In the lives of all of us, there are a few people whom we believe ought never to die. Timothy Coke Doughtie surely was such a person. He really was. (His middle name, Coke, has nothing to do with the dark brown elixir of Atlanta, by the way, nor was it connected to a nickname for a notorious white substance. It was derived from a Methodist bishop, of all things.)

But to return from that aside to the nature of Tim's life: There is no one who ever lived who was ever more alive than Tim. He gave us a new understanding of the words vivacity and animation and exuberance. To be with him was to enter into another realm, another plane of existence; we were suddenly swept into Doughtieworld without fully realizing how it had happened. But whenever it occurred, we were deliciously and delightfully enveloped by it.

How can anybody possibly die who lived life to its outer limits as Tim lived it? His existence exuded energy, each of his days was a testimony to the fullness of life, and now he is gone. And so quickly gone. From diagnosis to death there was scarcely a month. It seems monstrously impossible. He was in excellent health, and then in just a few days he was gravely ill. Could it be that someone who was always so lavishly lively was able even to evade death for a surprising length of time? Might his very Tim-ness have sustained him far longer than would have been true for the rest of us mortals in his circumstances? Did his inner spark stave off the approach of death so that only at the last did anyone know how serious his condition was?

We expect the rest of us to die. Some might even be pleased to see certain ones of us shuffle unceremoniously off this mortal coil. But Tim Doughtie's death drills a hole in our hearts, and it seems somehow utterly inappropriate, especially when we --- and he --- had so little time to prepare for it.

The Doughtie family came to Hilton Head Island shortly after Noah's ark came to rest on Mt. Ararat. They arrived here so long ago that I suspect it was they of whom Walt Whitman was thinking when he wrote in his poem Pioneers, O Pioneers! The year was 1961, and in those primordial times there were hundreds of native islanders, and the Fraser family, and the Hack family, and almost no one else here. The old bridge had been built, but few people had yet discovered either it or the Island.

The senior Doughties built a home on Beach Lagoon Drive in Sea Pines when there was hardly a Beach Lagoon Drive and hardly a Sea Pines. Because there was no high school on the Island, and it took nearly forever to get to Bluffton (some things never change), all five of the children went away to school. Tim graduated from Savannah Country Day School, which was no mean feat, considering the distance and the time it took to get there.

Tim Doughtie was one of the most intelligent, sharpest, quickest-witted, warmest, most caring, friendliest, and most genuinely loving people I have ever known. And as mentally gifted, wise, and well read as he was, I was astonished to learn from Betsy that he absolutely hated school. He detested it! I surmise that was because he never encountered a teacher who was intellectually able to keep up with him, and maybe he simply became bored with the mundane pace of academe. After all, who could effectively teach Einstein or Bill Gates or Robin Williams --- or Tim Doughtie? Geniuses generally go into other vocations than teaching, so there aren't many geniuses left to teach the geniuses.

Did you ever hear how Tim and Betsy became a number? There's a story! Betsy had come here to baby-sit for her nephews, the sons of her sister. Some of you will remember Babe MacNeille from the old days. One evening Babe saw Betsy having dinner in one of the Island's few restaurants. She insisted Betsy needed to meet this excellent-looking young man whom she had just met only moments before. Although she had never known Tim, she thought Betsy needed to know him, so instantly she introduced her to him. And that, apart from the intervention of a year Tim spent in Germany with the US Air Force, was that. When Tim returned to the States, they were married, and then they both went back to Germany together for three more years with our beloved Uncle.

Quickly to review his business career, he worked for the Sea Pines Company for four years, starting in 1970. Then in 1974 he started his own advertising company. It is important to remember that everything Tim did he did by being self-taught or by picking it up as he went along. His academic training, which ended after two years of college, was torture for him, but no one ever grasped things more quickly than Tim Doughtie. For example, when talking to him, we all wondered where our completely innocent conversation might lead, what pungent puns might result from phrases which tumbled effortlessly and ill-considered from our lips.

In 1982 Tim, John David Rose, and Tom Gardo formed a partnership for a much larger advertising company. During this time the unique mental hardware constantly whirring beneath the ever-memorable shiny dome came up with quips and quotes, suitable for framing in one medium or another. Tim didn't know exactly how to use these pithy statements he had concocted, but in the back of his mind he imagined there must be a market for them somewhere and somehow. In 1989, the singular imagination of Timothy Coke Doughtie issued in the establishment of High Cotton, the vehicle which best utilized Tim's creative genius. With Jim Morgan, and later Bonnie Snyder, he nurtured High Cotton into some really high cotton.

Likely most of us here have some tangible mementoes of his linguistic largesse. A couple of years ago, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, knowing nothing of Tim Doughtie or High Cotton, my mother-in-law found a doormat for my wife and me, in honor of our dog Teddy. It says, "This is not a joke. If you ever want to see these people again, bring me a 5-lb. roast in a plain brown bag." And it is signed, "The Dog." Teddy loves it, as does everyone else. Ten years ago, when I resigned from the pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church, Tim gave me a t-shirt. It boldly proclaims, "Jesus Is Coming --- Look Busy." I have to give careful thought about who sees that t-shirt. Not everyone can appreciate the thought-provoking irreverence. But that statement is so quintessentially Doughtian.

Tim was a tad unorthodox in matters religious. I know you'll find that hard to believe. After all, he was so predictably orthodox in all other matters. But it's true. He was too much a free spirit to be enveloped by the constraints of any particular theology or church or denomination, although he was active in church for much of his life.

Nonetheless, Tim truly and deeply lived what he believed every hour of every day. He was constantly committed to his understanding of what was right, and he always tried to do the right in his own memorable manner. He was unfailingly kind, even if at the same time occasionally caustic. That's a hard combination to execute with integrity, but he constantly managed to do it. He was prodigal in the use of his time for causes he believed in. Countless organizations in this community received the benefit of his wise counsel on matters of publicity, public relations, funds development, and other activities. He gave innumerable hours to the Island School Council, the Hospital Board, the Hilton Head Island Foundation Board, the Evening of the Arts, and the Scholarship Committee of the Community Foundation, to name a few. And always he was deeply concerned with maintaining the environment, especially its greenness. He also deplored cluttering it up with garish signs. What all of us take for granted in "The Island Look" was made possible to a significant degree by what Tim did to insure the understated beauty of "The Look." Without Tim, "The Look" wouldn't look so lovely.

The Doughtie family instituted a community award in memory of Tim's sister Alice. Therefore it was particularly fitting that in 1990, Tim and his brother Collins received the Alice Glenn Doughtie Good Citizen award. The committee who chose the recipients that year somehow managed to keep their choices a secret until the time of the presentation. But both the local Doughtie boys, each in his own way, have contributed immeasurably to the life of this community.

Ironically, one of the organizations Tim most cared about is the one which ministered to him in his very last days among us, and that was Hospice Care of the Lowcountry. He loved hospice, and what they did for terminally-ill patients. It was they who came to him in his final days, as he had come to them so often in prior days and years. What goes around comes around, and what a beautiful gift it was --- in both directions.

I briefly described how Betsy and Tim met. I would be negligent if I didn't also express public gratitude to God for what an outstanding pair they were from the moment Babe MacNeille dragged bashful Betsy to introduce her to this handsome young man upon whom Babe had just cast eyes for the first time. Betsy has been an Abbott to Tim's Costello, a Dean Martin to his Jerry Lewis, an ever-willing support to his ever-soaring intellect and wit. She always let Tim be Tim, and he always strongly encouraged Betsy to be Betsy. Together they were a singular duo. Being a singular duo is an exceedingly difficult thing to be. We all have been blessed simply to have known Betsy and Tim Doughtie, as was their son Matthew blessed to have them as his parents. I'm not convinced that any marriages are truly made in heaven, but their marriage came as close to it as any mortals any of us is likely to have observed.

From the first time I heard Tim Doughtie utter a word, I was instantly struck by how much he sounded like God. Or at least he sounded like we all know God should sound. If God does not have that kind of rich baritone resonance, He should start listening more closely now that Tim is much closer to Him, and begin to imitate Tim as best He can. A deity should sound divine, which means He should sound as much like Tim Doughtie as possible. Tim had a voice most preachers or radio personalities would trade their right arms for. Tim had to know his vocal timbre was very special, but he never flaunted it before the rest of us mortal-sounding mortals. He just bathed us in his basso-profundo sonorities.

Tim also was an extremely graceful person. I don't mean that in a physical way, although perhaps that was true as well. I mean it in a personal way. He was literally filled with grace. Grace, we were told in seminary, is unmerited love. Usually that means the unmerited love of God, but it can also describe human love. Tim loved people with a genuinely graceful altruism. He loved people, he loved to be with people, he loved to do for people. He was a wonderfully warm people-person. To be with him was always to be graced by his presence.

In Yiddish there is a word which is tailor-made for someone like Tim Doughtie. It is the word Mensch. In German, which, along with Hebrew, forms the primary linguistic basis of Yiddish, Mensch means man --- not male, but human, humanity. The Yiddish Mensch means more than that, however. It connotes a special person, a unique person, a God-inspired, God-reflecting, God-loving person. Goodness and godliness glowed in Tim's life; he was an authentic Mensch; what more needs to be said?

Many people believe that we live on in the lives of those who live after us. Tim Doughtie shall live in all of us who knew and loved him. There was too much Tim-ness in Tim for anyone ever to forget him.

But there is more to be said than just that. Tim shall live in us in memory, but Tim lives again as Tim --- eternally. He now sees what we on this side cannot see. He now knows what we cannot in this life know. As bright as he was, as creative and intuitive and prescient as he was, he could not see here what he now sees there, wherever "there" is.

If death has the last word for all of us, all of us shall be swept away by death, if not quickly, then slowly, if not in youth or middle age, then in old age. But in truth death is left speechless by what awaits us beyond death.

The Good News of God is that though we die, yet shall we live. There is hope beyond the grave. There is light beyond the darkness. There is joy beyond the sorrow.

It is a doleful reality to know that Tim Doughtie is gone from us. Nevertheless, it is a joyous conviction to believe that he, and we, shall live forever with God. If Tim died and that's all there is to it, then pancreatic cancer and heart disease and strokes and every other physical malady have far more power than our faith led us to suppose. Death is the absolute pits if there's nothing beyond death.

Tim's death is a terrible blow for everyone: especially for Betsy and Matthew, and for all the members of his family, but also for his closest friends, for his many other friends, for this community, for the world. After all, who shall continue to remind us that "Jesus is coming," and therefore we'd better "look busy"? You can't lose a Tim Doughtie without feeling an enormous and indescribably painful void.

Doughtieworld was a magnificent gift to all of us as long as Doughtie himself was there to guide us through it. But because it liveD, it liveS. As much as he is no longer with us, he shall always be with us.

I am reminded of the final scene of the world's greatest play. Several of the main characters lie dead upon the stage, and Horatio says of his beloved friend, Hamlet, the title character, "Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Tim Doughtie was a prince among men. Were that not the case, why would so many of us be here to give thanks to God for his life? Almost no one ever has this many mourners present for the final act.

Requiem aeternam, dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis, it proclaims in the beginning of the funeral mass; Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. The earthly end for all of us is the heavenly beginning for all of us. Therefore death ultimately is not an enemy, but a friend, even the death of Tim Doughtie. We have lost a unique friend, but Tim has gained an even greater, more enduring, more energetic life. As sorrowful as Tim's death is for us, I believe that he became willing to give all this up for what lies waiting on the other side.

Death is OK; even a death such as Tim's is ultimately OK. It is hardly what any of us would have wanted for him, particularly when he was relatively so young. But we have a God who has a plan for us, and He will lead us from this life to a life we can scarcely imagine, but to which we can all look forward with confidence.

This gathering has a much-lower-than-average-age than most of the memorial services in which I have had the privilege to participate over the past four-plus decades as a minister. Because that is true, I especially want to say something of eternal importance to those of you who are close to the age of 61 which Tim was at the time he died. Although death may seem inappropriate for anyone who is "younger," really it isn't. Death comes to everyone, and its timing in simply inexplicable. Perhaps God is as mystified by the timing of death as anyone else.

There are a few people here who will die just a few years younger or a few years older than 61. That has statistical probability. So I am speaking to you, your spouse, and the members of your family. And I repeat: death is OK, because God is God, and God will not allow any of us to stay dead forever. As the apostle Paul said, God wills that all should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. And if that's what God wants, that's what God gets, again, because God is God. Therefore we need not fear death, whenever and however it comes.

Thus in the end we are profoundly grateful: grateful to God for Timothy Doughtie, grateful to God for each of us and for all of us, grateful for the magnificence of life, and most especially, grateful for the life to come for all of us. Hallelu-Yah: Praise God!