As the dedicated hard working man, that he was John Krieg, my dad, was a phenomenal provider. Crawling under houses, busting through concrete and wielding a pipe wrench like it was a can opener, even on days freezing cold and sweltering hot, he put all 5 of us kids through Catholic school. Our uniforms and our church attire were always top quality. Several times a year we were at Brown Bros. Shoes in the first floor of Aunt Rosie’s two-story home in Oakland getting shoe wear that would keep up with the latest in fashion as well as our quickly growing feet. We ate well. There was always a steady stream of heat coming from the wall heaters that we used to like to sit in front of on cold days at our long time home on Ambrose Ct. in Hayward, CA.
In producing in such a way he also sacrificed his body. So when he retired at 62, his huge, gnarled and calloused hands justified the newfound life of leisure he enjoyed with his beautiful new wife, Elma. We might have gotten a few more years out of him if he had taken up my favorite form of exercise, bicycling, and yet there again Elma’s food gave him a glow that always surprised people when they learned his age.
Dad praised creativity. He prized art and artists. It is for this reason that Chris went on to be able to provide so very well for his family as the celebrated billboard artist that he still in the Denver, CO area.
A true artist, objectifies life. He uses his or her medium to help people see what is going on around them as they go about the daily task of just living their lives. Artists remind people that there is more and that we, ourselves, are more. And as such, whether he knew it or not dad raised a family of artists. Besides Chris, Nancy, whose amazing voice you will hear today found music as a way to express the art that was inside of her.
Kathy, Dad, Elma
As for my oldest sister, Kathy, who excels in sales, anyone who works for themselves knows that being self employed is in and of itself an art form of the highest order. While Karen, my youngest sister, taught school for a living. Her art came in the form of the daily lesson plans she had to not only prepare but then implement.
And as the author that I am, I live for the opportunity to learn about myself and life through the written word. Writing is a joy for me because it helped me learn how to talk and rebuilt my ability to think all over again. It is my art. Tho dad never saw it in this life but will in the next, I am building the coast to coast bicycle highway we call National Bicycle Greenway with my writing.
Dad loved baseball. It is why I tried to win his approval by working for nearly a decade as a baseball umpire after my car wreck forced me out of accounting. However, I needed to stop thinking balls and strikes and where I could get my next baseball pay check if I ever wanted to genuinely satisfy dad. Nor did it hurt that his desire for me to express as an artist seemed to coincide with my need to get my comeback story told. I perfected my writing skills.
I became a magazine editor, ghost wrote a book for a woman who went around the world on a bicycle and wrote and rewrote my story for 16 years until it finally found a book publisher. And with it, I have been able inspire great numbers of people So daily do I thank dad for his having a strong work ethic for all of us kids to see. This because writing a book is not easy. It requires perseverance and commitment. And it was his example that taught me how to put my nose to the grindstone.
Dad knew baseball as good as anyone I have ever met. And this includes any of the college coaches, even Oakland A’s instructors I used to have regular dealings with. When I was his little youth league catcher, after a game all he ever wanted to do was run through all the various strategies at hand. What pitches I might have called for differently, where I might have positioned my glove for the pitcher to see differently when the batter was standing in different parts of the box, how I could have located outfielders more correctly, and a whole lot more of these kinds of considerations were the nuances of the game he regularly drilled into my head. And if I had ever grown in size, he would have had a star baseball player on his hands.
As testimony to the depth of his understanding of the game and well after my baseball years were behind me, dad took an all star team of Little Leaguers out of the greater San Francisco Bay Area and almost all the way to Williamsport, the long revered baseball Super Bowl showcase for kids 9 thru 12.
In his retirement, baseball became dad’s escape. It was his way through all the nonsense of the world. It probably also helped him get his mind off all the anguish us kids had to be causing him during our early adult years. And even tho he never approved of them, dad was always there to get me back home after my bike rides across America were complete.
He also had a fascination with the workings of the brain. I can remember the late nights when he would implore me to finish my homework in the morning so he could concentrate on the documentaries that were beginning to appear on PBS television about the last frontier, the mind. In what has become cliche now, he was one of the first people I had heard to say ‘it’s all mind over matter’. Over and over again, he would tell me I could do anything with my brain.
To this day, I wonder if the brain injury I suffered when Chris and I crashed up in Idaho was my way of acid testing this truth. This combined with how hard he rode us kids if we misbehaved and the trials caused by my small size and I was blessed with strength. Following the lead my dad had set, I was able to overcome the pretty colossal setback of having to learn how to think, walk, talk, zip zippers, tie shoes and fasten buttons all over again.
For you and because of you dad the National Bicycle Greenway will become real! We have long heard that the pen is mightier than the sword. Well because of all the tools you dad have given me for life, I am going to show you and the world that my artistic expression, the pen, is mighty in its ability to actualize something truly great for all of mankind.
Dad when I was always the smallest kid on every time I played for and you helped me adjust the uniforms for me that were always too big before we always seemed to lose, you taught me not to give up, to keep giving my best.
Your teaching echoed the great words of George Armstrong Custer :
It is not how many time you get knocked down that count
but how times U get back up.
Dad your journey here is finished but your flame burns strong in all of us to whom you have given the gift of life.
Chris, Martin, Kathy, Nancy. Karen
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