The Wake

D's wake was held yesterday at Lookout Mountain Flight Park, over 150 people were there to celebrate his life and the gift he gave us of an example of how to live a life.

This is an email I sent out thenight I heard of his death:
A., my next door neighbor and good friend, called me on the way home from work tonight to tell me that D. had died. He was with his daughters and at home, sleeping, when it happened. He had been expecting it and did his own way, not our the medical) way. Evaded hopsice and even ever admiting that the pancreatic cancer had recurred. Lasted 21 stubborn months, bless him.

I turned on the radio (satellite) in the car and the first station was CNN with some big report on the gangs of LA, and it was wrong so I punched in the button for the 1940’s station, one of my favorite when I’m feeling stressed as the music soothes me. Ray Noble was singing, “Good night, Sweetheart, sleep will ease your sorrow, good night sweetheart, until we meet tomorrow…” It was the right song, for he was just that, everyone’s sweetheart.

I awoke this morning, wondering what I could tell his daughters about their father. They knew him as a Dad, I knew him as a part of our family in the hanggliding community, where, despite his age, he could be eccentric, wild, youthful, himself, not old. I think that was part of the allure. He was always young, and didn’t want to hang with old people. Their life did not interest him. He was independent, adventurous, a traveler. He wanted to be different and so he was.

He evaded death any number of times, had had an open heart bypass before any of us had ever met him, then took up hanggliding at 65 when the FAA wouldn’t give him a pilot’s license due to his heart history. He was determined to stay in the air. He tried to kill himself hanggliding at least once, when he pounded into the ground trying to emulate one of our top pilot's low level landings, and bent his heartbolt in the process. A week later my ex and I had to threaten to cut his flying wires to keep him from launching again despite the small sheer hemorrhage he had sustained. Years later, while learning to ski in Montana at 72 he went over a cliff only to land in the crotch of a tree just eight feet below instead of the fifty he could have fallen. Still later he had resigned himself to death and turned into a recluse, so we dragged him out and to the doctors where it was discovered he simply needed a new heart valve and went on further adventures. The man was Rubbermaid.

Enough for now….

Goodnight, sweetheart, Goodnight.


The man basically showed us how to live and how to die. As he had his daughter tell us, "I wasn't always good and I didn't always make myself proud, but I did the best I could." And died without whimpering over the choices he had made. God love you, Opa.