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Wayne Allen Stoddard, 81, passed away Friday, July 10, 2020. Wayne was born in Schenectady the son of the late William and Harriet (Van Vechten) Stoddard and was a lifelong area resident. He graduated from Nott Terrace High School Class of 1957 and proudly served in the US Marine Corps from 1957 to 1960. Wayne went onto work at Freihofer and then New York State Department of Motor Vehicle before going on to work in the family business of W.H. Stoddard & son Paint and Wallpaper. Later he worked at O D Heck as a mental hygiene therapist, in real estate sales for Doreen Ross and Associates and most recently for Sears. Wayne is survived by his wife of 59 years, Barbara (Powers) Stoddard, their children, Tina Stoddard, Kim (Eric Plant) Stoddard, Gregg (Lydia) Stoddard and Terri (Richard) Brown, grandchildren, Ashley, Shayne, Colleen, Michelle, Jessica and Justin, great-grandchildren: Benjamin, Andrew, Jailyn, Kaiden, siblings, William (Marie) Stoddard, Jr., Janet Hugo, Thelma (David) Moyer, Gene Stoddard and Elaine (Al) Lutzeier and many nieces and nephews. Wayne was a true family man who also had a deep love of animals. The funeral service will be Thursday 12 noon at Daly Funeral Home, 242 McClellan St., Schenectady, NY 12304. A calling hour will precede the service from 11 a.m. to 12 noon at the funeral home. Interment with Marine Corps Honors, will be in Memory Gardens Cemetery, Colonie. Memorial contributions may be made to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital or Animal Protective Foundation, 53 Maple Ave., Scotia, NY 12302.

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A brief, random collection of comments I have made recently that I am amused by, or amazed by, and glad I had the chance and took the chance to say it. I do this from time to time to check and see if I am responding responsibly. Since I was saving it anyway, I thought I'd share it here.

I am sure proud of him!

That means I have been praying for you and that boy for a long time.

did the lost pup find his people?

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

Insert Despicable Me reference here.

You weren't kidding! That is a great thing. Like an old testament blessing on your back yard. Kind of a holy place now. Isn't it funny how something like that can cause you to miss him more and yet ease the pain a little, too? Grief is a mystery. His friends are clear as day though. This filled me right up.

Goodness gracious. He could flip a dime over in the bottom of a RC cola bottle with that thing.

Praises from Texas!

Sweetheart, if you were wearing a mask with me then some folks need to be afraid.

Prayers from Texas.

Good deal. Let me know if you need a back up plan.

Word causes me to use bad words.

One of the most beautiful things about eternity is that she gets to be your mother forever.

"Either quit being a turd or go lay in the yard."

"She looks at you like you give milk".

"I know something about your britches you obviously don't. You can get happy in the same pants you got mad in."

I also tell people that the cow chip throwing contest was invented in Oklahoma, but in Texas we like to wait til the cow pats are dry.

There's no pill for sorry.

You can't fix stupid but you can numb it with a clue by four.

How far out in the country do we live? Well, it's 20 minutes to town by phone.

"He don't know which end of the cow gets up first."

I am very proud of you.

I was a brown bag kid. And save the bag.

I just can't figure out why any sane person would want that job.

I love you, miracle girl.

If I ever get a tattoo...

You could probably social distance from a lot of money in this location.

You ARE a treat.

Well, now I have a favorite.

I am so very proud of you! Well done.

Hey look! I got my own meme!

I recently said 30 years ago when I meant the 1970s.

Is anybody gonna call it rock hard?

The part about my willingness to say pretty much anything cuts in a lot of shocking directions.

"These rocks are apparently just like the ones your head is full of these days, child of mine."

I keep them in the desk drawer next to my left hand. Right next to a pair of fence pliers. Those aren't sentimental. Just incredibly useful.

How else will they learn to apologize to their own children? How else will they learn to understand relationships?

The best never rest.

Udderly rude.

He nearly got a tour of Oz.

That is horrifying.

or as I told it to my twins, "keep your booger hook off the bang switch".

Hard to tell from the photos, but it looks rather like a cicada killer.

I have never understood how a frame as tiny as yours can contain a heart as big as yours. I am grateful for it though.

Your opinion of this means a great deal to me. You were there for it all. I am just a recent arrival. Thank you.

making people cry does seem to be my primary spiritual gift.

Hello, friend. I am glad you found me here.

One of the reasons I believe so strongly in God being eternal and just is that He WILL right these wrongs in time. Not in my time obviously, but He will right these wrongs. Somewhere, because God is everywhere and completely unrestricted by time as we are, God is in a place where these wrong things have been set right. Someday, we will get to be there and see how He restored these losses. What a day, glorious day, that will be.

No french fries, no peace!

If you make yourself a doormat for other folks to walk on they'll just complain because you aren't flat.

I picked up a hitchhiker on 635 in Balch Springs a long time ago. He had a big wooden flute hanging on the outside of his rucksack. I told him I'd drive him as long as he'd play. I dropped him off in Fort Worth.

If you want to know who is more equal than you, check out who got haircuts during the lockdown.

When you fall down and your friends are concerned rather than amused, you have crossed over from young person to old person.

Breaktist is allllmost as cute as literry. Facebook really needs a "smitten" button.

I doubt I have a picture, but I inherited this same damn pony when I leased a ranch one time. They just left his ass there. At first I could not believe someone would be so cruel. Later I understood why they did it.

Thank you just doesn't seem adequate for such life giving words. This is in my top ten compliments. Maybe top five. I am humbled. and I mean that. Thank you. I am so grateful for you in my life.

The trouble with being a pessimist is that even if you're right you can't be happy about it.

When asked if I'm an experienced rider I have two pretty automatic answers. 1) I can ride anything with hair. 2) I've been under about as many as I've been on. Nobody ever questions if I can ride and they usually feel comfortable giving me the mean ornery horses to ride.

I am so grateful you let me in.

Good intentions? Yes, absolutely. Gonna behave? Zero chance.

We were at Disney World in 2007 and ate at the buffet place in Animal Kingdom. Ended up sharing a table with another family. The other dad and I helped each other's kids reach the stuff they wanted from the buffet, laughed together, cut up food for whichever kid was sitting closest to us. Had a lot of fun. When they left, the waiter came up like "OMG! How do y'all know each other!!??" Um... lunch today. The waiter could not believe we were not old friends from how we acted. We had no idea who the guy was. Then we saw him later that night reading the Christmas story from the Bible with a huge choir by the lake at Epcot. Still had no idea who he was. Nice guy. Great voice. Cute kids. Turns out we spent the afternoon with Trace Adkins and his family.

“Dearest friend, you have more joy coming than you can even begin to imagine. Babies always bring healing and new life with them. That will be especially true for this baby girl. Life is always a gift to be celebrated. I know you already know that. And I know you need joy and I know you already have learned in the hardest of schools to celebrate life. There is more to it than that though. I don't know if I can adequately explain it, but I want you to know it is coming. Because it is coming.

When my first grandchild was born it was amazing and emotional and exhausting. Like every baby. I remember the very first time that he smiled at me completely unprovoked. I didn't tickle him or make a funny face. He just saw me, recognized me, and smiled the biggest grin up at me. In that moment, five decades of bitterness and hurts and fears and pains were completely forgotten. As if they had never been. My heart was like the garden of Eden must have been. Alive. Free from grief and sin. In the presence of God. Filled with love and joy and newness.

It was overwhelming. I realized in that moment that I would walk through every day of my life again to get to this point. All of it. Every grief and loss and horror. Do you realize what that means? It means it was worth it. All of it. It must mean that. I had my doubts before. I just couldn't believe some of that stuff served any good purpose. But it got me here. To this moment. To this deep understanding that it all mattered. It was all worth it because it got me here to this eternal moment.

There is an unexpected joy in coming to the understanding it that it was all worth it. I didn't believe it either. I know it is coming though. I am already thanking God for the healing he is bringing to your heart. It is another way that God uses a baby to bring redemption to wounded hearts. To bring joy to your world. I am so excited for you.”

Lisa and I were speaking of you and your kiddos yesterday. We love you. We miss you. We are grateful for our times together.

“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”

― William Shakespeare

Granddotter is a fussy eater. She loves to watch garbage trucks, so yesterday we followed the truck for three sessions of observing the collection.

"Hey," sez I, "Look at that garbage truck! It eats EVERYTHING without complaining. How about you doing that, too?" I tried that approach at lunch today and it was going fine until we got to the cucumbers.

"No, Grandma, I can't eat the cucumbers because someone needs those and they are not garbage." Dern. Outsmarted by a three year old.

I had another what I think was a meaningful dream this morning. I had an economics history test to take, and I just could not settle down to study for it for several days, even though I had supposedly allotted time to study. I just couldn't concentrate and had other things to do instead. I ended up just diddling the time away. Test day came and I couldn't even get myself to try to take the test. I handed in a blank paper and felt very ashamed of myself. The prof came and asked me what happened and I apologized. He then asked me if there was something wrong and I told him that my home was in a state of upheaval and that I just could not concentrate on preparing for the test. He seemed sympathetic. Yes, I am definitely in a state of upheaval. 

Major Cows in my Road!! - I once had a dream that my life depended on taking off on a country road in a small plane. As I picked up speed, some idiot drove a herd of cows into my road, and I was faced with a choice of giving up on my takeoff and facing certain death or creating hamburger, wrecking my plane and facing certain death. I woke up before the story ended, which was probably a good thing.

St. Mother's Day will soon be upon us and I am having a cow trying to get a present to my saintly mother. I saw a nice sample card at the store, but there was no actual card on the rack. I asked a salesclerk for assistance and she found and sold me.... an empty envelope for the sample card. "OK, just give me the sample card and I will take the price tag off myself."