“I was around 10-11 years old living on Conesus Lake with my family. Early in the summer, we took a family outing for fishing, Bunny and Lou joined us. I would spend my winters looking at photo’s of my parents, Jay and Mary Jo, and their friends camping expeditions in the Adirondack mountains. There were so many pictures of Lou holding up the evening’s future meal (usually Bass). It made me very eager to fish with Lou when he would come to the lake house.
This particular outing, Lou took me to Bob’s Bait and Tackle to get bait. At my urging, he got some Crayfish. This was the start of my line of bad ideas. I never was big on handling fish, but to be around Lou I was happy to.
So off we motored on the Party Boat to cottonwood point, and my first cast into the duckweed, something hit fast. I started reeling as hard as I could, pulling this way and that… then it jumped up out of the water. “That’s a Northern Pike!” Lou exclaimed. Panic rushed through me. I started yelling for someone to take it, thinking the ferocious fish was going to somehow bite my hand off! Fluidly, Lou took control, reeling in and netting the 26″ monster.
It amazed me how he could so quickly handle and cool situations that seemed to be spiraling out of control, and do it with a smile.
Lou was a part of my life that I cherish. He was what I would think about when someone mentioned Church, or started speaking about the Lord. He was a rock that people could cling to in troubled waters, and he would hold you as tightly as you could hold him. So my adjective for him would have to be “steadfast.”
To know Lou was to know a true blessing, as he was to every life he encountered. To be loved by him was to know a steadfast love.
May the Lord bless you, and keep you, and bring you the peace of living with His steadfast love over your life. With all of my love,” Chris Rodman