Joel Gajardo had the best Father’s Day.
His oldest daughter, Elizabeth, spent hours making his favorite dish from his homeland of Chile -- pastel de choclo, a corn pie layered with chicken and ground beef and onion.
The family gathered in the apartment at Legacy Estates, a retirement home where Joel and his wife, Carol Stitt, had recently moved.
Their youngest daughter, Katie, was there. And Joel’s son Daniel, one of four children from earlier relationships.
Drew Holman joined them, too, Elizabeth’s high school sweetheart and the man she planned to marry July 3.
They ate and laughed and celebrated their love for their Papa.
Early that evening, Katie and Joel made their regular rounds to Scooter’s for a caramel coffee drink and Arby’s for his usual -- two roast beef sliders and a big Diet Coke.
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The perfect day, Elizabeth said Friday.
Joel laid down to rest at 7. A certified nursing assistant came to the apartment 30 minutes later. Carol has Parkinson’s and gets help with her daily needs.
The assistant checked on Joel. He was trembling and hot.
The ambulance came and took him to Bryan East Campus, to a room in the sixth-floor ICU, after doctors determined he had suffered a major stroke.
And where, the next morning, 23-year-old Elizabeth, would sit and hold her father’s hand and tell his nurse about her dreams for her wedding day.
About how much her father wanted to walk her down the aisle.
And that she wanted her dad at her wedding.
“She was emotional,” nurse Taylor Straube said. “She said, ‘I just want to get married while he’s still here.’”
The nurse didn’t hesitate.
* * *
Joel and Carol were married for 33 years.
They met when he came to Lincoln to speak -- a professor at Cornell and an ordained Presbyterian minister addressing a university audience on the subject of peace and justice.
The professor went back to New York but he kept returning to Lincoln, drawn to the graduate student from western Nebraska.
The couple settled here, destined and determined to make a difference.
Joel became the director of the Hispanic Community Center. Carol led the Foster Care Review Office.
Late in life, they welcomed Elizabeth and then Katie. They doted on their two girls, teaching them to always treat others with kindness. That education was the one thing no one could ever take away from you.
“He put all of his children at the forefront,” Elizabeth said. “He had a servant’s heart from the day I was born.”
He showed them the world. He served on too many boards to count. Organized festivals and handed out supper at Matt Talbot Kitchen with his family alongside him.
He brought her mom roses every Friday.
He loved her unconditionally.
“Their marriage was beautiful.”
Jessie Zuniga watched that marriage unfold when she became the family nanny in 2001. She traveled with them to Chile to their vacation home that December.
She met her future husband Jorge on the beach. Joel married them in the states three years later.
“Joel was the most tender and sweet and kind and generous man,” she said. “Not only as a father, but as a husband.”
After Joel died Thursday morning, family and close friends gathered to share their favorite memories.
Jessie shared hers.
They were gathered at the beach house watching the sunset. Katie was a toddler, Elizabeth 4.
“Carol said the only thing that could make this moment better is fresh peaches and cream.”
Joel left the gathering.
“He went down to the fruit stand and bought peaches and cream; that’s the kind of husband he was.”
Jessie and Jorge will be the host couple at Elizabeth and Drew’s wedding on July 3.
Their dad had been a part of every moment of their lives, the bride said. Because of his age -- 87 -- they never took anything for granted.
They’ll play their father-daughter dance song -- “I loved her first” -- at the big reception at Wilderness Ridge.
They’ll honor a man who did so much for his community and his family, the bride said. An incredible man who will be so missed by Lincoln.
“He helped everyone his whole life. I am so honored to be his daughter.”
* * *
It all happened so fast.
It was mid-morning on Monday, when the nurse walked out of Joel’s hospital room and approached her manager.
“I said, ‘I think I’m going to throw a wedding today.’”
No one hesitated.
The Bryan team worked together to get approval. The floral shop provided flowers for boutonnieres. The hospital chef baked a cake.
Elizabeth’s bridesmaids and friends gathered at her parents’ apartment.
Two friends fixed her hair. Two friends applied her makeup.
Drew’s mom called Hy-Vee for a wedding bouquet.
The bridesmaids slipped into fancy dresses.
Elizabeth’s dress had yet to be altered, but her future mother-in-law offered her wedding gown, and it fit perfectly.
There was joy and sadness and excitement and grief all at the same time.
Drew put on the blue suit he wore to his grandfather’s funeral. He went to the jewelry store to pick up the wedding rings.
Hospital staff gathered chairs and a plan.
Someone delivered a pair of gray dress pants and a white shirt to the hospital.
Taylor and the nursing team dressed the father of the bride. They talked to him as they buttoned his shirt and cleaned his beard and combed his hair and carefully hid the wires and tubes.
Taylor wheeled her patient’s hospital bed down the hall to the elevator just before 2:30 p.m.
They exited at the emergency room bay and rolled slowly down the street, behind the big medical complex to the green space and houses and the entrance to Fairview, the grand brick home of William Jennings Bryan.
Elizabeth and Drew were waiting at the sidewalk.
Carol was there in her wheelchair and sunglasses. Jessie was there, supporting her emotionally as the mother watched her daughters grieve for the father they would lose three days later.
The wedding party had gathered.
Their minister from Southern Heights Presbyterian stood waiting.
The photographer and videographer, who’d jumped to help at the last minute, were there to document the ceremony.
A few days later, that photographer, family friend Thuy Pham, would post those photos on Facebook -- beautiful images that captured the pain and the joy -- and asked for prayers for the family and thousands of people lifted them up.
But on Monday, the rest of the world disappeared.
The bride squeezed her Papa’s hand as they started down the makeshift aisle.
His wedding ring gleaming in the sun.