The Little Home on 5th East

One of the sweetest tributes I heard to both Grandma and Grandpa Packer was on the back of the funeral program. Brad Caldwell made these remarks at Grandpa Packer's funeral in November 2004. Their little home on 5th East certainly was a little piece of Heaven.

"I found myself so often in the front room of my friend. When difficult times came, when my heart was sorrowing and when my ming was hurt, I could hear my friend calling, "Come, and sit a while with us." And I would go. That little home on 5th East is a special place. To me it was a sanctuary. In fact, it was somewhat a temple. In that little home in that front room I learned much. It was a place of love, a place of friendship, and a place of counsel. And more than anything to me, it was a place of learning. There in that front room I learned what it meant to be a patriarch. There in that little front room I learned how a father should love his daughters and bring honor to his sons. It was in that little front room, I learned what it meant to be an eternal companionship. I witnessed with my own eyes what it meant to love someone more than you loved yourself. I learned what it meant to take care of one another. Every time I went there without exception, I felt closer to Heaven than before I got there. That little house on 5th east is a special place. I learned something else, every time I went there to sit a while, ninety percent of the time there was someone else there sitting while because it was a piece of Heaven right there in mortality. I saw a heavenly pattern of what Heaven must be like."

I'm not sure many would say the same thing about our home. Maybe they will one day!