What Really Counts
As highly as Jerry values
land, he places an even higher value on people.
“We are Christians and strongly believe in the
concepts of the Bible,” Jerry explained.
“And the Bible clearly points out what we are to do with people and for
people.”
Where people are concerned
family, of course, comes first. On my
first trip to Boise Jerry was driving us to see his home when he related a very
unique and entertaining story that beautifully illustrated the strength of his
values, and how much he cared for his family.
The story never made it into Jerry Caven’s television episode, but not
because it wasn’t worth telling.
It began with Jerry
describing how the house we were about to visit came to be. In the late 1970s, with five children growing
strong, the Caven house had managed to shrink around the family. Business was thriving, and they had the cash,
so Jerry and Muriel decided it would be practical to design and build a new,
larger home.
Jerry recalled the process
as starting with the basics, but then the inevitable began to happen. Muriel would comment that it would be nice to
have a family room at the top of the main staircase and then Jerry would see
the advantage of having a home office off the main hallway.
Jerry was a little
apologetic and even a little embarrassed as he described how large the house
became. “It was never intended to be
such a big project but you get ideas, then more ideas, and I guess it just kind
of got out of hand,” he reminisced.
“Anyway, we ended up with this fourteen-thousand-square-foot house. We had it decorated and furnished, and then
moved in.”
The Cavens had not been in
the newly constructed house too long before Jerry began to observe something he
didn’t feel particularly good about. “I
don’t think my kids had ever thought about how much we had before. You know, I don’t think they gave any thought
to my assets or how much money I earned,” Jerry explained. “But then we’re all in this big house and after
a while I didn’t like the way they were acting.
We were all developing an attitude that I didn’t like. Even Muriel and I started to forget our
priorities.”
After giving the issue a
great deal of thought and prayer, Jerry took action. “I didn’t tell anybody, not even my wife, and
I went out and bought a normal-sized house,” Jerry recalled. “Then I invited my wife to lunch.”
Muriel wryly recalled that
upon receiving her husband’s lunch invitation she thought he was going to ask
for a divorce. There was absolutely no
tangible reason for her to believe such a thing, but during this period of
their lives Jerry was extremely busy and spending a large amount of his time at
work; he rarely invited Muriel to lunch because his schedule didn’t allow it.
Jerry explained his
observations and concerns to Muriel over lunch.
“I told her how I felt about the kids, their attitude and all,” he recounted. “She knew what I was talking about and
agreed. So, we left the big house and
moved into this other house I bought. I
hired a caretaker to stay in the big house and we were gone for twenty years.”
In August of 1999 Jerry
and Muriel moved back into the house they had built twenty years before. They never considered moving out of this
beautiful home a sacrifice. Their love
for their children, concern that their children develop healthy values and
maintaining their own healthy perspective was simply more important.
© 2012 Philip Kassel
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