The atypical service was held Saturday at Geisen Funeral Home in Crown Point, where his daughter works and where she said her final goodbye to her one-of-a-kind father. After reading it, the rest of her family said it was perfect and shared many laughs. This helped me remember my dad in this way as well. “I wrote it myself and I didn’t tell anyone I was going to make it funny,” Jean said. I am very sorry for your loss, but please know that this is making many people who read this laugh and cry(in a good way) about their own Terry. All of us who read that obit also wished we had met Ward. We have Ward and his daughter to thank for this obviously needed reminder.
– "He lived to make other people laugh," says an Indiana woman of her father, who died last Tuesday after suffering a stroke. Terry Ward is now generating plenty of chuckles thanks to the obituary daughter Jean Lahn wrote for the Army veteran. Fox59 reports she's a little more familiar with obits than most, as she works at a funeral home where she comes across plenty of routine and formulaic remembrances. The 71-year-old doesn't get that from the get-go. His obit kicks off by saying Ward "escaped this mortal realm ... leaving behind 32 jars of Miracle Whip, 17 boxes of Hamburger Helper and multitudes of other random items that would prove helpful in the event of a zombie apocalypse." She charts his progress from high school ("only three of his teachers took an early retirement after having had him as a student") to marriage ("in the fall of 1969, perfectly between the Summer of Love and the Winter of Regret") to his 39 years of work with telephone companies, during which "he accumulated roughly 3,000 rolls of black electrical tape." Lahn wrote that he "despised 'uppity foods' like hummus, which his family lovingly called 'bean dip' for his benefit, which he loved consequently." Speaking of loves, his included "shooting guns, Bed Bath & Beyond, starlight mints, cold beer, free beer, The History Channel, CCR ... and above all, his family." As for those who loved him, they're invited to make donations in his name to "your favorite watering hole, where you are instructed to tie a few on and tell a few stories of the great Terry Ward." Read the obit in full here, or read some more tales about him, courtesy of the Post-Tribune.