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Jay Monroe Jensen, M.D.
" A Brief Personal History"
A Eulogy:
Niels Fredrik Jensen, M.D.*
December 13, 1995
This service and my remarks this morning will be brief. We cannot hope to approximate what occurred yesterday in Salt Lake. It was everything Dad would have wanted.
It is appropriate to offer a few words here this morning because Dad would not want us to fail to acknowledge and give thanks to you--his friends and greatest supporters. Salt Lake City is where Dad returned following many years and much training. It was here and among you that he received the training that most counts. It was here that he made the lifelong friends and forged the relationships that were the most meaningful to him. It was here that he wanted to rest, returning to the people and place from whence he came.
Jay Monroe Jensen was born June 14, 1924 to Art and Violet Monroe Jensen in the family home in Elsinore. He was delivered by Dr. Godferson and at birth weighed about 3 pounds. He could fit into a shoe box. With such a small birth weight and no modern facilities for care, his survival was tenuous and doubtful. For a time he was incubated in a water reservoir of a wood stove.
During this and other times he was blessed by having exceptionally fine and loving parents. They nutured, encouraged, and supported him. His mother was quite extraordinary--strong-willed and high spirited--with great expectations. The humor and integrity of his father is still remembered 50 years after his death.
While in high school Dad met our mother, Bebe Daniels. He was encouraged in this relationship by his father, who took an immediate liking to Mom's intelligence and good looks. They left for Chicago after marrying in the Manti Temple on June 14, 1947.
Mom was wonderfully supportive, both of him throughout his life and career and of all seven of us. She was a constant source of love and motivation.
In Chicago, Dad became a doctor. He graduated Alpha Omega Alpha, an honor none of the rest of us who followed in his footsteps ever achieved.
After doing an internship in surgery at the University of Chicago, he left to train at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the oldest and finest training surgical training centers in the world.
At the conclusion of his training and with three children and a great love for the West he returned home. He began in the private practice of surgery at L.D.S. Hospital in the fall of 1957.
Salt Lake City did not have a shortage of surgeons. He was told that it would be very difficult for him to make a living in Salt Lake, since he had no connections in the city. This is where his competitors underestimated both you and him. They didn't realize that this was one of the most relentless, focused, competitive, individuals they had ever encountered. They didn't realize how finely he had been trained. They didn't realize either just how supportive and loyal were his family and friends. Many of you, in those early days, drove extra miles to Salt Lake to be treated by him. Later, and again with your help and support, he was one of busiest surgeons in Salt Lake.
The reason you first chose Dad as your doctor initially was out of loyalty to his town and his family. Thereafter, it was out of respect and trust in his ability. I practiced with Dad for almost a year and I am the only one of the five of us to do so. Dad was superb in care of his patients, before and after he took them to the operating room. He was an excellent diagnostician and he was absolutely indefatiguable, when it came to postoperative management. It never got to late to reassure a patient or family, check a drain, change a dressing, listen to a chest, make sure that a surgical wound was healing properly. If he was less compulsive about some of these things and had cared just slightly less for his patients and more for himself, there is little doubt to many of us that he would be here today. But Dad simply loved life and he lived it fully. As children, we rarely saw him during the week. If he did arrive home at 8 or 9 o'clock at night he would often take Mom dancing or to a movie.
Besides being bright, gifted, skilled, and enormously energetic he was mentally resiliant and tough. I was most proud of him not for his victories and accomplishments but for how he handled challenges, bad luck, setbacks-- with optimism, tenacity, and courage. He was a gallant warrior:
I am wounded,
But I am not slain.
I shall lay me down and bleed awhile
Then I shall rise and fight again.
(John Dryden, English Poet)
We're proud of his journey from Elsinore, his accomplishments and successful career. But we are also grateful that when he had time outside of the hospital it was all for us. He was truly a wonderful, warm, loving, and compassionate father. He believed in engagement, even though it might not always be pleasant. Usually it was, but he most certainly wanted us to achieve and like his mother, if we fell short he wanted to know why.
He loved to travel and he loved to travel with us. He took us world's fairs in Seattle, New York, Montreal; He took us to Europe three times. We toured battlefields of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Great War, and WW II. I even think we may sometime have gotten to Korea and Vietnam if there had been time. Dad liked to see and talk about great events and great achievements--not only of men but of peoples. Each time we were expected to read and to prepare before going and then to keep a complete journal while we were there. One day in Paris, we walked 26 miles through the Louvre and the city. Taking a trip with Dad was like taking a trip to the Hospital--no stone was unturned. The only beach we ever visited was Normandy. He was always loving and while demanding, never punitive. Like his mother, he tried to see the talents in each of us and then to fully support them. He never wavered in this. He felt strongly about trimming his daily lifestyle and our daily lifestyle so that we would never have to work while going to college and graduate school. None of us ever did. Three of us attended Harvard, two the University of Chicago, one Yale, and two the University of Utah. He was very proud, I think, in his role in getting us there and in keeping us there.
The only thing Dad loved more than work was play. He took us to the ranch to ride, fish, work and play; to Europe to see the La Pieta; or to the ball-field to "hit a few". We interacted intimately. We heard marvelous stories of who we are and flawless recitations from Shakespeare, Sophicles, Dickinson, and Joyce. He was a self-taught philosopher, a lover of Great Books and great ideas and he had a marvelous sense of humor, inimitable timing, and stage presence.
One of the most remarkable things about this great warrior, surgeon, and scholar is that he was also a great advocate, coach and mentor--especially for his children. When he was not in the hospital he was interacting with and healing you he was at home inspiring and coaching us.
Much of this is simply too personal for me to talk about about this time. But Dad was a New York Yankee fan and so an analogy to baseball and the Yankees may be acceptable to him.
I recently read some lines about the great Johnny Sain, one of the greatest Yankee pitching coaches for some of the best teams in the history of sport, and I thought of Dad in his role of personal coach to seven individualistic, young, raw, and at times wild pitchers. These were his children. I know from talking with many of you that your respect for Dad was such that you regarded him at times as a personal advocate, a mentor, a coach.
I would like to share some of these lines about Johnny Sain, the Yankee pitching coach, because they remind me so much of him.
"As much a psychiatrist as coach, he was immensely skilled at getting the pitchers to figure out what it was he wanted them to do.
Other pitching coaches were concerned with the physical condition of their pitchers; Sain was more concerned with their minds. He wanted his pitchers to think positively and to be at peace with themselves at all times. Sain believed that pitching was all about confidence and concentration. He spent more time with the players who were in trouble than the ones who were the stars. Once during the 1963 season, Jim Bouton stopped him and asked Sain, "How come you're not talking to me anymore?" "How are you doing these days?" Sain answered. In fact, Bouton had been on a considerable roll for several weeks, keeping the ball down and winning low-scoring games. "Fine,Bouton said," he answered. "Then you don't need me, do you?" Sain answered.
Sain's lessons were not just psychological in nature, for he was a very good practitioner of the art as well, always trying to give his pitchers an additional pitch as one n those days, and after marrying Art Jensen on June 14, 1911 taught school for several years in Elsinore. Her students still remember her for her ability to foster excellence and to bring out the best in them--perhaps the highest accolade for a teacher.
Dad’s father, Art, was the oldest son of Niels Bitteby Jensen. Traumatized by the early deaths of his mother and brother, by all reports he had tremendous depth of character and integrity. He played baseball semiprofessionally and later owned a cattle ranch in the Sevier Valley.
Dad's earliest and fondest memories involved the mountain above Elsinore, a beautiful place. As a very small child he slept between his parents in a wagon bed near the Alma Frandsen cabin. He never lost his love for that great starry sky, spring water, and blue-bells. He rode horses, once for thirty six hours straight, roped cattle, read Shakespeare in a balsam grove, built a cabin with his father that still stands, found arrowheads, fished in Pole Canyon and Sam's Toe, developed a beautiful spring among the aspen, and became a man.
With Grandma's encouragement, Dad excelled in school, at every level. He was very competitive. From very early on, he wanted to be a doctor.
At South Sevier High School, he excelled academically and played coronet in the band. When he graduated in the summer of 1942, he left Elsinore to attend the University of Utah. What he lacked in prepratory knowledge, he made up for with an excellent mind, discipline, and hard work. Cat anatomy was himore weapon against their true enemies, the hitters.
If he saw a pitcher make a mistake during a game, he would not say anything during the heat of the game or immediately afterward, when the pitcher was down on himself. Instead, he would wait a couple of days. Then he and his pitcher would grab gloves, and they would begin by playing catch. . . Suddenly, without anything being said, in order not to make the pitcher tense, and without a single word of criticism having been uttered, he would be well into a lesson on mechanics and on trying to correct the error. There was never anyone better at getting inside the head of a pitcher than Johnny Sain.
Besides his prowess as a surgeon and his excellence in many arenas outside of medicine, Jay Monroe Jensen got into the heads and hearts of many of us in this room, not the least of which were his children. For this, we are better and more giving human beings.
Now please join me in prayer.
Dear Lord:
Five generations and almost 150 years ago, our forefathers left the fertile fields of Denmark for Utah. They traveled first by ship and then by wagon to this place. Here, under the authority of Prophet Brigham Young, built a town. They missed Denmark so much they named their town after beautiful Elsinore.
The resemblance ended there. Instead of green fields they found desert; instead of water, dust. They were asked to do the work of the Lord and they did so. They dug the springs which made the desert flower. They wavered at times but they persevered and never quit.
We are grateful for the blessings bestowed upon this town and our family. One of these was the life of Jay Monroe Jensen.
Dad fathered seven children. He supported them, laughed with them, instructed them, and dearly loved them. This lagacy of love will ripple through time and through generations yet unborn.
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Jay Monroe Jensen has answered the summons that sounds for all men--for we are but sojourners upon the earth, losing our hold upon life when our time is done as a leaf falls from a bough.
Like the stars of day our beloved dead are not seen with mortal eyes. They shine on in the firmament of endless time. Let us be thankful for the life of Jay Monroe Jensen. It continues in love, is stronger than death, and spans the gulf of the grave.
Amen.
