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May 16, 2007

Manor funeral celebrates life of a good man

Darcy Manor funeral celebrates life of a good man

By SUZANNE MOORE

ELLENBURG -- Darcy Manor took one last ride in the horse-drawn wagon he'd built with his own capable and loving hands.

Tuesday, as the murdered man's workhorse Belle stood patiently between the shafts, pallbearers slid Darcy's casket into the wagon and took seats on two benches built along each side.

"He had an Amish buggy," said lifelong friend Todd Jarvis as he held the horse before the funeral procession arrived at E.F. Drown Funeral Service on Route 11 in Ellenburg Depot. "He was afraid kids would fall out of it, so he built (the wagon)."

Jarvis and his brother Mike missed their friend's funeral at St. Edmund's Church a few miles away to ready Belle and the wagon for the short drive to Whispering Maples Memorial Gardens Mausoleum behind the funeral home.

"He would be so proud" to take that mode of transport, Darcy's uncle Alan Cardin told more than 400 mourners who crowded the church in Ellenburg Corners.

At least 50 stood outside in the rain, unable to hear the service but remaining anyhow.

Tears had fallen freely as Darcy's wife, Heather, and brother, Stacy, led the large family down the center aisle, as pallbearers accompanied the rain-spattered casket through the tightly packed throng that left just a narrow passage at the back of the church.

But laughter rippled as Cardin described the "retired men's club" that frequented Darcy's D.J. Repair Shop mornings and afternoons, friends and family who he put to work helping to weld, paint and varnish the wagon.

One time, as Darcy repaired a pickup truck hoisted up on the lift, Cardin said, one regular at the shop -- sitting just out of sight -- called him on his cell phone, pretending to be an auto dealer who wanted to buy that particular vehicle.

The "men's club" laughed at Darcy's confusion over the call.

"Next day," Cardin said, "he had a chair set up in the corner for "time out."

And cell phones were banned from the shop.

Cardin celebrated Darcy's life with other anecdotes, including one involving a baked ham that somehow fell to the floor as he was trying to carve it.

In his usual laid-back fashion, Cardin said, Darcy "picked the ham up, rinsed it off, put it back on the platter.

"Darcy looked at (his mother-in-law) Annie (Keddy) and said, This will be our little secret."

Cardin told how his nephew always had a friendly greeting for everyone, patiently repaired his cousins' cars, tirelessly entertained children with four-wheeler, snowmobile and wagon rides.

"Sometimes, he was a big kid himself," Cardin said, raising chuckles especially from the pews reserved for family, who filled almost half the church. "He has all the toys to prove it."

The devoted family man and father of two young sons, said Cardin, "took extremely tender loving care of his grandmother. ... He was the one constant in her life. She could count on him visiting seven days a week no matter what."

There was no direct mention of Darcy's death at the hands of an assailant at a camp on Drown Road in Mooers, where he'd gone to perform some routine maintenance.

But Andrew Sparks, a cousin, recited a poem he'd written that blended agony over the unspeakable act with hope.

"Grieving widow," it reads in part, "hold onto the light and give your crumbling heart a rest ... You are stronger than darkness."

The Rev. John Looby framed his brief homily around the Gospel reading, which told how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.

"I am the resurrection and the life," Looby repeated the words from the Bible, the Lord's message to Lazarus's sister Martha. "Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live."

"I think these words were recorded so we could hear them at a time like this," Looby said.

"All we can do at this point," Cardin had said near the close of his remarks, "is take one day at a time and move forward."

Darcy wouldn't want it any other way, he said.

"Heather," Cardin said to Darcy's widow, "we will all be here for you every step of the way. We will take care of you and the boys for Darcy, because Darcy would be the first to step forward to help any one of us."

He directed his final words to Darcy.

"Rest assured your family will be in good hands with all of us.

"You will now be our guardian angel.

"We love you."

Cardin stepped down from the altar, paused to rest his hand on Darcy's white-draped casket, then took his seat.

smoore@pressrepublican.com

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