"Three years ago, I agreed to make a television pilot, assujing it to be just another three weeks of trouping. I was unaware at that time that I had begun a journey that would bring me here today, not as an actor, but as a member of a family-because that's what we are-Freddies family. Each of us a part ofhim, and he a golden part of us. Yes, we all began a working relationship with a 19-year odld boy that soon developed into a friendship. And even before his accelerated maturity into manhood, that friendship ripened into respect, affection and mutual concern that went beyond our careers and into our lives. "In less than three years, millions of people who were exposed to his bebrancy, his awesome talent, his luminous smile and captivating graciousness, fell in love with Freddie Prinze. He lived for laughter, our yourn man did. He created it for others, effortlessly and enthusiastically. he accepted it as nourishment to his sould and he gave it to his peers as a gift of appreciation. And I can pay him no more sincere tribute, than to admit that he had grown from a new kid in a rehearsal hall into a professional colleague on stage, faster, more gracefully than any actor that I have encountered in nearly half a century of theater.

"It was provident that he was with us in an electronic age, where his performances attracted and amused more people than all the stars of Broadway ever entertained in the history of theater. Those tapes, those films in which his precious gifts are captured, will endure. And the weeks, the months, the years to come, millions more will discover Freddie as his joinsthose other greats of our profession, in what Shadespeare called, "the undiscovered country." He'll be welcomed there as a peer, a man who brings thosse two most precious commodietes, love and laughter.
"We who shared his personal and private laughter also shared his love. More, we shared is concern about those private demons that brought his emotions from deep despair one moment, to explosive good humor the next. Each of us, in turn, know something of his inner turmoils and each of us, in turn, in our own way to reassure him. None of us truly realized the extent of his anxieties perhaps because of hismecurial ability to abondon despondency and soar to self-mocking hilarity, that sent us all into a gleeful response. And we realize that now, while we mourn our loss, we must also realize that Freddie is gone-where he wanted to go. He went with our love and he took with him secret parts of us that can never be replaced.

" We are bound together, this family, not in a temporary chill of death, but in the everlasting warmth of his humanity and his humor. Let us not mourn his death, rather, let us celebrate his life. In the years to come, in the days and the years, this moment will have passed and we will see Freddie again, we will hear him, we will think of our brother and we will smile again and we will laugh again, and we will be warm again."

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flannelpjs

What a heartwarming eulogy and what a wonderful way with words. It touched on everything anyone would have wanted to say about him. Thanks for sharing that with us
flannelpjs!!!!!!!

When Freddie was buried, 1/31/77, I was listening to the news on the radio and they broadcast the very last paragraph of Jack Albertson's eulogy. He could barely get thru the last sentence. He must have sobbed like a baby. And I sat and cried too. It was very moving to hear.....and to read again. Thanks.

I can't read this too well cuz I'm in Circuit City & I don't wanna get emotional in a big store... But it's sad. I'm getting choked up so I better re-read at home before I wind up having to break out the hankys in here...