Brief thought 1 on an early Friday morning before the PTO meeting at my kids’ school – It’s a big weekend for Forestgate Presbyterian and for Waypoint Church. Waypoint is our church plant that launched in Fall 2021 (and started, in some ways, as early as Summer 2016), and they will be celebrating their particularization this Saturday. This marks the ordination and installation of their own elders, and they are no longer officially a church plant anymore. I wish I had more grandiose words for the occasion, but my writing muscles are tired, and I decided I wanted to focus on the “flashback” that I teased in the title. Before that…
Brief thought 2 – I have lots of random allusions in my sermons that serve as mini-illustrations. Some are scriptural; some are pop-cultural. An example of the latter would be the Bob Eucker line that a certain devoted youth group volunteer noticed and mentioned to me on Wednesday. Thanks for noticing. IYKYK.
Not-so-brief Flashback – My dad had cancer in late 2011, and his radiation and chemo ended on the same weekend as the NCAA Tournament Selection Show. It was a convenient thing to look forward to during a hard time. Well, it’s the Selection Show is this Sunday; I’ll be in small group when it happens, but I’ll be thinking of dad, approaching 14 years cancer-free. I’m grateful for every one of those years. And since this is a really long post to follow (written before Christmas 2013), I’ll stop typing:
When my dad turned 60 earlier this year, I thought he probably deserved a blog post to commemorate the occasion. For reasons I’ve since forgotten, my week got busy, and I had to delay that post. I was waiting for the right moment. It looks like that is today, because of the following “confluence”* of events: 1) yesterday was roughly two years since he was diagnosed with cancer; 2) yesterday was also the day his doctor said he didn’t need another follow-up body scan because he’s looking so good; 3) that was good news; 4) it’s Jimmy V week on ESPN; and 5) I thought of a funny story this morning involving my dad and the movie Home Alone.
(*Why is “confluence” in quotes? And why the use of that 25-cent word? Stay tuned until story #3. It’ll make sense.)
And since every blog post needs some kind of theme, and since it’s getting close to Christmas time, we’re gonna give you 12 facts (which might turn into stories) about my dad. 12 Facts for the 12 Days of Christmas. Let’s call it 12 for 12. I don’t think ESPN’s 30 for 30 folks will sue us, so here we go:
1. Dad’s name is William Lee Giesman, and 90% of the known universe calls him Bill. But occasionally my mom calls him, “Pitt.” He happens to be a distant relative of William Pitt. That’s actually not true, at all, but it sounds impressive. The truth is Dad’s been known as “Pitt” since college. He and mom went to a little conservative Christian college called Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. (Dad’s baby brother Kenny graduated from there, too. And so did the current head of the NFL Player’s Association, DeMaurice Smith.) I’m not sure if his classmates had trouble remembering “Bill” or if guys from Pittsburgh were extremely rare on the Cedarville campus. But for one reason or another, Dad quickly became known as “Pittsburgh,” which was quickly shortened to “Pitt.” Also, there is a card game named “Pit” that my dad was given as a gift. It wasn’t very popular, and I know of no other family that grew up playing “Pit.”
2. Dad is from Pittsburgh, and he (and his whole family) are loud. If you think that’s an insult, you obviously don’t know how much I love my extended family. We’re loud, but we’re also loyal. That might be a Pittsburgh thing, and that might be a Giesman thing, but it’s a thing, nonetheless. This might help you understand me better. I like to say that my dad talks loud and my mom talks a lot, and that’s why I am the way I am. (P.s. My dad doesn’t have a Pittsburgh accent anymore. With all due respect to my Jine Iggle-loving relatives, anyone who’s ever made fun of a Southern accent hasn’t spent much time around Pittsburghers. Also, Jine Iggle is Pittsburgh dialect for “Giant Eagle,” a popular local grocery store.)
3. Dad likes the Steelers just a little bit. That might go without saying since he’s from Pittsburgh, but it also gives me an excuse to tell a couple of stories. First, you remember that family loyalty bit under #2? Well, if you’re a Giesman, you had better be a Steelers fan. There’s not really an option. I was born in Ohio and basically lived in Indiana (Colts country) until age 7 and have never actually lived in Pittsburgh. But if the Steelers play the Colts tomorrow or any other day, I’m rooting for Pittsburgh without a second thought. (What if the Steelers somehow played against my alma mater, the Alabama Crimson Tide? Thinking about that might make my head explode, kinda like the old SNL Superfans meets Jeopardy sketch when one of the answers/questions was “Da Bulls vs. Da Bears.”) My aforementioned Uncle Kenny has basically been disowned by his extended family because he had the audacity to raise his children as Jacksonville Jaguars fans. (They live in Jacksonville, but really? The Jaguars? They weren’t even born there.) I saw a coffee mug the other day that I nearly bought Dad. It was outta stock on Amazon, but on one side it said, “You are in the presence of a PITTSBURGH STEELERS FAN.” The flip side read, “Cheer accordingly, or shut up!” Perfect. Hopefully, they’ll restock that bad boy soon.
3a. Confluence? – The Steelers play at Heinz Field currently. They used to play at Three Rivers Stadium, along with the Pirates. Three Rivers is named for the CONFLUENCE (sportscasters loved to use this term whenever they’re in Pittsburgh; I assume it’s at least a quasi-technical term) of the three rivers. The names of the three rivers are at the bottom of this entry. See if you know them.
4. Dad is responsible for my sports and fantasy sports addiction. My brother has fallen off the wagon of fantasy football addiction at the moment. (Does off the wagon mean he’s playing fantasy football or not playing fantasy football? On the wagon? Off the wagon? There was a Seinfeld about this.) Either way, my brother and I accompanied our dad to his first-ever fantasy football draft. I think I was in 3rd grade. I think we won that year. The next year, the draft was in the board room in dad’s boss’s office. My brother had his own team; I’m gonna guestimate that he was in the 7th grade. To quote that cheesy “Just Say No!” commercial from my childhood, “I learned it from watching you, DAD!!!” And I don’t regret it. (I’ve got a championship game coming up this weekend in one of my two leagues, btw.)
5. Dad carries a copy of one of my old college newspaper columns in his briefcase. At least he did, as of last year at Christmas time. Lemme explain. In college, I worked for the campus radio station and campus newspaper, mostly in sports, though I was once a graveyard shift DJ, too. During my junior year, I was the assistant sports editor at the paper, and I started to get opportunities to cover some of the high-profile football games. It just so happened that year that my oldest cousin Amelia was planning to get married on the day of the Alabama-Auburn football game. That’s obviously a pretty big game. Maybe a little more so in our family since I’m a Bama grad, and my brother is an Auburn alum; we overlapped in college for the two years immediately preceding Amelia’s wedding, too. At any rate, my mother informed me that if I wasn’t at my cousin’s wedding, I would be homeless very soon thereafter. (Nate was in his first year out of college, but I’m sure he was threatened with something, too.) So I went to the wedding. But not before I wrote a column full of snark and sarcasm about how my cousin was getting married on the day of the Iron Bowl in Atlanta. It was that very column that my dad fished out of his briefcase during a recent Christmas when it came up in conversation. (I’d give you a link to that column, but the Office of Student Media at Bama lost their online archives a few years ago in a fiasco that infuriates Bama college media alums to this day. If I get the time, I’ll dig up a print copy of that column and upload a picture of it.)
6. Dad scored free Iron Bowl tickets two years in a row. As I mentioned, Nate went to Auburn, I went to Bama, and we were in college at the same time from Fall ’99- Spring ’01. In ’99, Bama was en route to a 10-win Orange Bowl season, thanks to Shaun Alexander and Chris Samuels. In my freshman zeal, I was determined to get tickets for the Iron Bowl on Auburn’s home field. I was prepared to shell out $100. A day or so before I headed to the Plains, dad called to say that he had acquired tickets from a friend of a friend. (Nate used his student ticket. Also, thanks to an epic 4th-quarter comeback, Bama beat Auburn and then beat Florida for the SEC title the following week.) The same friend of a friend came through the following year when Nate and dad came to T-town to watch one of the most depressing games I’ve ever attended in person, a cold, drizzly 9-0 shutout win for Auburn that put a bow on a horrible 3-8 season that saw Bama plummet from their No. 3 preseason ranking, fire a coach in mid-season and prompt an NCAA investigation. But Nate and dad enjoyed the game and the free tickets. Also, in spring 2002, dad scored tickets to the Final Four to watch Indiana play. He had to pay face value to another friend from Kansas, but I’d still say it was a good deal.
7. Dad was a pretty good athlete, but he had a few injuries over the years. Let’s start with the good. When Dad was in 40s, he once won the 100-yd dash at his company picnic against a bunch of younger guys who worked in a factory. Not bad, eh? But like any good athlete, he had a few injuries over the years. There was the broken wrist suffered while catching a pop-up in a slow-pitch softball game. (Did you hold onto the ball or not? I can’t remember, Dad.) There was the pulled hamstring, suffered several times but most notably in the 1999 Turkey Bowl at First Pres-Dothan. (I can vividly remember him limping to our seats in the 3rd-to-last row of Jordan-Hare stadium for the ’99 Iron Bowl later that same day. He confided, “Don’t tell your mother, but I pulled my hamstring.”) This has nothing to do with his injury history, but I think it’s worth mentioning that he once picked up a technical foul while playing in church-league basketball game for “politely” asking a ref if he was blind. On another related note, my mom told my dad it was better for their marriage if they didn’t sit together during my soccer games. By my senior year, Dad’s tendency to “assist” the refs had begun to grate on her, so he roamed the sidelines, and she sat with the other moms, and we were all happy when the games were over. Which reminds me…
8. Dad was always supportive of our sporting endeavors. During Nate’s senior year of high school, he was a starting fullback/defender and team captain for our soccer team, and I was a freshman who saw spot duty here and there. On one particular game day that season, Dad had to host some out of town visitors at work. (He was a VP of Finance for a small manufacturing company, and the visitors were from the parent company in Kansas that owned them.) I’d say dad attended more road games than not, but I can’t remember him ever missing a home game. The day the head honchos from Kansas were in town was no exception. The game probably started at 4pm, and I can remember looking towards the bleachers and seeing a half-dozen guys in dress slacks and dress shoes roaming the sidelines. I assume we won, but I know for a fact that Dad was there. Along with Mom and a bunch of guys straight from the board room.
9. Dad has a lead foot. So do his sons. My father is a godly man. But he was once one ticket away from getting a suspended license. (I think.) And while I’m at it, let’s just say that I am need of sanctification in the lead footedness area, but the funny speeding stories all belong to my brother. Ya know that part about my cousin getting married on the day of the Iron Bowl? Well, Nate was actually part of the wedding party. And he was my ride to the wedding. And an hour into Amelia’s reception he informed me that we were leaving and headed to Auburn to watch the game. (We didn’t even have tickets. We just watched it at his best friend’s house. It was SEVEN Auburn fans and me. Bama won. I sang the fight song.) So we got in his truck and made a 2-hour drive to Auburn in a considerably shorter amount of time than that. The 100 mph governor kicked in several times as he weaved his way through I-85 traffic. I’m not saying Dad would be proud of that driving, but the apple(s) didn’t fall too far from the tree, and that thought probably makes him smile a little.
10. Dad thought Home Alone was really funny. We were pretty young when Home Alone came out in theaters. We usually didn’t see movies on opening night, but I think Nate convinced Dad that we should go, so the whole family went on down to one of the two movie theaters in Dothan, AL. And we laughed. In fact, the whole audience laughed. But Dad laughed louder. So loud that he nearly lost his breath a few times. (I don’t know if everyone is like this, but I can easily pick out the sound of my dad’s sneeze [like a freight train] and laugh in a crowded room.) Dad laughed so loud that people began to laugh at my dad’s laughing. Something funny would happen, and a roar of laughter would rise. And then fall. But Dad’s laugh lingered just a little longer and little louder. And eventually the laughter picked back up, only now it was directed at something other than Macaulay Caulkin. And at some point, I think my brother and I even began to laugh at the fact that people were laughing at my dad’s laughing. In related news, I’m watching Home Alone tonight with our College Bible Study folks, which got me thinking about that story, which got me thinking about this blog post.
11. Dad had cancer and lived to tell about it. It’s hard to know what to say about all of that. When I found out my dad had cancer, I was 30, dad was 58, and I wasn’t ready to lose him. And people that age aren’t supposed to get cancer. And I was scared. And it sucked. (And if that word offends you, just know that I don’t think that word goes far enough in portraying the ugliness of cancer.) Yes, the radiation treatment appeared to work. Yes, he is cancer-free. Yes, I am overjoyed. Yes, I am still appreciative of every one of my church members that says to me, “How is your dad doing? We prayed for him.” Yes, yesterday’s news was great. Part of you probably expects me to slap Romans 8:28 into this post and end on a positive and encouraging note. Something won’t let me do that today, at least not in that exact way. Something in me just wants to say that cancer sucks and I’m glad for now that it’s behind us. I can still remember when Dad was getting fried by radiation treatments five times a day for seven straight weeks, some of which I saw up close. I can still remember him saying that he was looking forward to the March Madness Selection Show weekend because when that weekend arrived it meant he was done with his radiation treatments. Which reminds me…
12. Dad and his sons remember important events in life according to what sporting even was going on then. Maybe you think that’s strange. Maybe it is. But I’m always going to think of my dad when March Madness Selection Sunday rolls around. And then I’m going to thank God that the radiation treatments are over, that the cancer is gone and that my dad is still standing.
And while we’re at it, let me tell you about a certain sporting event from the month when my dad was diagnosed with cancer. We were on our semi-annual Giesman family ski trip. There have been some good ones. This one was in 2011, and we were in Park City, Utah. Mom and Dad had known about the cancer for a week or so; they decided not to tell us, and in hindsight, I’m glad they didn’t. We went to Utah, and the guys hit the slopes while my mom took my wife shopping. As expected, my brother was a little quicker on most runs than me, and I was a little quicker than my dad. But at one point, Dad and I got separated from Nate, and we ended up on a hill with moguls, aka, death traps for amateurs like ourselves. Dad eventually threw his skis over his shoulder and started walking to the bottom of the hill. He was more than a little tired. (Keep in mind, he had cancer.) When we got to the bottom, I met up with Nate, and Dad called it a day. Nate and I remarked to each other (and later to our mom) that Dad might finally be starting to show his age on the slopes. Little did we know, he still had quite a bit of fight left in him.
Merry Christmas, Dad! And a Happy late birthday! If you’re in the mood, we’ll watch Home Alone when you get to town this weekend. And you can laugh as loud as you want.
*TRIVIA QUESTION ANSWER: Name the three rivers that form the CONFLUENCE in Pittsburgh:
The Ohio, the Allegheny and the Monongahela. I know the Ohio starts at the confluence and flows west into the Mississippi. But I forget where the other two start. Also, I spelled those from memory. You should be impressed.
-Pastor Matt, 3-13-26 (though most of this post dates to December 2013)