NOVEMBER 21ST 2015 THE PARTY The party was a great success. The kids put it together in our auditorium and did a great job. Jean and I put together a slide show of about 475 pictures starting with our wedding through the last 50 years. That went over really well. We had enchiladas and margaritas and danced to the music of Steve Knight. Marci, Kevin and Rick made very flattering speeches. There was a total of 73 family and friends. I hope the next 50 are as good as the last fifty. As parties go, this one was at the top of the list.

JUNE 2016 OUR FAMILY WEEK AT NEWPORT BEACH This year we changed houses. We decided that we needed more room, so we moved north about 10 blocks. The was quite a bit bigger and had great parking. We had places for 5 cars. It had more sleeping space and a really nice kitchen. After doing this for about forty years, It I will probably be our last time summer at Newport Beach. The rent is just getting ridiculous. It is now about $1000 a day. We can’t afford it anymore. We had a fabulous week as usual.

All of the family for at least a couple of nights, including Eitienne and her daughters. As usual everyone had a great time. The weather was perfect. We did have one mishap, Owen broke his hand playing goalie in their soccer games. He was a real trooper and had to fly home with a cast.

SEPTEMBER 2016 Jean and I took a little trip up to Portland to visit Kevin and Staci and Owen and Evan. It was a great trip. The weather was fantastic the whole time we were there. We got to see Owen play soccer twice, he’s getting very good. We stayed at Deeana’s one night. It’s always fun to visit with Kevin and Staci.

I think one of the most wonderful and difficult things to find in this life is your sole mate. It takes a lot of luck. Rick has seen it first hand, Kevin and Staci, my Dad and Mother, and Jean and I. He seems to know what he’s looking for and I think he believes he found it with Eitienne. He is in love, that’s wonderful place to be. Two weeks ago he bought a beautiful engagement ring. He told us he was just waiting for that right moment to surprise her. They were taking Angela (her oldest daughter) up to Stanford to start school and they decided to take a few days of vacation and just enjoy the trip home. We thought he was going to propose on that trip. But, he told us that they really enjoyed those two days together and the right moment just didn’t pop up and grab him. The day before our anniversary Rick called to announce that he proposed to Eitienne and she accepted. We are so happy that Rick has found his other half. I hope she realizes how lucky she is. Jean and I welcome our new daughter and grand-daughters, Angela and Abigail, into our family.

IN SUMMARY OF THE FIRST 80 YEARS

When I was a young man going about living my life, I really never seriously contemplated not existing. The concept is impossible to get your mind wrapped around. It’s like trying to understand that the universe is endless without bounds, or the theory of relativity. Just think about how amazing life is. For example take the human body. Now there’s one marvelous piece of equipment, and it comes with a lifetime guarantee. Of course each lifetime has a different unspecified term.

I can honestly say that until that fateful day in January 2014 going through a quintuple by-pass surgery, I had never come face to face with the end. Don’t get me wrong, I always knew life was finite, but we tend not to apply that theorem to ourselves. Following that surgery I was in recovery for sixteen days, during which time I flat lined twice, and I don’t remember a minute of that time. Then in rehab for three weeks at the Menifee Rehab Center. For those three weeks I suffered from hallucinations, convinced that my family was plotting to take everything and leave me alone with nothing. I have only vague recollections and a mixture of real and conjured events. I have given the subject a lot of thought since then. It was a time when I was very confused and struggling to separate the real and imaginary. Although I don’t attend church on Sunday, I have always considered myself a believer, but religion is a very complex subject. For example we have The Old Testament, The New Testament, the Koran, and countless others claiming to having the truth and salvation in their hands. Most claim the only true path to heaven is their way. I have a great deal of envy for those who have faith in their convictions and believe they have found the truth. It must be a great comfort.

All of us, as predecessors, leave everything we have to our future generations We even document it for them. We come into this world with absolutely nothing except an infant body equipped to travel the adventures of a lifetime. When we leave we take nothing with us, not even the body in which we arrived. Actually that physical body is manufactured by the mother. We just take residence on arrival. Everything, all our stuff stays here when we die.

As an engineer I find it hard to believe that creation is all accidental chemistry and cosmic explosions. The whole concept of life boggles the mind. I have reached that time in my life that I accept the certainty that life as we know it comes to an end. But then what? It’s not the dying that bothers me, it’s the not living. I don’t believe that the miracle just stops. Jean and I have spent our lives building a family around the concept of love and responsibility. I will tell you one thing, when I was on my death bed and I was told how my family came together and rallied around me, I was the proudest man on this earth. I believe that life is made up of choices. If you make the right choices, life is grand. But if you make the wrong choices, life can be difficult. And usually the right and wrong choices are pretty evident. My dad believed there are two basic rules to live by. Don’t lie and don’t steal. If it’s not true don’t say it and if it’s not yours don’t take it.

As parents we tried our best to teach by example. Being a parent is a very difficult job. I think Kevin and Rick understand the concept of responsibility. I am extremely proud of the men they have become. Kevin and Staci have done just an outstanding job of raising our grandchildren. But, I must say, Rick you certainly surprised. Before Jake came along you were becoming a typical self-centered bachelor. I was beginning to worry that you were going to end up as a lonely old man. It’s difficult to find the words to express how proud I am for the way you handled Jake coming into your life. You not only handled the situation better than anyone else I have ever known or heard of, you have become an outstanding father, brother and son. You make me very proud.

Michele has certainly been the most challenging aspect of our family. She was a model sister and daughter as a child. Then she hit those teen years and all of the problems you read and hear about start to manifest themselves into our lives. We went through a bitter battle with her until we began to get some answers for why she acted the way she did. She was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder formerly known as manic depression, a mental disorder with periods of depression and periods of elevated moods. She also found out she was allergic to alcohol. Alcohol literally turns her into a monster. So she was medicating her mood swings with alcohol.. She joined AAA is treated and medicated by a psychiatrist and has been monster free for eight years. But, I must say, with all of the turmoil in her life, she has raised three wonderful children. I don’t have a clue how she did it. She never plans ahead. She must have moved 50 times. I know one thing for sure, Troy needs the love and support of everyone of us to get him to manhood. But she has survived, so far, somehow. But then, if there is a family crisis she’s right there when we need her, and she takes charge. If it hadn’t been for Michele during my heart surgery, I have no idea what Jean would have done.

Then there are my two boys, Mike and Mark, from my first marriage. Because Mike died in 1992 I have already eulogized him earlier. When your children are the product of a divorce your range of influence is somewhat limited. There’s no doubt in my mind that I should have put myself in a position of more fatherly influence with those two boys. Things like soccer, Little League. Parents have a responsibility to get their kids involved, like we did with Kevin and Rick. And I can’t help believe that the fact that Mike’s step-father was gay had a disturbing influence on his life. He was a fine young man. He was very bright. He loved children and I think he would have made a great father. Unfortunately we’ll never know.

Now we are at the real reason I am writing My Memoirs. All of the good things that happen in our lives are easy to cherish and live over and over in our memories. But it is even easier to bury the failures. My biggest failure is my sons Mike and Mark.

Mike, as I discussed earlier, died of AIDS at the age of thirty-two. I’m not sure what I could have done to prevent that tragedy, but I could have been more of a father to help him navigate through lifes problems rather than being one.

Mark on the other hand is an ongoing battle to survive.. He is literally “THE KING OF NO MEANS”. He showed up at my door in 1977 (he was 16 ) with all of his worldly possessions in a brown paper bag. His mother kicked him out because she could not control him anymore. He was into anything that made him high, and his peer set was pretty low level. He was going into his senior year in high school. He was in deep do-do with respect to graduating and his mother had put him in continuation school. I sat him down and made him a deal he couldn’t refuse. It was a test for our marriage. We had just gone through a couple of strained teenage years with Michele. It was not a fun year but we got him through school. He couldn’t wait to get out on his own. He left my home the day he graduated in 1978. I don’t think he has made a right choice since then. He called me one night in about 1995 and asked me to buy him a bus ticket to Galt up by Stockton. His mother had married her fourth husband Bob Webb, a classmate from high school, and Bob had a ranch in Galt and had invited Mark to come up and live on the ranch. Bob was really a good guy and he tried to do the best he could for Mark. As far as I know that seemed to work for Mark. Unfortunately in 1997 Peg died from a ruptured brain aneurism. After Peg died, Bob sold the ranch and just disappeared. Fortunately Mark had met a lady in Galt that needed a care giver. Mark got a license and was taking care of her. Her name was Calle. She was quite large (about 300 lbs.) and she could not get around and she had a breathing problem like COPD. She supposedly had money coming in from an ex-husband, so she was paying Mark. We didn’t hear from Mark for about the next three years. The next time he called, they had pulled up stakes in Galt and moved to Plush, Oregon. This place is out in the boonies on a fork in the road about 80 miles east of Klamath Falls. Jean and I visited them there in 2005 and I have never seen Mark happier. He and Calle had a very close relationship. The next we heard, they had moved to Klamath Falls and I think Mark really loved Calle. It was the first time in his life that someone really needed him. Then the unthinkable happened, Calle died. Mark was devastated. He got drunk and got into an accident. He hit a motorcycle with two people on it and there were minor injuries, and he had two previous DUI’s and even though both riders testified that they were dressed in black and without lights. The fact that Oregon has zero tolerance on drunk driving he was sentenced to twelve years. He was placed in a low security prison farm in Salem, Oregon. Mark spent almost six years at the farm before he was released. On one hand it seems terrible for him to spend six years for drunk driving, but on the other hand it was probably the best six years of his life. He had three squares, a job, a bed and healthcare. He looked better than he had in years.

Today he lives in a one room third floor walk-up bachelor apartment in Klamath Falls. He lives on a disability check. He’s fifty-five years old and in poor health. The summer of 2013 when we made our annual family trip to Newport Beach. I called and invited him to join us for that week. He accepted and I sent him a train ticket and arranged to pick him up at the train station. He seemed really excited. All the family and friends were looking forward to seeing him. I think the only family members who had met Mark are Michele, Kevin, Rick and maybe Marci. A week before the trip, he sent me the train ticket and said his health was not good enough to make the trip. I was very disappointed. My gut tells me that he is constantly in a state of going off the wagon and he was afraid he couldn’t handle it. From talking to him on the phone it seems that there were times when he sounds like he’s on something. But, he may be on pain medication that makes him sound that way. In general, for the past year he has appeared to be perfectly normal when I talk to him on the phone. What’s the next move? I would go up there if I thought he wanted company. He’s living like a homeless person. I could try again to have him come visit. My son’s fifty-five years old and I don’t know him.

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