By TEDDY ALLEN/Designated Writers

We conclude Bob Griffin Week by telling you the service celebrating his life Friday afternoon at Shreveport’s Emmanuel Baptist was filled with applause, spontaneous laughter, sadness for the end of an era, gladness for such happy memories.

And joy for the start of something new and eternal.

Some ballgames don’t have this much crowd/congregation applause. But all who honored Bob with eulogies were so on the money, so authentic, so honored, so funny and joyful in their recollections of Bob, that the Good Lord must have said to each of them, “You just stand there and I’ll tell you what to say, how to say it, and when.”

It was a beautiful thing.

Katy and Kristy, his twin daughters, batted cleanup before Dr. Chad Hardbarger’s message. Dr. Hardbarger, incidentally, was wearing tennis shoes with his suit, a Bob staple, and declared it a Tennis Shoe Month of Sundays for Emmanuel. No loafers or oxfords allowed until March. Glory.

Katy and Kristy shared a story of the “dependable” used car their excited dad bought them — a car that died on the way to church. The story of Bob messing up the dinner-table prayer whenever the 6 o’clock sports didn’t go nearly as well as he’d hoped. The story about Terry Bradshaw being overly excited to meet “Bob Griffin’s daughters” on the sidelines before a Tech football game when they were freshmen cheerleaders — and neither of them knowing who Bradshaw was.

(You can watch the entire service at ktbs.com, by the way. If you’re ever feeling blue, I’d recommend it.)

But the best Katy/Kristy story was about their dad’s Christmas gift this past December, an Alexa contraption for his car. He wanted it to work like Peyton Manning’s worked for him in the commercial, but every time he asked her something…nothing. He was SO close. And then he realized…maybe her name wasn’t Alicia? Bob had been asking “Alicia” questions. So he tried other names. “Amanda, play Willie Nelson’s ‘On the Road Again.’” He asked Allison this and Angela that and FINALLY, Alexa. And BAM!, all systems go.

As always, Bob just kept smiling and plugging along until he got it right, one of those “Perfect Guy in the Perfect Place at the Perfect Time” deals. He got it right. Bob got it right. Again and again. Good for him, and good for us.

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