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Jay Monroe Jensen, M.D.

"He brought joy to the life of a boy and hope to the heart of a man."

A Eulogy:

James King Hill*

December 12, 1995

My brother, Doug, said earlier that this is the only funeral that might require an intermission.  So if you need to leave temporarily, please return.  It is not easy to talk of greatness in an expeditious manner. 

Dr. Booth was concerned about three speakers which preceded him and spoke of incidents that he wanted to touch upon.  How do you think I feel now, having four, using much of my material, and all four being doctors?  So I'm here in contrast to those brilliant minds and that, too, might be appropriate.

Bebe, Judy, Art, Fred, Christian, Peter, Karen, Nicoline, Wallace, Doug, Mona Lou, Jimmy, and members of the congregation.  I am not unmindful of this responsibility yet am very grateful for the opportunity today.  I am also quite aware of my limitations and hope that this family and congregation will be sensitive to my feelings as this effort will be intensely personal and therefore difficult. 

I speak today as a simple, country boy.  Jay Monroe Jensen was my cousin.  He still is.  He was a role model for me as a kid in our little town.  He still is.  He was there on the day I was born.  I was with him on his last day here.  The beginning and the end.  I could never decide if he was better with a scalpel or a pen.  He was without a doubt the most versatile human being I ever knew.  His intellectual capacity was almost limitless.  He could quote Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Jensen.  He was a terrrific baseball player, could outrun anyone in town at one time, and played the coronet in the high school band.  He became a great doctor, a surgeon, a diagnostician, and yet he found the time to take art lessons.  He was a graduate of the Fenwick School of Fly Fishing in West Yellowstone.  He was a faithful New York Yankee fan his entire life.  He was a voracious reader, a member of the Great Books Club.  In my opinion, my humble opinion, he could do anything better than anybody.  I was certain those flags on June 14th were for him.  I was in high school before I realized that he had been born on Flay Day.  He never corrected me.  Most of you here know him as a physician.  His professional career speaks for itself.  I think of him as a cowboy.  All of my life, he bound-up my wounds, emotional and physical, much of it on a horse.  He took care of me in ways I cannot adequately describe on this occasion but I must try.

Jay Jensen eulogized my father and mother at their passing.  He did so for many, many others.  Now I am asked to eulogize the master eulogizer.  He was the absolute best at describing in words what people really were.  So I have decided that in order to do him partial justice I will use his own words.  In effect, I will now ask him to eulogize himself by exposing what kind of person he was to me, from the first day to the last one.  I want you to feel of his concern for me, his sense of humor, his good advise.  Perhaps you will see why I will miss the constant encouragement he gave to me throughout his magnificent life.  He healed thousands of people and what I say now is what he did for me.

From a letter from Jay Jensen dated February 5, 1992:

"It was a nice, warm early spring day in Elsinore February 1, 1929.  Dr. Dewey parked his big black Packard in front of Aunt Carrie and Uncle Jim's house.  I knew that your mother was inside.  In a little while, I learned that you were there, too.  They gave me a peek at you.  I was only five years old but I remember seeing a fat, red kid wrapped in a blanket.  I always wanted a baby brother and I think I thought you were he.  In many ways you have been."

That was my birthday wish just four years ago.

When my folks were divorced, Doug, Shirleen, and I returned to Elsinore to live with our grandparents.  I think Jay knew that I was emotionally confused.  I was about 10 years old and he was about 15 and the healing process began quickly.  He proceeded to teach me how to ride a horse.  He took me swimming in the Sevier River, gave me my first lessons in spotting a mule deer on the West mountain, taught me some songs along the Rocky trail which I can still sing (I remember all the words), and took me down into Sam Stow fishing.  I remember a quote.  He said, "There are more fish in Sam Stowe per square inch than anyplace in the state of Utah."  We found that to be true on two different occasions.  He gave me my first calf-roping lesson and calf-riding lesson, which I never mastered.  He fixed big plates of baked beans for me in Taft Paxton's cabin.  He told me hundreds of stories, some of them preposterous and some of them true; stories about the old west, about Uncle Art, about good horses, and dogs and about why I should be proud of who I am.  He touched on that subject frequently and right until the end.  He brought joy to the life of a boy and hope to the heart of a man.

Once I was bragging about my Uncle Wallace to some people and I thought I may have overdone it.  Wallace said, "Keep right on going.  I have an unlimited capacity for praise."  So do I.  Listen to this letter, dated April 12, 1986:

"Thank you for your kind and thoughtful expression in your last letter.  It is an encomium I shall treasure.  I hope to always deserve your friendship as well as your support.  As a matter of fact, I am aware that you have been an essential part of my psychic constellation and that I have always sought your validation."

He needed my validation?

"Since you have been an outstanding paradigm for me to emulate, you have effected a very significant missionary effort on my behalf.  It is true that I have not advanced much, in spite of your efforts, but just think what I would have been without them.  You are a vital and essential element in our family, your own family, your kid's families, our kid's families, the Bitteby family, the Elsinore family, and I suspect Zions Bank and the Joe Goodman enterprises would fail without you."

Sorry Joe. 

"Please care for yourself prudently.  Do not take any more 50 mile hikes and eat no ice cream, lasagna, milk, pie, cake, or bunges."

Coming from a man like Jay Jensen this could rupture my calvarium and it nearly did.

From a letter dated December 15, 1988, almost exactly seven years ago to the day:

"You and I have had a lot of good times, a lot of good talks.  I don't recall any fights or animosity which by itself is quite unique.  I am sorry that our children have not had the complete Elsinore experience but through a combination of fortuitous circumstances we have even been able to provide some of that.  The Bitteby family, as you know, has been obsessed for several generations and perhaps forever with the ultimate ontological question:  Is there anything to it, any significance to the human experience?  This question, in more erudite forms, has occupied all the theologians and all the philosophers there have ever been.  Most people, it is true, are not similarly haunted.  The urgency and anxiety of the question leads not to fear and trembling but to on-wee."

Then he brags about me, again. 

"You, I think, have been the most positive affirmation in response to this question of anyone in the family.  Your enthusiasm and constancy of faith and performance has been a testimony and repository of strength for those of us who have less of both.  I have appreciated your help and support since childhood and I still do.  Thank you."

There is a P.S. here which perhaps bears comment.  I made the mistake of taking Wallace, Doug, and Jay to a professional basketball game.  Unless it's baseball, Jay's not too interested.  Wallace and Doug couldn't begin to understand what was going on.  Wallace didn't like the noise and Doug couldn't see a play.  He said, "I get constantly astonished and then it becomes tiresome."  Jay, after that game, added a P.S. to this letter.

"It may be time to do a little home-teaching on basketball.  Doug tells me he has documentary evidence that a willowy, English teacher in New York learned everything there is to know about basketball in two days.  He formed a pick-up team and beat everyone in sight including the New York Knicks.  This proves, according to Doug, that there is really nothing much to basketball-- as he has long supposed."

Needless to say, it was the last basketball game I ever took these people to.

Here, one year later, is an excerpt from a letter dated December 27, 1989:

"I have reflected often and have told my kids on many occasions of the marvelous relationship we've had through the years and of the kind of person you were as a kid, and so remain.  Then, as now, you were always optimistic and always enthusiastic and were a good eater.  You did not sulk, balk, and you were forever able and willing around the camp.  You were both good to me and to the horses."

Here is one dated October 30, 1990.  The Yankees come in again.  He was quoted by John Mooney in one of his sports columns.  In that letter to John Mooney, Dr. Jensen, praised George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees and a friend of Jay Jensen.

"I thought you may be interested in a column by John Mooney.  You may not agree with my sentiments regarding George Steinbrenner and I'm not sure that upon more mature reflection that I now agree with them, either.  We of the Bitteby family have always tilted at windmills and attempted to defend the lost cause.  I sincerely wish that we did not have this unfortunate propensity and I'm personally going to try to convert to a very rigid form of theological Republicanism--perhaps not today but someday.  I greatly enjoyed the brief trip on the mountain.  I hope that we can go up for a few days together next summer and let's plan to do so.  We had a great childhood and it would be pleasant to reflect upon it.  I think you would enjoy riding across the mountain from one cabin and pasture to another and when we got to Grasscreek you could see if you could catch a fish in Pole Canyon."

We never got to that trip.

One of my favorites is a letter not to me but to Niels Fredrik Jensen.  This was written March 8, 1991.  In it, Jay speaks of his own father, Art Jensen.  What he says about his dad in this letter is, not surprisingly, what we on this day say about him.

"Art was an intensely moral person without being pontifical.  His word and oath were everywhere accepted.  His credit rating was virtually without limits.  His personal life was impeccable.  He did not talk about doing good from any forum or pulpit he just quietly did good in countless thousands of ways.  He paid much of his tithing directly.  He never knowingly took a calf or anything else which did not belong to him.  He never told nor would abide a salacious or prurient story or joke.  The cowboy evolved from the code of knighthood.  He, true to this tradition, was deferential to women, modest, decorous. . .He pretended to enjoy hunting but it was only another facade.  While he could see deer and other game better than anyone else, his shots always hit rocks or trees.  I do not believe he ever killed an animal.  The only living thing he ever shot was his foot.  He loved good dogs, good horses, and good kids and they loved him.  He was very good to me.  I learned very early that I could impress him by reciting Shakespeare and Dickinson and by doing well in school and in church and I did.  I have no doubt that he loved me very much.  And I loved him."

Then he talks about arranging the funeral.  He talks about the pall bearers, remnants of his old baseball team.  Neil Jones played the guitar and some of the other Jones boys sang "Home on the Range."  Then he talks about Woodruff Sylvester who was also motherless as a child and whose sister Eliza raised them both. 

"Woodruff spoke and retold some of Art's original quips, his retorts, and anecdotes.  The audience began to laugh and continued laughing.  Woodruff said that if every laugh Art had contributed to the world were remembered by a single flower that huge, old church would not be able to hold them all.  Then some of us cried.  My dad, Art, was an entirely unique, talented, devoted, and original person.  All in all, he was a man.  I shall not see his likes again.  I have tried on occasion and perhaps will again to write something worthy of him but everytime I have tried pinning him to the wall someone in a shawl seems to say, "That was not me at all".  With love, esteem, and affection I am as forever, Jay Monroe Jensen, M.D."

Top that.

It's all very familiar.  On Friday, Jay Monroe Jensen's last day here, I was telling Fred, Chris, and Peter about a baseball game in 1946.  South Sevier High School was playing Richfield.  Jay was home from medical school and attended the game.  I was playing short-stop, not my regular position.  A ground ball took a bad hop and dislocated the ring finger of my right hand.  I was jumping around the infield holding on this hand and Jay ran from the crowd.  He looked at the finger and popped it back into place.  My whole arm ached and I thought maybe I should drop out of the lineup.  He said to me simply, "Stay in the game.  Your Dad would not quit over some little thing like this."  So I did stay in the game.  As I recall, I got two hits.  Three years later, I was contemplating leaving college because I was discouraged.  My girl friend and I had broken up and my grades had started to slip.  I just wanted out.  I wrote to Jay in Chicago where he and Bebe lived at the time.  I then received the best letter of all.  This letter is dated March 25, 1949.  It is filled with wonderful advise.

"In all respects, our relationship with each other has been much more intimate than our family ties would predict.  In almost a real sense, we have been brothers.  In our boyhood heaven, we worked and swam and lived together.  At this moment, I can see you astride our Bill horse riding hell-bent and a very good rider you were, too.  Together we've been cold, tired, and lost and forever in my memory is the fact that you did not quit when the going got tough."

That's a little unfair when I was planning to leave school.  He begins by saying, "Nostalgia hangs heavy when I recall the fun and the laughs we had together."  He talks about the years of youth being spent in a "terrifying valley of indecision."  He then talks about what I should do next.  It is full of the best advise I could ever have.  He says again, "Stay in the game.  Don't walk out now.  Get the degree.  Don't quit."  I took his advise.  I stayed in the game.  He ended by saying, "I saw the Yankees last fall in St. Louis, a wonderful ball club.  Then he signed it, "Jay and Bebe".  I have reread that letter about a thousand times.  Once again, he was telling me to stay in it.  Jay Monroe Jensen was never, ever, a quitter.  He preached that message to us all, over and over, throughout his life. 

Even in the end he had a hard time leaving us.  Finally, he knew it was time.  He had done it all.  It was the ninth inning.  The home team was safely ahead.  He stayed in the game until he was sure of that.  Art, Violet, my grandparents, Walt, Basil and all the others were getting impatient and I think he felt their pull.  Karen asked him how he felt about his life.  He said, "All I ever wanted was three things:  to be a doctor, to be a cowboy, and to be a father."  He was all that and more. 

Ten years ago I spoke at my Grandmother King's funeral in Canada.  I turned to Jay Jensen.  I told him I needed some help.  He gave me a copy of an Emily Dickinson poem entitled, "The Chariot."

Because I could not stop for death

It kindly stopped for me.

The carriage held but just ourselves,

And immortality.

We slowly drove, He knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labors and my leisure

For his civility.

We passed the school

Where the children wrestle in the ring-

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house

That seemed a swelling of the ground.

The roof was scarcely visible,

The cornice just a mound.

Since then - 'tis centuries-

And yet, feels shorter than the day,

I first surmised the horses heads

Were towards eternity.

Finally, from his 1966 eulogy to Uncle Walt.  "There is an appointed time in the days of men.  We know not why."  Jay Monroe Jensen was unique.  We shall not see the likes of him again.  We have come to say good-bye.  From Dickinson again:

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all.

In this the season of love, hope, joy, and renewal thank you Dr. Jensen for the hope you gave to me and to all of us here.  Your remarkable family, your wonderful wife, and seven extraordinary children--five doctors, a lawyer, and a registered nurse.  They will honor you all of the days of their lives, as will I.  On June 14 next, I'll step back and salute my flag again and remember. 

I now pray for the Lord's blessing for Bebe.  You stayed in the game, too, taking care of a superb man for 48 years.  How can we ever thank you enough?  Jay was so very proud of you and his family, as I am.  There was never any doubt of his intense love for each one of you.  My advise to you as a family is very simple: 

"Let me keep faith, all else above. 

And trust that can't depart. 

When days seem long,

Let me find a song,

In the garden of my heart."

Bebe, we have many songs yet to sing.  Let's sing them together. 

These things I pray,

Amen.