Vince Flynn and Rush Limbaugh, I want to tell you where I was yesterday. I attended the funeral for the author Vince Flynn in St. Paul, Minnesota, yesterday, and it was amazing. Three thousand people at a beautiful, beautiful Catholic Church, 3,000 people.
It was a closed casket, but the viewing began at nine. The line was two blocks long to get in. There were people from all over the country. People flew in from Hawaii, arriving at 9:30 yesterday. The funeral was at 10:30. People flew overnight from Hawaii to get there from all over the country. Vince had friends in the US military. There were dress Marines. There were Secret Service.
Huge, huge family, great people, very, very loving. They were doing so great for the circumstances. They put everybody else and their comfort first and their concerns first. Kathryn and I were in line with George Brett and his wife and some friends from Kansas City. When we finally got to the family, his wife Lysa was there, they went and grabbed the whole family to come up and meet us and say hello. It was a 90-minute Mass. Just beautiful, folks. Everything about it was just beautiful. It was sad, but it was uplifting and beautiful at the same time.
It was a privilege and an honor to know Vince and to know his family and to be part of this yesterday. And I need to make a correction. I can't tell you how embarrassing it is, but the family was laughing themselves silly. Last week I said that Vince's father had passed away early on, so when I met Vince's father yesterday he said, "You know, I'm glad that you were wrong, one of those rare times, when you were talking about me." And I was mortified. I was trying to remember, well, how in the world did this happen? Who told me? All this is racing through my mind as I'm talking to Mr. Flynn who is perfectly healthy, in his seventies, and he's laughing about it. The whole family, they were laughing about it. I mean, it didn't upset them. They didn't call. Nobody wrote, tried to correct me. They knew, I guess, that they'd see me yesterday and tell me about it.
But for the life of me, I can't recall how I came to believe that Vince's father had passed away early, but he hadn't. His brothers and sisters were all there, and it's amazing the resemblance they all have for one another. They called him Vinny. And his mother is just a piece of work. They're all just wonderful people. It was really an emotionally conflicting day, because there was the sadness -- and I still haven't gotten past that. For some reason I'm having trouble accepting that this has happened. And then at the other end of this, it was just every positive thing about a family is present in the Flynns. They're just grade A, quality, class.
It's like I said last week, if Vince was in your neighborhood, you'd have the best neighborhood in your town. If Vince was part of your group, it would be the best group, whatever the group is. You could say that about his entire family, his kids. At the end of the day it was just a very uplifting and heartwarming thing to be a part of, mixed with the sadness. But I wanted to take a brief moment to tell you about it and to thank everybody in Vince's family for making us feel so welcome yesterday. They were going out of their way, putting everybody else and their comfort first yesterday during this.
It was also fascinating to meet friends from elsewhere in Vince's life. We knew him as the author and as the golf buddy and as the guy who came to our various fun weekend groups, a couple of trips that we took. But for the first time yesterday we met his Minnesota crew, so to speak, and they were all just great, and they couldn't have been nicer, especially on a day where nobody really could believe they were experiencing.
But that's it. The strength that they exhibited and the... Well, their belief in God, I'll tell you, is what got them through it, propels them through it, and sustains them. And it was just obvious. It was very, very confirming, folks, of the traditions -- and I mean this. The whole day yesterday, for me, and for Kathryn, for all of us, was entirely confirming of everything we invest in as Americans, in terms of the traditions and the institutions that we rely on, that we believe, makes this a great country.
It was all embodied yesterday from nine o'clock to two o'clock, five hours, including the reception afterwards. So it was a treat to meet all these people and to experience the uplifting nature of their personalities. So just a brief moment here to thank them for it and to offer again our sympathies and condolences -- and, once again, to tell everybody that Vince Flynn's father lives. He's robust; he's still alive. I got that wrong, and, as I say, I'm trying to figure out who told me he'd passed away.
It was in a group. We were talking after we'd all learned that Vince had come down with prostate cancer. There's the group of us sitting around one of these golf weekends and somebody said, "Well, you know," blah, blah, blah, blah. And it just survived, and nobody ever corrected me or anybody else when we were talking about it in the past year, until yesterday. When somebody said, "I want to introduce you to Vince's father..." (laughing) I wish you coulda seen the look on my face. (laughing)
We got to the family at the visitation line, and someone says, "I want to introduce you to Vince's father."
I said, "Oh, no."
And then I musta had ten people say, "I didn't tell you! I'm not the one who told you!" Everybody was saying, "Don't look at me!"
So, at the end of the day, I'm just gonna say I made it up and get everybody else off the hook.+
2 years ago
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