TRIBUTE

The following is the eulogy I delivered at Gary's funeral service on March 25, 2026.

Gary Wilkerson was my brother, he was also my employer, my golf partner and my rock of Gibraltar throughout my life.

Let me start with the things I remember about growing up with Gary. For the first years of my life, we shared a tiny bedroom off the kitchen at our house on Tennyson Terrace. We slept in the same double bed. He gained his freedom from me when he moved to the back bedroom, formerly the girls’ bedroom, when our sister Gail moved out on the night of her wedding to Ken Covel. He was seventeen.  I was ten. 

I remember jumping on him in bed on Saturday mornings to get him up to watch The Bugs Bunny Show with me on TV. He loved Bugs, Porky, Daffy. So did I. But he would have slept through it all if I didn’t wake him up. 

I remember Gary and Bobby Clukey tying our little red wagons to the back of their bicycles with ropes and taking me and my friend (and Bobby's brother) Lee Clukey on the kind of death-defying thrill ride down Tennyson Terrace that only older brothers can inflict on the younger brothers.

I remember how when Gary worked his first job as assistant manager at Super Duper grocery that he would have to deliver the nightly inventory request to the Flickingers warehouse someplace way south on Transit Road. Rather than driving alone, when very tired from a day’s work at the store, he didn’t want to risk falling asleep. So, he bribed me to go along with him by offering to stop at McDonalds. It was the first McDonalds in the Buffalo area where he bought me fifteen cent hamburgers. French fries were ten cents. Shakes were twenty cents. We did this nearly every night.

Gary became one of my first employers after our father passed away. Gary took over running the Williamsville Taxi business that our Dad had only recently taken over from our uncle Harry. Gary certainly didn’t want this business, he was just twenty-one and I’m sure had other plans for his life, but he bucked up and did the job nobody else would do, adding cars and drivers and putting two-way radios in the cabs. He modernized a failing business and for a time, made it work.

My job for him every Saturday was to wash and vacuum the three or four taxis the business had outside the apartment he and his wife Donna lived in on Ferndale Avenue. Our Aunt Florence lived next door. I worked year round washing cabs.  Yes, even during the winter in Buffalo. On Friday nights and frequently on Saturdays,  I also ran the taxi business so he and Donna could enjoy an evening out. I answered the phones, took the customer orders and dispatched the cabs on the two-way radio. He devised a set of radio signals.  Signal 3 was over and out. I was fourteen, and actually kind of enjoyed the responsibility of handling the business. And after his son Jim was born I also was charged with babysitting and changing diapers. For that, my pay increased from fifty cents an hour to seventy five. I had a fringe benefit. I could watch Star Trek during its first run on Gary’s color TV.

I remember Gary driving us home after one of our golf games in his Buick convertible, and how he discovered that if he hit the gas just as I was taking a drink from the jug of iced tea that the acceleration could cause the tea to splash all over me. He loved to tease. 

As each of us Wilkerson kids married and moved away from home, one of the ways our family kept together was by gathering together on Sunday. Every Sunday. One week at it was at Tennyson, one week at Gail and Ken’s another week at Judy and Dick’s another at Virginia and Ed’s. Gary, Donna and the kids were there every week until he closed the taxi business, became a New York State Trooper and moved downstate.

I never really understood the importance of family at that time. I just took it for granted. But I want to tell you what life has taught me. Family is not just important. It’s the most important thing there is in life.  Gary knew that. 

So, Sundays were important. If you watched the home movies our Dad took, and I digitized this past year, you’ve seen some of our Sunday excursions. To the Buffalo Zoo, to Niagara Falls, to Letchworth Park, to Watkins Glen, to Lilac Sunday in Rochester. And there were also our summer vacations, to Allegheny State Park, to Washington D.C., and our many visits to Virginia and Ed’s home in West Virginia. Our free time was family time. I understand the later generation called it FFF.  Forced family fun. Maybe we grumbled about it.  But it was worth every minute.

Of course, in the fall came football. Gary and I would play touch football every Sunday, me and Gary against Dick Van Kuren and Ken Covel.  It was touch football, but it was brutal. The touches frequently left us all sore for days. Then after our game, we’d lick our wounds, go inside and watch the Buffalo Bills or whatever football game was on TV.

One of my favorite memories of Gary in our adult life was during our first family trip to Rehoboth Beach when Gary led a family church service. Knowing that we’d be in Rehoboth on a Sunday, and not wanting us to miss church, Gary asked me if I could bring a small keyboard and play some hymns. So in between our family singing hymns Gary and Gail reading Bible passages Gary delivered a sermon.  It was just like any regular church service, our family praying, some of our babies crying, and Ed Snell falling asleep. It was the first time I ever played music for a church service. It warms my heart to remember it. Gary loved our Lord and wasn’t afraid to talk about it. I know that he’s with the Lord now, because if he isn’t, I’m in real trouble.

When I was still a kid, Gary taught me how to play golf, and through the years we played a lot together. I never beat him. Not even once. I think that’s why he liked playing with me. But maybe he also liked to spend a few hours alone with his kid brother when, away from everybody else, we could talk about our lives and the choices we had made. In many ways Gary and I were as different as can be. I was the hippie musician who went to Woodstock, he was the hard working New York State Trooper. He was the responsible one with a steady job and a mortgage. I was… on another path.

To clarify our differences, Gary used to reference one of the children’s records that we grew up with. The Grasshopper and the Ants. Gary said that I was the Grasshopper, living a carefree life, out playing music, writing for TV, thinking the world owed me a living. He was the Ant, hard at work, doing a real job, breaking his back and preparing for the inevitable winter that would certainly arrive. Of course, things weren’t quite that simple, though, like the Grasshopper, I did sing for my supper from time to time. 

Gary was always there whenever I needed help. When I launched a company in the golf business, and needed help at my booth at the PGA Show in Orlando, Gary and Marla pitched in and helped me work the booth for four days. All they asked for was a hotel room and dinners. We had great fun being together. That was in 2004 and the BreakMaster is still in business.

But to me, the most important thing about Gary was all about family. This family, all of us. If he wasn’t the center of it, he was darned close. I know how much his family meant to him. His kids, his step-kids, his grand and great-grand kids. His wife, Marla, and the wonderful life they built together. His parents, his sisters, his brother, his nephews and nieces. He loved all of you very deeply and he loved every minute of being together with you all.

I wasn’t as good at family as he was.  Gary kept in touch. Me, not so much. He’d call out of the blue and we’d talk about what was going on in our lives. He used to tease me that it was odd that the phone lines would only call out from East to West, and not the other way around. It wasn’t that I didn’t like to keep in touch, it was rather that if I didn’t hear anything bad, that I knew you were all just fine.  It took me a long time to learn not to take that for granted.

As I have gotten older, I have delivered eulogies to friends who have passed. This one, however, is coming years too soon. It’s never easy to prepare for the passing of someone you love, but this one is particularly hard. I just thought we had more time. But I’m thankful to God for the time we had together. 03.29.26

BACK TO TRIBUTES