I had the opportunity to speak at My Uncle Bobs funeral service, and below is what I said:  

It is very hard to encompass the life of someone with a few lines or sentences. The best you can do after a loss is to try and look back on a life and feel touched and blessed to have known that person.

That is my thoughts on my Uncle Bob. To have had the opportunity of spending time with him is something that puts a smile on my face.

I have spoken with several members of the family as well as included some of my own memories of Uncle Bob that I would like to share with you now.

 Family Man

 *He was a Great Example of a devoted husband, father, and grandfather

- Aunt Roberta and Uncle Bob was more than just two names, growing up it was one long name together based on the fact they were never apart. It is rare to meet two people better suited for one another, and their 50+ years together proved they were in fact a perfect match.

- His children and grandchildren were the jewels of his eye, lighting up when talking about him.

Long before my time, there was a camp that the Hackett family called home. The Red Quill Lodge, located outside of Gaines, PA in Kettle Creek was the engineering design of Bob. This camp was the hot spot for the Hackett family in the 60’s and 70’s, and Bob served as the camps’ director, with everything from the activities to the menu of the day being planned out by him.

You don’t always have to have the same last name or the same bloodlines to be considered family either. For 40+ years at Dresser Rand, Bob was part of a band of brothers.

-I grew up with stories every night at the dinner table of these guys, and their work and home lives. These men worked, hunted, fished, helped each other out with projects, cut wood together……any of them who needed him over the years could always count on Bob to be there to help them out.

- Later in life, Uncle Bob and Aunt Roberta had the time to attend local sporting events to at first support nieces and nephews, and later the Elkland youth as a whole. To Uncle Bob if a kid had an Elkland jersey on their back, they were considered family.

Family Man – Probably the ultimate test to being a family man is in the end his illness helped bring our family closer.

  Jack of All Trades 

*Above all he liked to be needed for things

*Notorious for his pen and paper when it came to projects, both at work and home he would calculate and recalculate until the project met his expectations. Even engineers at work would go to him for help with their blueprints.

 - helped to build several of the families homes, including the one I grew up in. From the 60’s through today there was not a single Hackett home project that he was not somehow involved with.

- Very detail oriented, not always going with the appropriate way of doing things, but still his insight got the job done. One example of his attention to detail at the house I grew up in was setting the half bathroom sink at a child’s heigth, so that my older brother and sister who were little at the time would have a place to wash their hands for supper.

 Sportsman 

*Hunting and fishing stories.

-Before my time - on the eve of the first day of the PA deer season, there would be a mandatory meeting at Gramma and Grandpa’s house, where Bob and others would plan out every detail to ensure everyones success the following day. The second part of meeting would be tales from previous years that never got old and somehow improved every year.

- The stories, I heard them all hundreds of times growing up, the stories that you usually started out with phrases like “It was about 7:30 in the morning”, or “We had just got done having a sandwich and decided to put on one last drive”. These were always told either on the phone after the hunt, or again and again around various Hackett kitchen tables. Uncle Bob’s name was always involved in the stories, and most of the time was one of the leading characters in these sometimes tall tales.

- I can honestly say if there was a Beagle Heaven on Earth, then it was located behind his house. He always had Beagles, usually in pairs. The animals were not just hunting tools to Uncle Bob; they were part of the family. I don’t know of many dogs, except his girls that had hot meals everyday.

- I got my first boat ride with Uncle Bob, as he took me fishing many times on the lake with my dad. His excitement made me proud even if I had only hooked a bluegill the size of a large minnow, he always had a way of making you feel good about the job you did.  When we were done he would clean the fish into fillets, and would always slap me on the arm and say “you put these in the frying pan, with a little butter, salt, and pepper and they’ll melt in your mouth.”

- Later on I got to experience these hunting tales first hand, with Uncle Bob and his backpack strapped on, trudging up to the tree stand nicknamed “the Condo”. He knew I wasn’t the best hunter, inexperienced being the best word I could use, so he helped me out, and calling down to me on the radio to help me spot deer as they passed through. He didn’t care for his own hunting success; instead he wanted this rookie hunter to get in some shooting. That was Uncle Bob, looking to help out someone that he knew needed it.

- Last winter, Uncle Bob was still out there, sitting in the truck, and on the first day of deer season as several deer and a flock of turkeys approached my tree stand, Uncle Bob radioed up to make sure I was keeping my eyes open. He was sitting down in the truck, binoculars eyeing the tree line. I had my most successful hunting experience that morning. He later quoted to Dad, “Bruce isnt really a hunter, but this morning he sure was”.

I would like to close today with a poem by one of my favorite poets, Walt Whitman. I searched for a poem that I though would be fitting to read here today, it is called “Song of Myself”

 Walt Whitman

 “Song of Myself” 

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yelp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I am old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,Regardless of others, ever regardful of the others,Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine,

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

On Jan. 8th, 2006 my grandfather Frederick Aaron Hackett passed away. It’s hard to imagine summing up someone’s life in a few brief paragraphs, like obituaries do. I got many things passed down to me from my grandfather, even my middle name Aaron. My grandfather was a rugged man with a gentle soul, a man who worked hard to provide for his family, and passed down the tradition of hunting and fishing, hard work and good values to his kids.

My childhood memories were full of my Grandpa, and the visits I made with my parents “Up on the hill” where he and my grandmother lived. From him I heard hunting and Elkland Tannery stories growing up, that to me were like history lessons of both my roots and the people that lived in my hometown. He even came to my baseball games sometimes growing up, and used to set up shop by the left field foul pole with my grandmother at the ball field in Elkland.

I am grateful for the time I was able to spend around my grandfather while growing up, and I will dearly miss knowing that he is now not around. But I know he left a positive impact on the many members of our family and that he helped shape and form our family in many different ways. He was a hunter, a fisherman, a trapper, a tannery worker, a barber, a father, a husband, a real character and my grandfather, and I will miss him.

FREDERICK  HACKETT
Frederick A. Age 92, of RR #1, Osceola, PA, passed away Sunday, January 8, 2006, at Broad Acres Nursing Home, Wellsboro, PA. He was born November 3, 1913 in Leetonia, PA, the son of Fred Wing and Leah D. Niles Hackett. He was an avid outdoorsman and sportsman, taught many kids to hunt and fish, was very accomplished tying flies and was a barber. He was an employee of Elkland Leather Co. and Ingersoll-Rand Corp., Painted Post, NY. He is survived by wife, Edith, they had been married for 70 years; sons and daughters-in-law, Robert R. and Roberta Hackett, Nelson PA, Bradley B. and Rosemary Hackett, Elkland, PA, Terry K. and Joanne Hackett, RD. Osceola, PA, William A. and Lois Hackett, Spring Hill, FL; daughters and sons-in-law, Sharron G. Jones, Aberdeen, Md., Clara L. and John McDivitt, Lawrenceville, PA, Deborah L. and B. Scott Chilson, Nelson, PA; 21 grandchildren, 39 great-grandchildren, nine great-great-grandchildren; brother and sister-in-law, Charles A. and Joyce Hackett, RD. Westfield, PA; sisters, Louise Kreisler, Fort Collins, CO, Leah Rhodes, Castleberry, FL; numerous nieces, nephews and cousins. "His greatest joy in life was his family." He was preceded in death by grandchildren, Scott Frederick, Anita Faye Hackett, Jennifer Hackett, Robert Hackett; and a great-grandchild, Christopher Portell; four sisters and one brother. Private funeral services will be held at the convenience of the family. Burial will be in Tioga Co. Memorial Gardens, RD. Mansfield, PA. Memorial donations may be made to the charity of the donor's choice. Arrangements are in care of the Kenyon Funeral Home, 214 Main St., Elkland, PA.