A Roof Is For the Building

Some years back, a fellow named Del Sorensen put a new roof on the fellowship hall at our Lutheran church. Del had done well in used cars over in Saginaw, and he was feeling generous, which is a fine thing to feel. The roof needed doing. We were grateful.

But Del also decided the hall should henceforth be known as the Sorensen Fellowship Hall. He wanted a plaque. Visible from the parking lot. He had opinions about font size.

Pastor Holmgren listened to all of this with the patience of a man who has heard worse in a single Tuesday. Then he said, "Del, we're grateful for the roof. The hall's been the fellowship hall since 1952, and it's going to stay the fellowship hall. Your name's already on the deed in heaven, and that's the one that counts."

Del didn't care for that. Stopped coming to church for about four months. But here's the thing: he didn't try to take the roof off on his way out. He didn't lock the doors. He was sore about it, sure. But he left the roof on the building, because the roof wasn't for him. The roof was for the building.

I've been thinking about Del a lot lately.

What I've been reading about is the Kennedy Center, which is the big performing arts building in Washington. Named for a president who didn't put his own name on it. Jack Kennedy didn't walk around looking for surfaces to sign. Other people named it for him after he was gone, because of what he'd meant to them. There's a difference between earning a name and demanding one, and the difference is roughly the size of a man's whole character.

What's happened is this: the current president decided he'd like his name on the outside of the building. A judge said no. Told him no twice, which in my experience is once more than most people get before the conversation turns pointed. So the president shut the place down. Then he said if he can't have his name on it, the building might get "ripped down." Those were his words.

I set my coffee down when I read that.

Now, the Kennedy Center is not alone in this. You've got fountains in Lafayette Park that got $17 million in fixing and then got fenced off so nobody can much use them. You've got a Reflecting Pool with algae and peeling paint after a $15 million contract supposedly went to its care. Public tours of the White House stopped so a $900 million ballroom can go in. A park that got torn up for a fighting event and then just stayed that way. Behind a fence.

Aunt Vi, who has been wrong about approximately nothing since the Carter administration, would tell you the pattern isn't complicated. And she'd be right. The pattern is: if I can't have it my way, nobody has it. And if I can have it my way, it goes behind a fence and you can look at it from the sidewalk.

There's a word we'd use for that in Chamberlain's Bend. We'd use it gently, because we try to be charitable. The word is "toddler." I've watched toddlers at the county fair, which is always next month, has been since I was a boy, don't ask. A toddler sees another child holding something and can't stand it. Not because he needs the thing. Because he can't stand the sight of someone else holding something whole. If he can't have it, he'll pull it apart. Not for the pieces. Just to settle the score.

What gets me, what made me set the coffee down a second time, is that none of these places were broken before. The Kennedy Center wasn't failing. Lafayette Park was a park. The Reflecting Pool reflected. People went there. These were working, living, visited places, and the only thing that changed is a man walked in who couldn't tell the difference between owning something and caring for it.

That's not the same thing. Owning and caring are cousins at best, strangers mostly.

In a small town you learn this early. The person who owns the most is almost never the person who tends the most. The person who tends the most is usually someone nobody's named anything after. She's the one who unlocks the church kitchen before sunrise for the funeral lunch. He's the one who patches the grandstand with leftover lumber and somebody else's nail gun. Their names aren't on anything. Their handprints are on everything. And when the building is still standing twenty years from now, that's why.

Del Sorensen eventually found another church. One with a smaller memory and room for a plaque. I heard they named the coat closet after him. That's probably fine. What matters is the roof he paid for is still on our building, and in February when the wind comes in off the fields and everyone piles into the fellowship hall for the chili supper, nobody thinks about Del. They think about the warmth, and the chili, and the folding tables, and each other.

That's a legacy. Nobody put it on a sign.

You can't demand a legacy into being. And you can't hold onto one by tearing down everything that won't hold still for the naming. A building doesn't become yours because your name is on it. It becomes yours because you left it standing for the next person, in better shape than you found it, and walked away without asking for anything back.

Jack Kennedy understood that. Del Sorensen came around to it, eventually.

Some people take longer.

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