Delivered by Alison Albeck Lindland on Saturday, October 22, 2016

Thank you so much for being here today to celebrate our Dad, Hans.  
I see beloved cousins from Holland and Denmark and across America, Phi Delts and Wharton classmates, and friends.  
 
We have known many of you our entire lives, a byproduct of our dad’s commitment to relationships.  This past week as we’ve been reflecting on our Dad many of you have remarked how lovingly he spoke about us, his family, over the years.  
 
What you many not know is how glowingly he spoke about his friends to us his family.  Whenever he mentioned plans to see friends or recounted recent catch ups, it was always accompanied with a paragraph of glowing biographical accomplishments.  He reveled in the successes of his friends and took so much pride in celebrating you all.  He would be so happy to see you all here today.
 
My Dad was many things throughout his life - an accomplished professional, a devoted brother and alumnus, a warm friend and neighbor - but as a testament to his strength of character he was also the exact same person to his core in all of his roles.
 
He was a selfless leader who truly cared about improving the communities he was a part of.
He was passionate about connecting with people and invested heavily in relationships.
He was proud but never arrogant and driven by a very clear set of values.
 
My dad also had no pretenses about him - he could connect with anyone usually on the basis of where they were from via his family history which was so varied - he often joked that it sounded like he was making it up on the spot. He always was someone you could turn to in a difficult moment, at a crucial junction to give you sound balanced advice and most importantly support.
The thing that I found so remarkable about my father’s sense of self and is that it was so innate. It simply was something he extracted from life and refined at an early age.
 
There are so many wonderful words that friends have used about my Dad, but the most consistent thing that everyone has said about our him is what a good man he was, above all else.
 
And how incredibly lucky was our family to have such a good man at the helm of our lives.  Plotting a bold course for a path of adventure and then working so hard to make it all a reality.  
 
He had a code and he lived it completely - Be happy, Live up to your potential, Do right by your family.  And he designed his entire life to manifest this code and his values - an international through line connecting us to our ancestors, deep commitments to friends and a deliberate investment in education and meaningful experiences.  And he made it all a reality for us with my mother’s loving support, deft organization skills and creativity to back him up.
 
As a father Dad was passionate, deliberate and supportive.  He set a high bar for what he knew we were capable of and was there every step of the way with a warm hand on your back and an encouraging word in your ear.  
 
He traveled and worked relentlessly, but yet I recall him being there at every major play and sports game, knitted together with phone calls from far flung places on business trips, calling to say good night in Dutch - lekker slapen, Welterusten, Ik hou van jou, Goedenavond, tot ziens!  When I started traveling for work I asked him how he endured such a grueling travel schedule well into his 50s and he shared something that sums him up perfectly - sometimes you would arrive right as your connection was departing and no matter how unlikely it was that you would make it you just always had to run for the plane.
 
We had a truly idyllic childhood back on Sheffield Terrace, in our beautiful flat that was always bustling with voices of children and friends.  He and my mother cut a glamorous figure and I remember many a night when I was going to bed and they were heading out in black tie to go dancing at Anabelle’s or for New Year’s at Hurlingham.
 
Dad was famous for his epic tickle tortures spanning the entire flat, he was affectionate and warm with all of us from the youngest age - as he would be with his granddaughters.  My sister recalls Dad lying on her bed at 39 Beach every night he was in New York, tenderly reading her somewhat scary bedtime stories, still in his suit fresh off the train.
 
As a family we spent happy weekends at the the Holland Park Adventure Playground, swimming at the Kensington Close Hotel, taking half term trips to Center Parks in Nottingham Forrest, Easter ski trips to Zermatt and Grindelwald.  When I was nine we were preparing for our annual ski trip and Dad placed a pamphlet of pre-ski exercises on my bedside table.  When I remarked about it he noted that about the third of the joy in anything could be extracted in the planning phase.
 
To know my Dad was to know how connected he was to his international family and background - and our childhoods were filled treks back to Denmark and Holland to stay connected with beloved Stal and Albeck families.  I don’t think I understood till I was much older that Dad didn’t really know his Albeck family story until he was in his 30’s when he sought out an assignment in Denmark.  He talked lovingly about this family heritage his whole life, not boastfully, but likely because this kid from Oakland could not quite believe his own unlikely origins.
 
He cajoled his reluctant formal father into playing the role of an active grandfather and his efforts started a loving new chapter in their lives, and formed the basis of almost twenty joyous summers at his lake house in New Jersey.  That would be followed by over a month down in Virginia with my mother’s beloved parents - who just adored my father.
 
These past few days we have been immersed in wonderful memories as a means of healing the hole in our hearts.  We were lucky that he was an avid documentarian and we have incredible records of special family time together.  He directed these videos the way he directed our lives - clips of us visiting historical sites of family importance, with our beautiful mom flanked by sulky pre-teens wincing at the camera, followed by jaunts to amusement parks like Lego Land, Dad planted by the side of a ride never tiring of watching us go round and round shrieking with excitement.  
 
He always wanted us to soak it in and see how amazing life was, how lucky we were - probably because he never lost his own sense of wonder and amazement with the places his life brought him and the incredible friends that he had.  
 
He was behind the camera too often but when he stepped in front of it you were struck by his infectious smile and earnest joy.  He was never so happy as he was when he was celebrating someone else - a child’s college graduation, toasting my mother at her surprise 50th birthday party, beaming at the opening of his cousin Bruce’s hotel, holding a treasured newborn granddaughter.  In group photos he always stood in the back with his vast arms reaching around all of us.
 
Incredulously I don’t think we realized until we were older that not everyone had a Dad like ours, but realize we did.  As adults all of us remained close to Dad, and though he had done such a terrific job raising us as children, supporting us through the transition from young adulthood into the next critical stage of our personal and professional lives was a challenge he was uniquely prepared for and excited about.
 
I spoke to him every morning on my way to work, and he answered every call with an enthusiastic “Hey!” and when I would brush by some professional win, or mention some personal trial he would draw me out with an earnest “tell me everything”.   
 
He was also a prolific group emailer signing every note to us with a commanding “Love D” and would take great joy in sending emails with detailed plans for family engagements and gatherings far in advance.  
 
As with everything - he had a plan.  About five years ago he began to implement his transition to the retirement vision he’d always had, an apt in NYC, a condo in Florida and a family country house somewhere on the east coast.  As a part of this he wanted us to take big Christmas trips to try on different parts of the country for that family house.  
 
In our second year of this tradition we visited Vermont and he sent one his typical planning emails to the group informing us of options for the spa and the plan for dinner reservations.  He also asked the group to think of ideas for discussion topics over dinner and I replied saying, as a parent to two little girls I would love to hear everyone’s favorite memories of their childhood, for inspiration, and high level thoughts on how everyone would envision being involved in my daughters lives, what traditions they would like to establish, things they would like to teach or impart to them.  The later was meant mostly for my siblings.  
 
But in typical Dad fashion he could not wait the week for VT and immediately replied with twelve beautifully excited paragraphs sharing the happiest memories of his childhood and then recollections from being a father to young children.  
 
The email read like a slideshow of our happy lives - a season pass to Tivoli Gardens underneath my father’s office in Copenhagen, a box at covent gardens and monthly matinees to see the ballet with a little girls peering over the side of the box, playing softball games in hyde park through the american society in London, Easter trips to Portsmouth where we would showcase my mothers’ ingenuity with homemade Easter bonnets in the parade. 
 
He then answered the second question - in what we would lovingly refer to as “classic Dad mode”:

This was just the sort of email that Dad was prone to sending on a random Thursday night.

As we all know, Dad’s retirement plans were thwarted by his illness, but somehow he didn’t really let it slow him down from fulfilling on his vision and last September after being guests at our rentals for two fun summers, Dad bought a new family lake house in New Jersey at Beaver Lake.  
 
We crammed more fun into the last year of his life at this house than we rightfully deserved in a decade together - and that is a credit to his determination to not be worn down by his illness, to never lose faith, to maximize the time we had together.  
 
We celebrated two labor days, Thanksgiving, Easter, many birthdays including him - turning 71, along with many low key weekends where we just sat on the deck watching the sunset, flipping through family albums. Most importantly we hosted my sister Elisabeth's jubilant wedding to Neil in August, which Dad exclaimed was the most marvelous wedding he’d ever attended.  In spite of everything I think it was the happiest day of his life.  He had no use for self-pity or time to waste on sadness.
 
There are not enough words to encapsulate my Dad, just as there was not enough time for us to be with him.  

I will end with a letter our Dad wrote to us when he was not even 40, we were living in London, in some of the happiest years of our lives. Because of his own mother’s tragic death just a decade earlier, my Dad knew too well how short life was, as always, he was prepared with a plan to deliver his message to us should be not be there.  
 
Fortunately my Dad lived thirty wonderful years after this letter was written and we are so lucky for that.  But here we are today - just kids, desperately missing our Dad who loved us endlessly, but with this message that distilled his life and love so perfectly.