Eulogy for Mauno Lindholm
Mauno Lindholm was my grandfather on my father's side; an immigrant who came to this country from Finland at a young age and grew up to become a hero in WW2. He is the first person I know to die who I felt close to and greatly influenced by. He passed away 2 weeks ago at the age of 91.
To Mauno, nothing in his life was more important than his service in WW2. He flew 62 missions in a B-25 bomber, and he liked to tell me that his plane never took a bullet and he was called "Lucky Lindy" as a result. The odds of a pilot surviving that many missions is infinitesimal. He claims to have loved war and he looked back on the war as the best time in his life. He retired from the military with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and highly decorated, including a distinguished flying cross.
Mauno was the basis of the "Milo Minderbinder" character of Joseph Heller's Catch 22. The Milo character is intended as an indictment of capitalism - Milo trades with various undeveloped countries to spruce up the food in the mess hall, and ultimately contracts with the Germans to bomb his own base. In reality, Mauno would never have commited the latter act, but he did love to talk about using Army planes to conduct various trades, and he claims that his mess hall served the finest cuisine as a result (and no doubt his own pocket was well-lined to boot - I suspect the money he made in the war saw him through the rest of his life).
In his character, Mauno was something of a Nietzschean. He was manipulative and always happy to sacrifice another to whatever he perceived his own interest to be. Lies came easily to him. I learned from him that a person can get away with most anything, as long as they are willing to maintain the necessary lie. For example: annoyed at restrictions at his condo complex that required a treeline to keep the condos from view of the nearby golf course, Mauno simply contracted to have the trees removed. When pressed by the association, Mauno simply repeated that he had NO IDEA how the trees could have come down, and what a coincidence that it happened to open up his own view so nicely. Another time, he had bought us kids some fireworks to light off, and we set up an incredible pyrotechnic display. When the firemen showed up angry, Mauno blithely explained while standing in the middle of the shrapnel and smoke that he had nothing to do with it and perhaps these kids might know. The firemen, thankfully, had the decency not to start questioning us.
But he did it so charmingly! As a kid I was endlessly amused by this brazen bad behavior, and the fact that he made no apologies for it. Similarly, Mauno loved to drink, and womanize, and was something of a hedonist. I strongly suspect that any hedonistic tendencies I have acquired are a direct result of my young interactions with Mauno. But at the same time he posessed a fierce discipline. At 80 years old, after drinking all day every day for the better part of 40 years, he simply stopped cold turkey. I saw him then in the throes of DTs and it was not a pretty sight, but I was awed by the force of will required to make such a drastic change so late in life.
The picture I paint of Mauno is not that of a saint, and frankly, that is why I loved him. He may have been an asshole (at times), and he may have done things that I would not want to emulate, but he lived life on his own terms. Mauno was larger than life. I am a bit angry at myself for writing this because I know there is no way I can encapsulate every aspect of his enormous personality into this eulogy. Most people try to say "he was a good man" but I don't think that does Mauno justice. Instead, I will borrow a phrase from Nietzsche: Mauno Lindholm was beyond good or evil. He existed in an eclectic morality that was entirely self-created. Perhaps not a good man, but definitely a fascinating man.
I miss him so much!