Gott sprach es werde licht...
Scheisse was, es brannte nicht!
God said "let there be light"...
Shit, it didn't turn on!
"What a little ice cream can do for Washington!"
Whenever we would arrive at the house and he was in his chair, we'd hear him call out, "Hi Hansi! Hi Courtney!" He had a particular tone about it each time that was very musical.
After every Nats/Skins victory, we made sure to give each other a high-10. If we weren't both watching in the same spot, I made sure to give dad a phone call. Sometimes, if I was catching a game on the radio and he was elsewhere watching on TV, I would give him a call right then - "did you see that?" He was always so excited.
If there was one thing we both enjoyed, it was grousing about work.
While watching TV one time, the President was shown eating an ice cream cone, with a happy crowd around him. "What a little ice cream can do for Washington," Dad remarked.
Whenever I left the house, I was sure to say, "OK dad, I'll talk to you a little later," to which he would always advise me, "OK, Hansi, be careful!" in the same tuneful voice that he would use when greeting us.
When I was young and unsure about some clothing or a haircut or whatever, he'd always have a way of trying to reassure me: "Hey, cooooool, man!"
Dad sure did love Beavis & Butt-Head. "Those are my guys!" Even in the hospital, Jurgen and Gunter made sure to bring him his B&B shirt to wear and the hospital staff referred to him as the Beavis & Butt-Head guy. At one point, a nurse noted his shirt and lamented that his parents wouldn't let him watch them when he was a kid. Dad made sure to let the nurse know that he should keep an eye out for the new B&B movie that had just come out. His imitation of Butt-Head's laugh was hilarious in an altogether different way from the original.
Stepping out of his new 2019 Rav4 for the first time: "That is a sweet ride!" He really liked the smart key system (which he spent a good amount of time showing off to mom), the temperature control that allowed you to set desired cabin temperature, the automatic parking brake, and the red color (red was important), but the real selling point for him was the automatic rear hatch. He was blown away that you could just press a button to shut it.
"They got a lot of junk in there."
- Dad, commenting on a picture of the NYC skyline on TV.
Dad placed a really high value on that sort of consistent, familiar service. He liked knowing everyone's names and really liked being able to just say "I'll have my usual." He would sometimes get annoyed if he recognized the waiter and the waiter didn't know what he was talking about.
Whenenver he got coffee, it would usually come with creamer. He'd drink the coffee black, but take the individual creamers as shots at the table.
Physical fitness was something that was both important to dad, and something that impressed him. He would refer to Jurgen and Gunter as 'the powerhouses' and went to the gym with them many times. When I started going to the gym, he came along for quite some time as well. He always had a lot of fun and enjoyed the cable low row and bicep curls in particular. Even in his 80s, he was exceptionally strong, not just for his age, but in general. It's shocking to look back and think that he was most likely doing all of this while quietly and unknowingly dealing with a progressive lung disease.
He always stood out at the gym, being the only guy there in loafers and a Citizen watch. We kept track of his exercises in a DayMinder calendar and he always enjoyed when I would take a picture of his exercise log to send to Jurgen (when he was in NC). Dad also really liked going to the nearby Wendy's for a post-workout spicy chicken sandwich and chili.
Speaking of chili - I remember his go-to euphemism for farting when we were kids was that he heard a "barking spider." Haha whaaat?
He would always sing a little song when I was a very small boy as he bounced me on his knee:
"Hänschen klein,... I wish I could remember the rest. It's an old German folk song.
ging allein,
in den grünen Wald hinein.
Stock und hut...
There was never an occasion too formal or too informal for an evening at Longhorn. Sure, he'd get his steaks well-done, but it often seemed like the Chocolate Stampede was the real reason for going.
I don't know how he liked those Giant Food Bakery Croissants so much, but he did. After dinner, he'd often have a croissant for dessert, dipping it in a glass of milk. Of course, this was a second place to his preferred dessert: Chips Ahoy Chocolate Chip Cookies, the ones in the blue package. He was a huge fan of those.
If you lived in a house with or worked with dad, you knew the five forces acting on an aircraft: pitch, roll, drag, yaw, and side force.
He taught me at a very early age what angle of attack and angle of yaw were. I enjoyed having the information, but it was only much later that I found out his interest in planes had as much to do with wanting to become a licensed pilot as it did with engineering wind tunnels.
He had a constant, almost nervous energy. He always wanted to feel like he was helping, all the time. If something was going on and he couldn't help, he would stand around looking for something to do. Working on the house recently, my mom was being followed closely everywhere by a robin, who wasn't eating or looking for food, but constantly peering in to what she was doing. She felt like it was definitely Dad's energy following her around.
The way that Dad would tap the spoon or fork on a dish and make fast lip smacking noises if he was getting ready to eat something he liked.
Coming by the house on weekends, I enjoyed hanging out on the couch while dad sat in his chair watching baseball, CNBC, CNN, or MSNBC. We would just hang out and talk awhile about sports, politics, or current events whenever we didn't have a game to watch!
Dad had impeccable handwriting and a signature that stayed consistent throughout his life. We first saw an example of this signature in a document from 1952, when he was 15 years old!
I remember working at Carmax and every now and then calling Dad in the middle of the night while he was at Aerolab (at that time, he would arrive at work at 1 AM, typically), whenever the mechanics or I needed an answer to an engineering-related question. One particularly important technical question we had to answer (to resolve a dispute in the shop) was whether an inflated tire actually weighed more than an uninflated tire. Dad's answer (the air in the tire is compressed and thus has a higher volume of air than an uninflated tire, and air does have weight as evidenced by the 14 psi we experience just sitting around) won me twenty bucks.
A Geico commerical that was on years ago showed a pair of cavemen on a moving sidewalk in an airport while a song played in the background. Dad loved the clip of the song (it was 'Remind Me', by the band Royskopp). He got a kick out of hearing it in its entirety online.
"Just wait until I'm well again. You won't believe how much help I'll be." - Dad always believed he'd beat his illness, and we all believed in him as a result. He said these words less than two weeks before he had to leave us. He had just finished explaining how to install shingles on a roof.
Trying to remember the new team name, Dad stumbled on "Cambo," which seemed to amuse him a bit. Honestly, it's better than the one they ended up with.
Crab cakes! Dad never missed an opportunity to have himself a crab cake.
Gunter and I would through the ball around the back yard quite a bit, and Dad enjoyed both watching, and every now and then (despite a bad shoulder) come and play a bit as well. He couldn't throw overhand because of his right shoulder, I got him a right-hand (left-hand throw) baseball glove, since he was uncomfortable trying use his left hand to catch anyways. He would catch the ball with his gloved right hand, then underhand toss it to one of us with his left.
"Keep it going there, partner!"
Going with Dad to see the BSO play the Sibelius Symphony #2 at the Meyerhoff was a lot of fun. Even though he wasn't a big classical music fan, he took in the concert with me back when I was maybe 16 or so, and got us a pair of seats right up front so that I wouldn't miss anything.
Baltimore wasn't a top destination for us, but Dad, Jurgen, and I took in an Orioles game in the summer of 1999. It was crazy to see all of our favorite players at the time: Ripken, Surhoff, Anderson, Mussina and others. He was really into baseball for several years in the late 90s, and we watched plenty of Orioles games, since there was no DC team at the time (although he was a Senators fan in the 60s and 70s).
Seeing him show Mom how the smart key system on his 2019 Rav4 worked was like watching an excited kid. It was an all new thing for him, and he really enjoyed it. After 82 years of turning a key to start a car, he could start it with a push of a button and open it with the key still in his pocket. Cool, man!
During the early 2000s, goatees were super fashionable. I remember even Dad - very briefly, for maybe a week or so - decided to have one.
Dad's Favorite Soups
Dad certainly loved his soups, especially in later years:- French Onion
- -before his ILD diagnosis, it was his go-to soup in any restaurant; after, it mostly just came from Panera
- Panera Broccoli Cheddar Soup
- -he liked the creaminess of it
- La Madeline Tomato Basil
- -before, but especially after his ILD diagnosis, this was a favorite; at Xmas 2022, Katie got him several quart-jars of it and it was a great source necessary nutrients... he really liked the Strawberries Romanoff to go along with it
- Wendy's Chili
- -does this count as a soup? he certainly ate quite a bit of it.
- Dumbbell Curls
- Low Cable Row
- A pleasant stroll on the treadmill
- - He used to love swimming in the Jadebusen as a kid.
- - In the months before covid, Mom got him signed up for a senior swimming class, which he enjoyed.
- - One early memory was Dad swimming in the ocean during a vacation we all took to Virginia beach. At one point, he swam out pretty much to the edge of the world (or so it seemed when I was a little kid, it was probably a hundred yards or so in real life) and waving to us from the ocean as we stood on the beach. I was terrified that he would get eaten by a shark that far out and was pretty much in a state of panic until he swam back to shore.
Business card from the original Aerolab facility. They put "Project Engineer" for the job title because it seemed better than "Guy that does a little of everything."
It's easy to imagine how excited Dad would have been to watch us working on the deck and fountain. You could almost hear him saying, "Wow, cool!" with every cut and every new board installed. He would get so excited to see any project come to life. He was, in every sense, a creator.
Although Dad drank coffee for most of his life, it turns out that he didn't actually like it - it was just what people drank, so he did as well. His habit was to get a large coffee in the morning, mix in cream and sugar, and just sip on it a little bit all day, throughout the day (despite it getting cold). He began drinking it black when the habit of coating his teeth in a mixture of acid and sugar fifty times a day caught up with him in the form of multiple root canals. He would still take shots of the cream, though, at restaurants.
Very late in life, my brothers got Dad into energy drinks. He said he liked them because they tasted good and "got his legs moving," with his favorite being Rockstar Lemonade. They always knew that he was up and about when they would hear the crack/pop of the Rockstar can opening downstairs, followed shortly by the sound of CNN or MSNBC on the TV.
The BP Station in Fulton saw Dad just as often as anyone, especially after his retirement. He really enjoyed their breakfasts and lunch subs, and you could be assured that you would always find some BP leftovers in the fridge. It was a frequent stop when he took his Rav 4 joyrides throughout the area.
Arriving at the place he'd call home for the next 36 years, and well beyond. It's home for us, too, as long as Dad is there.
One of the main drivers of Dad's success in life was his unique skillset, having both the mind of an engineer, but the hands of a machinist. Generally you're either one or the other, but he excelled at both and that gave him a unique and inimitable perspective on how things worked (and if they didn't work, how to get them to work right), which will never be replaced.
It was always fun hearing Dad's stories about getting used to America. He learned English largely on the streets, and just the same way he picked up aerospace engineering by paying attention, imitating, picking up patterns, and knowing what questions to ask, he managed to do the same with English to the point that, at least during my lifetime, I never remember him having a German accent.
He often talked about his experiences trying out English phrases early on. One of the first phrases he learned was in the diners: Give me eggs. He would say it, and they would give him eggs. Not sure how they would come out, but he would get them. When he got tired of that, he learned another phrase: Give me hot dog. In his words, he ate so many hot dogs during that time "...that they were coming out of my ears."
Things didn't always work as intended, though. As anyone who's learned a new language can attest, there are some rough patches. At one point, wandering the streets of New York City looking for a soccer game, he managed to flag down two women and tried his best to ask for directions. He recalled them looking at him with confused expressions as he tried to use a combination of words and hand gestures to get his point across. Finally, as he recalled clearly, one woman looked at the other and asked her, "What is he saying??"
While he didn't watch a whole lot of soccer, when World Cup time came around, he was locked in - and rooting for Germany! Of course, Team USA was his second team.
English was Dad's primary language for nearly seventy years, but he always enjoyed hearing German spoken, and speaking it. He always spoke at a moderate pace and needed a similar moderate pace in order to understand, as he was out of practice. When he was very confused under medication during the last few months, he would speak exclusively in German. It was interesting, seeing how he would revert to his original native language and made you wonder a bit how deeply this knowledge was kept in his head. Almost certainly, with a few weeks of re-acclaimation, he would have been able to communicate as a native again. Oma was the same way.
One afternoon, I was doing some de-cluttering and I found some index cards from high school of German prepositions. No longer being an active studier of the language, I set them aside to be recycled. Dad came by and noticed them and took great amusement in looking through them, mentioning that he'd had "no idea" that I had taken such an interest in speaking well and learning the finer points. He asked if he could keep the cards, and naturally I said he could do whatever pleased him. From then on, I made it a point to practice and clean up my German so that it would be as functional as possible, and he enjoyed our conversations.
Dad always enjoyed a shave and a haircut, even when dealing with the supplemental oxygen equipment. He mentioned that once he was well again, he'd like us all to go to a high-end barbershop together.
He always referred to the German letter eszett (ß) as beta (β), due to its similarity in appearance to the Greek letter. Not sure if this was something that was taught, or if it was just an idiosyncrasy. As such, I always knew it as beta right up until high school.
There was only one kind of pumpernickel for Dad: the very hard/stiff style that was difficult to find around here. Most of the pumpernickel in this area is soft bread that has been flavored with the same sort of grains. Dad really enjoyed the German-style pumpernickel that you could find at Aldi, typically with butter, a few tomato slices, and salt. He also enjoyed it with some liverwurst or smoked salmon with cream cheese.
Double T Diner in Ellicott City was always a birthday favorite. It's the EC Diner now, but he wouldn't be a stranger there. We made sure to make this the destination for his 86th birthday dinner!
Winning the lottery was Dad's #1 pipe dream, as he always aspired to material comfort. In the earliest years of my life, Dad played frequently, filling a large urn that we had in the house with losing tickets, which my brothers and I would dump out and pretend were money. At one point, our neighbor mentioned that in the late 1980s the Pennsylvania lottery jackpot reached $120 million, and Dad drove all the way out to PA to make sure he could buy a ticket! Much later on, we mostly just had fun playing scratchoffs that he and Mom would get for our Christmas stockings.
"That's a nice piece of plunder!" Dad would say, when we came home with something new.
It was never raining out with Dad. It was just a little bit of liquid sunshine.
"We already gave!" he would shout, whenever there was a knock at the door.
Last updated: Please share your memories with us!
One of the door casings that ended up being Dad's and my last project together. I learned so much in that afternoon about how to get a precise appearance out of an uneven surface. He was a magician with home repairs.
Watching Dad negotiate with the sales guy when buying my VW was quite a sight. I learned that so much of what goes on in a dealership is just games, and was interested to watch Dad just cut through the crap and get right to the car. I also learned how much power you had when you were coming with a real down payment or cash. Dad's approach to cars has stuck with me.
He also didn't care for wasting time when it came to getting rid of a car, either. The Dodge Dakota which he'd had for a long time (probably fifteen years at that point) wouldn't start, and the local garage couldn't fix it. A mechanic friend happened to need a car at that exact time and Dad offered the truck to him if he could get it running. Lo and behold, my friend came and ohm'd out the pickup coil and got it running for twenty bucks in twenty minutes. True to his word - as Dad was never one to back out of a deal - Dad went inside and immediately signed over the title.
In the hospital with me back when I was twelve, he was translating a German book I had for me. An old man behind us in the waiting area peered over and asked, "Do you read German?" - "I am German," Dad replied, with amusement.
Dad's bad shoulder made buckling a passenger seatbelt very awkward, and he often needed help getting it set. However, he loved going for rides in everyone else's cars. One morning I even went and picked him up in Courtney's Avalon and we went to Eggspectations. He couldn't believe how nice it was, by his standards.
Wo rohe Kräfte sinnlos walten,
da kann kein Knopf die Hose halten!
Where raw power rules mindlessly,
no button can hold up your pants!
Das Lied von der Glocke
Das Lied von der Glocke (Schiller)
(The Song of the Bell). I imagine this is probably something German schoolchildren repeated to each other back in the day or something like that.We had a secret handshake when I was a kid - I slap him a low five, he does the same for me, I give him a fist pound, he does the same for me, and then an "ahhhhh" as we hit the smooth hand slide. You kinda gotta see it for it to make sense. It's always going to bring a smile about.
One of the first things Dad taught me to draw was
Kilroy was here.
Kilroy was here
Translating an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head into German (because how else would you spend an afternoon?) he coined the word arschklopfer (a butt-knocker).
He really liked Honey Nut Clusters Cereal back in the day.
With apologies to G.E., Dad made an 'old' joke at your expense once at dinner. Mentioning a newly minted centenarian in the news, he remarked out of nowhere, "Sounds like he's been hanging out with G.E."
Dad pumping iron in his distinctive gym outfit: penny loafers and an eco-drive. He would have been around 80 or 81 in this picture.
- Favorite exercises at the gym:
Gunter told me about a time that Dad decided to go out and check out some BMW sports cars. He was really attracted to the BMW Z4, but when he got into it, he found it extremely cramped. This was the impetus for him deciding to get a Rav4 instead.
The afternoon where we bought the Rav 4 was interesting. I took him over to Carmax, where he immediately went over to a used one, with the same body style as Gunter's, ready to buy it right then. I encouraged him to sit in it, which he grudgingly agreed. When it was clear that he would have to sit with his chest against the steering wheel in order to see over the hood, he had to be convinced that it was a dangerous and impractical choice. We spent the next couple hours walking around the lot, checking out various cars and various features. As mentioned before, what truly sold him on the one he actually bought was the powered tailgate. With a bad shoulder, the idea of not having to slam down a tailgate was very appealing to him. He was ready to buy it for that alone, without even test driving it, but after convincing him that a test drive was absolutely necessary, it was clear on that drive that he would really enjoy the car.
Figure Loafing
Decades ago, MAD magazine had a comic strip that featured the "Gen X Olympics", with pictures of the various events. Dad thought the picture of "freestyle figure loafing", with a loser draped over a couch, the funniest thing ever. That expression became part of his permanent vocabulary: "What are you up to today? Doing some figure loafing?"Let's get our buds out of here! - Dad was really eager to escape from the blood transfusion center when he said this.
The medications that Dad had to take while he was sick had a tendency to make him pretty confused. Occasionally, he had trouble recognizing people, and on one particularly difficult morning, my mom learned that even though dad was confused, his diplomatic instincts were very much intact:
Mom: "Who am I?"
Dad: "You're the helper."
M: "Oh, I see. How much do you pay me?"
D: "Hmm..." (thinking) "Not enough."
M: "Are you married?"
D: "Yes."
M: "And what does your wife look like?"
D: "Hmm..." (thinking) "Very pretty."
Dad's Tundra, back home after the frame was replaced.
Mom often mentioned that on the day I was born - a Sunday - Dad and the Doctor were splitting time and attention between her and the Redskins game. It was the early 80s, after all.
Years and years ago, Dad enjoyed picking the wild daffodils from behind Aerolab for Mom. We'll think of Dad every spring, when the daffodils come up.
Dad approached nature with a certain amount of wonder. He remarked to Gunter on several occasions how amazing it was that you could just put a seed in the ground, and after a while, food would come out. "How does it know?" he would ask.
Dad had a particular idea of beauty: natural colors, smooth, flowing lines, elaborate woodgrains, and flowers. His approach to landscaping and furniture building embodied these ideas. For the bookshelves in the family room, he managed to draw out smooth curves for the upper arcades by attaching a pencil to a string, which was wrapped around a nail to draw out the curves. One curve had to be off-center, but he made it appear just as natural by attaching a second nail next to the first and wrapping the pencil around both.
Only one of the three benches that Dad built for the fountain remain, and it's going on 35 years old - though it's still as sturdy as ever. We can't quite do it justice, but we did make replicas for his Celebration of Life based on the one that's available. The plans that we pulled together are here.
Even though we had a beautiful rosewood dining room table already, Dad wanted another one in teak for the extension to the kitchen. Gunter mentioned that it was never clear to him why Dad went through the trouble of shopping for a whole other table until years later he realized - Dad loved teak and just wanted an excuse to bring some into the house.
I remember visiting Dad at the new Aerolab location once, and he was introducing me to some co-workers. "He's got a lot of opinions on politics," he warned them, though in a complimentary way. During the early 2000s, he and I had had many contentious discussions, but by this time in both of our lives, we'd both mellowed out and tended to see things in a much more similar way.
Of course, he had very particular phrases when he wanted to disparage someone, especially a politician. I'm sure they were a lot more common back in the day, but I've never heard anyone else use these sorts of expressions:
"He talks like a man with a paper asshole."To this day, the first one is still a puzzler as to what it means, but it's a distinctly Dad expression.
"[He] can go shit in [his] hat."
"He has diarrhea of the mouth."
The original Aerolab facility, under construction in the 1960s.
"He who hesitates is lost!"
When I was little, Dad used to bounce me on his knee and sing the German folk song,
Hoppe Hoppe Reiter.
Hoppe Hoppe Reiter
He would always say Hoppla, hoppla, reiter. When it came to the word, "plumps!" (he'd say, "bluuuum!") he would drop his knees to make a slide, and I would go sliding down to the floor, laughing.On any phone call, he had a very particular valediction that I can hear in my head right now. (musically) "mmhmm, byebye." He would catch himself and back up to make sure he said it if it seemed like the call was ending before he was able to. He had a similarly musical "Hello, hello, helloooooo!" greeting.
When it was time to eat, he was always happy to note the arrival of the food: "Let's dig in!"
After any meal, especially a large one: "Well, that'll hold us until we get something to eat!"
The best Friday night dinners were the ones followed by a trip for ice cream. If we were in Scaggsville, we'd go to Baskin Robbins; if we were near my place in Ellicott City, we'd go to Cold Stone, and if we were at BGR, we'd go to Tutti Frutti next door.
For his feats of strength, steadiness of character, and birth year, Mom's family nicknamed Dad "The Ox."
He placed a high value on material wealth. After the privation he experienced as a child, he felt comfortable knowing he had assets to fall back on and took great pride in what he was able to save and provide for everyone.
While in his mid-60s, he was putting plywood on the roof of the new addition to the garage. When a strong gust of wind came, it caught the plywood and knocked him off the roof onto a wheelbarrow. Natrually, he got right up and kept on going. When he was locked in, there was no stopping him. Well - except once. Back at the old house, he was bench pressing in the garage and apparently got stuck. Mom had to rush into the garage and remove the weights from the bar, one by one, until he could free himself!
In his 80s, he reminisced about how easy everything was for him back when he was only 62.
In his old-fashed sort of way, whenever Dad had a crude or vulgar joke, he would tell it off to the side, in secret, away from the ears of the ladies.
I made the mistake of asking Dad for a match one time. "I got a match for you. My ass and your face," was his reply. I remember also that we were on the front porch. What was even going on? lol
"Pardon my French," he would say, whenever using language that he felt whatever company around him would find vulgar. Of course, he maintained two other French-isms, always using a very long, guttral R sound at the end of "showerrrrrr" and placing a lot of emphasis on the second syllable of "garbaaaaaage." Also, when I was little, I remember him reading a book about computers to me, and he would pronounce Charles Babbage's last name the same way - Babbaaaaaage. I never questioned it!
Overhearing Jurgen refer to someone as a "d-bag": "D-bag? What is that, a dirt bag?"
One Christmas, I got Dad a pad of those Knock-Knock silly sticky notes. The ones I got for him were for him to use at work, and they were titled "WTF Notes." He asked what "WTF" stood for and Mom told him it meant "Wednesday, Thursday, Friday." He got a laugh when he found out what it actually meant.
For whatever reason, he was a big fan of Michael Steele when he made appearances on MSNBC. Jurgen kept a picture of Michael Steele on Dad's phone, and even when he was really confused due to medications, Dad would recognize him.
Sometimes the confusion became scary for Dad. Occasionally, he would become really emotionally invested in a news report about a bad situation, and became agitated, desperately wanting to help the victims of war, crime, or whatever trouble there was, without realizing that it was on TV and there was nothing he could do to help. In those moments, Gunter found that he could change the channel to Golf TV, and the coverage would soothe Dad. Despite never having had an interest in golf, Dad ended up watching a lot of the Golf Channel in order to keep his nerves calm.
Even though times were very tough, Dad still hung onto his essential silliness and his desire to have fun with the family.
"Mama"
"Mama" by Heintje Simons
(which I had heard him sing many times, especially when younger). He mentioned that the song reminded him of Oma, and wept.When Oma passed away and we went to see her, I remember Dad mentioning that she had gone "to the afterlife," an idea which was contrary to her own religious beliefs. It was clear that in his mind, he hoped to see her again one day. We all hope that he was right.
He also seemed to believe that a preference for German dark chocolate was genetic and unalterable. Oma loved chocolate and Dad did as well, enjoying it in all forms: cookies, cake, bars, liqueur-filled treats, etc. For our dinner together after Oma passed away, he made sure to dedicate the chocolate cake to her.
Sibling rivarly never ends. As Dad's illness progressed, he found it tough to keep his apperances up, but he took great delight on hearing that he still had hair, whereas his older brother had long since gone bald.
Being bedridden (or chair-ridden) was extremely difficult, but Dad kept a little plastic basket with a few items in it to break up the monotony just a bit, including his remote control, his magnifying glass (and later, his
extra-large lighted magnifying glass
Album includes a video of Dad getting his magnifying glass. (Slide 8)
, a grip strength trainer, and a solid brass fidget spinner. On Christmas Morning, 2022, Dad woke up at 4 AM and excitedly yelled to Mom to wake up, as it was Christmas morning. She told him to get back to sleep, and that we'd be opening presents later! He dutifully complied.
One of the things Dad liked to do for Christmas during his later years was to decorate little coin pouches with washi tape and put various bills inside them. He would then unbend paper clips and use them to hang the little pouches in discrete areas around the tree, a combination decoration and present.
We all did bed jump shots in a hotel in Oklahoma. The idea was to keep your body as straight as possible as you jump face-first onto a bed. Dad was never one to be left out of the fun, and here was his attempt! (2012)
His reaction when Gunter told him the Philadelphia Eagles were going to the Super Bowl: "Ohhhhh shit." Even through the fog of medication, football rivalries penetrate through.
Similarly, when Dad and Gunter watched San Fran beat Dallas, Dad remarked with delight, "They got their little bumps kicked."
Football was also a source of frustration. Especially during the Snyder years, I'd often heard Dad, exasperated, yelling at the TV: "They look like the eleven stooges out there!"
His outlook tended to be generally positive, though. Every season came with Super Bowl expectations, no matter how bad the offseason was or what the experts were saying. Even after the Eagles jumped out to a 28-0 first quarter lead during the notorious "Monday Night Massacre" game, his only remark was that perhaps it would just be a high scoring game - with us on the winning end.
Some of Dad's favorite players included Sonny Jurgensen, Charley Taylor, Art Monk, and Santana Moss. While clearly an offense guy, he also did make reference to Charles Mann and Dexter Manley a number of times. He would refer to Joe Theismann as "old mushmouth."
When I was a little kid, Dad taught me my left and my right by using the mnemonic - "Your right hand is your writing hand." 35 years later, I still hear him saying it.
He brought me home a few computer games when I was little. Not sure where he got them from, but the biggest one for me now was probably Civilization. I remember it came on four 3.5" floppy disks. I played that game for hours and developed an interest not in computers, but history (which I'm sure was the opposite of whatever everyone hoped would happen). Dad took note of it and brought me back a copy of Braudel's "A History of Civilizations," which he picked up at the mall randomly. He told me he noticed I had been taking interest in this sort of thing and thought I might enjoy the book. I still have it.
Another game he brought back was a simple game called "Nibbles" (he called it "Diddles"), which was basically just controlling a little dot matrix snake going around the screen eating numbers, getting larger each time it ate one. It was a tough game. In the nearly days of our 33mhz NEC computer, it was a hell of a challenge.
We kids wanted to see fireworks for the Fourth of July on the Columbia Lakefront every year. One year, we got a late start and couldn't find parking anywhere. Dad parked the Grand Caravan in the median of 29 among several other cars, not far from the footbridge, and we watched the fireworks from right there.
Mom still jokes about the one time when I was very little, and Dad was so exhausted and inattentive one evening that he brushed his teeth with Desitin (diaper rash cream) instead of toothpaste.
When my brothers and I were noisy and annoying, he made it a point never to tell us to 'shut up', but instead, "Shut it down," like a machine.
Dad sure did like ribs. Whenever he had the opportunity, he'd get himself a half rack of ribs for dinner, especially at Famous Dave's and Longhorn. He'd follow it up with coffee for/with dessert.
Monster energy drink and ice cream for dinner. You better believe Dad always did it his way. (May 2022)
In a similar vein, Dad did his best to pay me a compliment by pointing out that while my brothers were/are very strong, he went to great pains to insist that I was very strong for my size. It was meant and taken as high praise from someone who was himself a physical specimen.
Dad enjoyed going on walks through the neighborhood in his later years. Up until the day before he got sick, he was taking multi-mile strolls, enjoying the outdoors and the sights and sounds of the neighborhood. When he was compelled to stay indoors, he would walk on his treadmill and note distances and times. Consistent with his enjoyment of numbers in general, he would note the distance in miles, then convert it to feet on his calendar as well.
Coming back from any event, Dad would always ask if we had enjoyed ourselves: "Did you guys have a large time?"
Dad appreciated his Mach 3 razors. One year for Christmas, I got him a laquered burlwood handle and matching stand. He appreciated be able to shave now with fine wood, even if it was the same old razor he'd been using since their introduction; he appreciated natural beauty. He also appreciated his Citizen watches and Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookies, but for very different reasons.
Just a random memory of Dad teaching me how to shave: always up and down, perpendicular to the blade, never parallel with the blade. I was nervous about slicing my face apart, but Dad gave me enough assurance to try it.
Similarly, teaching me how to tie a Windsor knot was a skill that has proven extremely useful over the years. Dad believed the ability to tie your own tie was valuable. In later years, he had trouble doing so because of his bad shoulder, so we would help on the rare occasion that he needed one.
Working on our last project together, Dad and I went up and down the stairs frequently at my place. He recommended that our next project should be to extend the banister up higher, beyond the staircase itself. The current banister was designed for someone to grasp it as they go upstairs, but requires the user to lean over the stairs and bend forward to grasp it as they descend from the top floor. His suggestion exemplified his approach to homes: he was always looking for ways to make everything safer, more comfortable, more functional, and more beautiful. It is a deep regret that we didn't get to that project in time. There is never, ever enough time.
Jurg happened to be at CVS on day while Dad was checking out and got to catch a bit of Dad's humor without him knowing. Showing his ID, he read off his birthday to the cashier: "June 12... 1837." He was never afraid to have a little joke at his own expense. I guess when you can't deny you're getting older, may as well have a little fun with it.
He was frustrated one time, back in 2014, as he was feeling sore and stiff while we were trying to install a dishwasher at my townhouse. "Getting old is a bitch," he groused. However, we were all still lifting weights at the gym together years later. He was unstoppable.
"If we can cover up half of those birds... we'll have 'em whipped."
Every now and then, someone would come in the room while Dad was watching trashy reality TV to pass the time. He'd get self-conscious and insist that he didn't even know what it was he was watching. Gunter went to great lengths to assure Dad that nobody cared what it was he was watching and if he enjoyed what was on, no one would object to it being on.
On family vacation in Toronto one year - I think it was Summer 2001 - we somehow ended up with a penthouse suite hotel room for the price of a regular hotel room. Being in Canada, I wanted to try Cuban Cigars, so Dad and I went out and got a couple and smoked them on the balcony. That was a wild experience.
Between the ages of 19 and 21, Dad served in the U.S. Army.
Dad loved hearing jokes. We told plenty of not-so-nice ones that got a lot of laughs, but this corny one sticks out in particular above the other ones because it was one of the few that made him laugh until he cried: What's the deal with pro wrestling? It's a bunch of guys who don't wear pants, fighting over a belt.
When I bought my first place, I thought of the anxiety that Dad had talking about his first place. He often talked about how he would be kept awake at night, wondering how on earth he was ever going to pay it all off. Seeing as he did and continually moved on to bigger and better things, I felt encouraged.
Of course, all of that is easier if you're smart with your money. Dad used to talk about his time in the army and how he preferred mostly to save his money rather than going out on the town on weekends. Guys would often borrow from him, on the condition that one this week would be paid back with two the next week. By his own account, this helped him build up a savings much more quickly, at the expense of his more self-indulgent collegues.
Dad would talk often about nights keeping watch in the army. When someone would approach, he had to yell, "Advance to be recognized!". He spoke most often of the more mundane experiences in the military.
- When he was young, Dad (by his own description) was a real "water rat.".