set on top and were given our stations to keep the books on the piano or the cupboards or fridge from opening and spilling out all the contents when we turned a corner. Dad would sometimes wake up before the sun rose and start driving while we all slept in our beds, and we would wake up in a new location. Seatbelts? Psssh! We didn’t worry about them at the time.

Driving all these adventures was Dad, always lovingly supported and encouraged by Mom! He arranged hearing aid specialist deals in different cities to fund our travels, mapping out the route to our next location, hooking up the water, electricity, sewage line & setting up the fake grass and picnic tables outside under the awning, always making everything as nice as could be. He would stop at a mini mall, and we would be waiting for him to come out of the store, when suddenly he would come out of a McDonald’s nearby with a tray full of ice cream cones. We would cheer for the yummy treat and for Dad who loved to share them with us and make us smile! While driving endless miles, I’m pretty sure he would turn his hearing aids down when we sang boisterously along to the 8 track tapes of Patsy Cline, Olivia Newton John, Kenny Rogers, and Loretta Lynn, but we had lots of fun gathered at the front of the motorhome watching the changing landscape speed by with Dad at the wheel.

His adventurous spirit took us from the La Bufadora blowhole in Mexico to the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC to the Redwood trees near San Francisco, California to Daytona Beach, Florida and everywhere in between. We visited Death Valley and Tijuana and slept under the big and bright stars at night deep in the heart of Texas. We saw Shamu at SeaWorld and got ringworm when we were playing in our cousins’ empty pond in Florida.

As we traveled, he had success in every city he worked, to the degree that every dealer asked him to stay on as a permanent salesman. He felt capable and discovered he loved selling. After a year and a half and a few false starts of trying to settle down in Florida, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Prescott and back to Phoenix, Dad & Mom finally bought a house in Peoria, Arizona and a hearing aid business in Sun City.

Even though we had a house at that point he would still occasionally buy a new motorhome for adventures such as going to the sand dunes with friends or taking the boy scouts to Mexico. When I was in college we made the trip back to Pennsylvania again by way of New York, in a new motorhome for Grandma & Grandpa’s 50th wedding anniversary. Dad tried to recreate our Rainbow Rover fun by buying us all matching t-shirts with a coyote sitting by a cactus howling at the moon, but we were brats about it and pitched a fit about wearing matching t-shirts and immediately split up when we went to the Statue of Liberty. Ornery kids, Sorry, Dad!

After Dad & Mom became empty nesters his love of the road manifested in a more open air way, with his candy apple red Honda Gold Wing motorcycle that he loved to ride everywhere, even back to Pennsylvania and up the coast to Alaska!

After 25 years of service, Dad sold Statewide Hearing Aid Center and Dad & Mom served the first of 2 missions in India. In Bangalore, India, Dad was the finder of art supplies and the driver through the winding, crowded streets to get to the residential school, Shanti Bhavan, where mom taught the children Art. They also helped with humanitarian projects such as digging a well and supporting the Morning Star Orphanage. Dad loved to take amazing photos of flowers and cows.

During their 2nd mission to Chennai, India in 2004 a massive tsunami devastated the coastal cities. Being the senior missionaries in the area, Dad coordinated the first response and was one of the first people onsite to distribute clothes, dishes and medical supplies donated by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This was when he contracted non-contagious tuberculosis which impacted his lungs for the rest of his life.

For 15 years after their missions Dad & Mom cared for Grandma Neibarger. Dad was always kind and patient, and cared for her as he wished he could have with his own mother and father. He was always thankful for all that his sisters did in his absence for his parents. After his grandparents, his sister, Darlene, and his parents passed away he often commented on looking forward to being with them again.

After Grandma Neibarger passed, Dad & Mom moved to Cedar City, Utah to be near 3 of their most “favorite” children. Like many people in 2020 Dad caught Covid-19 virus and had to be in the hospital a few times. Despite his already weak lungs he survived thanks in large part to Mom’s loving care. His hearing got worse as he aged which isolated him quite a bit despite all of Roger’s efforts to help improve his hearing with newer hearing aids. When we spoke to him directly though, he still always had a cheerful response of how blessed he was in having the love of his life with him and the comforts of family nearby, oh and also, whatever new app or thing he learned he could do on his iPad. 😉

I learned much later in his life that he thought he would have enjoyed being an electrician which may explain why we always had the latest technology such as 8 track tapes, VCR players, video cameras, satellite dishes, computers and any gadget along with many boxes of cords and wires.

During the time of the pandemic it was a blessing for me to be able to attend home church with them and when Dad would kneel and bless the sacrament for me and Mom, I felt that those were holy moments.

Dad saw the good in others, even us kids, despite our own challenges. One thing that I remember Dad saying often was that in his patriarchal blessing he was told that he would have a noble posterity and he believed that was true. I thought a lot about that over the years. What does it mean? Does that matter?

Being Noble means – having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals. As I look back over our experiences growing up with Dad and I think of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I know that promise truly has been fulfilled. Because of Dad’s example we have learned to be forgiving and to break unhealthy patterns. We do hope for and hold onto high moral ideals and strive to live up to them despite our many, oh so human, mistakes. We work to learn from our mistakes and strive to live up to God’s values, and we continue to find greater peace and happiness through repentance as disciples of Jesus Christ. This is the legacy Daniel William Caldwell leaves for us, his children and grandchildren and I will always be eternally grateful. Love you Dad!

As we look back one phrase comes to mind. “Hot Dog! We never had it so good!” This was one of the positive statements he would have us repeat together at breakfast or whenever it was needed to build enthusiasm for life, recognize our blessings and encourage us to get up and do something good. I believe Dad seeing us together today is saying his beloved phrase right now, “Hot Dog! We never had it so good!”

We have been blessed by our father. We have watched him struggle with challenges that affected us all and we have all learned the personal and joyful effects of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. He has blessed us with the innumerable blessings of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives and the richness of forgiveness, repentance, and love that Christ offers us all which extends beyond the grave.

Dad’s deep desire and divine mission to bring joy and happiness into the lives of his family and those God placed in his life was in our opinion, Mission Accomplished. Good Job, Dad!

Thank you, God, for giving us a father that loved you, through his challenges and through his successes in this life. Thank you, Dad, for giving us the foundation to grow in faith in Jesus Christ, and patiently and selflessly providing so much more for us! We love and miss you, but we know we will be together again!