Jesus Always Gets the Last Laugh

by

Special to United Methodist Insight | Oct. 25, 2025

I didn’t grow up in Marquette County, Wisconsin, but it is where I became a full-fledged grown-up. This is another way of saying it is where I got my comeuppance, the technical definition of which is “a punishment or fate that someone deserves.”

I learned some of this kind of ridiculous irreverence from Bob Wright, who was the owner and editor of the Marquette County Tribune when my wife Jo and I arrived in Montello, Wisconsin in the summer of 1978. Fresh out of seminary, I had been appointed by our bishop to serve as pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in that county seat town of 1,400 souls.  

I stopped into the newspaper office to meet Bob, allegedly one of our members, though I never saw him in church until I officiated at his funeral several years later. Bob interviewed me for a story about the new preacher in town, took my picture, and then invited me out to meet his wife, Marion, at their Montello Lake home on the north edge of town. Marion was as sweet as Bob was acerbic, and she was always in church.  

I learned big words like acerbic from reading Bob’s weekly, humorous column, “I’d Rather Be Wright,” in which he poked fun at himself and the world. At one time, it was syndicated throughout Wisconsin to about 30 other weeklies.  Wright was awarded the prize for best locally written column in Wisconsin seven times. His humor was often picked up and quoted by the Reader’s Digest and other national publications.

Bob was the kind of guy who was funny without half trying. And no one was safe from his tongue-in-cheek barbs. When he was inducted into the Wisconsin Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2006, someone said, “Montello residents knew Wright as a community sparkplug. They laughed alongside him when Bob once observed, ‘Sometimes the burden of being the only intelligent man in town is more than I can bear.’”

Wright described himself as “a good-natured cynic who has a hard time taking anything serious.”  A few months before he died from bone cancer, he told me, “If I can’t leave them laughing, I ain’t going.”

Long-time Marquette County Tribune columnist, Fran Sprain, wrote, “For many years Bob Wright was considered permanent toastmaster for the Wisconsin Press. Upon his retirement, he was given a royal roast by his contemporaries about which he says: ‘I consider it the highest honor to be insulted by my peers.’” Wright was the Wisconsin Newspaper Association president from 1972-1973, and served for 16 years on their board of directors.  

I thought the interview part of my meeting with Bob was over after we left his office at the paper. As usual, this then wet-behind-the-ears pastor didn’t know the half of it. After Marion served us iced tea and cookies in the living room, Bob invited me downstairs to the basement for a game of Ping-Pong. It was to be the beginning of my many comeuppance events during our eight years in Marquette County.

I thought of myself as a pretty good Ping-Pong player, a game I had mastered at church camps over the years. Bob Wright took me to school with world-class-level spikes that left me flailing and ducking like an inebriated goose. He invited me to come around anytime for another game. He also wrote a very nice article introducing me to the community.

There were a few other humiliating comeuppances during our time in Montello, like the day I put on my best suit and went over to the funeral home for a visitation. People were sitting in a big circle around the open casket. I made the rounds shaking hands and offering condolences to everyone.  When I had finished the funeral director, Tom Steinhaus, took me aside and said very quietly, in a practiced funereal tone, “Uh, er, John, your fly is open.” 

Then there was the time I filled up the car at the Shell station and drove off without paying. Ole Gardner, the owner, and a long-time church member, had to call the church office to alert me to what I had done. I was just glad he called me before he called Kelly Campion, the county sheriff.

I will never forget the day I ran into Marion Wright at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison. She and her sister were waiting for Bob to come back from getting a biopsy on his neck. When I returned to check in later, Marion told me the news couldn’t be worse; “Bob has multiple myeloma in his bones.” 

Bob was philosophical about it, as he was about everything. After he had been home for a few weeks, he had Marion call me to come over the day after his 64th birthday. It was May 27, 1981.This time there was no Ping-Pong.

Bob said he wanted to talk to me because he wanted to share thoughts that might be helpful in other cases like his.  He said he was experiencing “remarkable lucidity and clarity of thought,” that he was “resigned to his approaching death, not bitter or angry.  Those emotions are a waste, like hate and envy. I have no fear of death; I am not unique; billions have experienced the same.”

Bob told me he was the only one who was not surprised by the news of his terminal illness: “I have had an intuitive sense about it for two years, ever since I first felt the pain in my bones. I have an epitaph for those who thought I was a hypochondriac: I told you I wasn’t feeling well.”

It was Bob’s wish to be cremated, and to have his ashes spread on the twelve acres of land around their house by Montello Lake. He said, “John, I want you to officiate at my funeral because I like you, even though you are suffering from terminal shortness.” Bob said, “You know I wouldn’t have said that if I thought you were sensitive about it.”

(I am 5 feet 1, and not at all sensitive about it since I found a short girl who would date me.)

Bob added, “John, I want you to be completely honest about me in your funeral sermon.” And I was, but according to the journal I kept in those days, that was not to happen until October 5,1984, 39 months later.

A new building for Trinity United Methodist Church was just being completed on the east side of Montello, near what is now the Crawford Funeral Home. Bob’s was one of the last funerals held in the classic old Methodist Church building, now Reader’s Realm Book Store, two blocks north of the granite quarry on Highway 23, Montello’s main street. It was one of the largest funeral crowds I ever saw in that building.

The sanctuary and balcony were packed full of Bob Wright’s family and friends. The funeral director, Tom Steinhaus, helped the ushers, Fred Cartwright, Herb Sheller, Jack Whirry and Bob Robinson, set up extra chairs at the ends of the pews on the outside aisles.

About twenty-five red jacketed members of The Wisconsin Newspaper Association sat in the front rows, just behind the pallbearers. Bob Brandt, the association president, gave the eulogy. The high school principal, Roger Klug, along with Jon Sheller, a local muck farmer, and Bob’s son, Dick, shared remembrances.

Dick said he had practiced his speech, a deeply moving tribute to his dad, about 200 times and never made it through once without crying. Bob’s niece, Sonia, sang a solo, accompanied by our organist, Florence Steinhaus Scheiber.

I delivered perhaps the best sermon I have ever given at a funeral. I even got a few laughs; I think in a way that would have pleased Bob. My old friend Jim Olson, the longtime editor of the Richland Observer, my hometown paper in Richland Center, Wisconsin, told me that I got it “just right.”

In the conclusion of Bob Wright’s funeral sermon, I said, “Bob told me one day, when I visited him at the Montello Care Center, that he didn’t think there is any life after life. He said, “I don’t believe our consciousness continues after death. I am just thankful for the 64 good years I’ve had, and I think that’s enough.” 

I said, “Since I get to have the last word here today, I am going to beg to differ with Bob. I know he was, in his own phlegmatic way, a good friend of Jesus. I have no doubt that his acerbic, wry humor would make Jesus laugh as much as it did all of us who loved him.

I fully expect to see Bob Wright in heaven and then we will both have a laugh with Jesus.

The Rev. John Sumwalt is a retired United Methodist pastor and the author of “How to Preach the Miracles.” Email him.