My Dad passed away on January 11, 2001. He was 87 years old.
He was an intelligent and super inquisitive individual who thought about things that his peers mostly didn’t/couldn’t and, if they did, he thought about them in a whole different way. He was a gifted athlete and a guy who could figure out how to do whatever needed to be done, fix whatever needed fixing and provide for his family with limited resources. Like his Father and brothers, he was a blacksmith and in a town of ~700 people he learned how to get by. At an early age he learned that “providing” meant bringing home all manner of fish and game and he became a "crack shot".
What follows is a eulogy that I wrote for his memorial service.