One of my brothers passed away

Very unexpectedly got word tonight that one of my older brothers passed away tonight. He collapsed from a massive heart attack at home and never regained consciousness despite the efforts of the paramedics.

He was a good man and leaves behind a wife and four children. Since they live in the Portland, OR area, we’ve always spent more time with them than my other brother, who lives in California. Whenever we’ve lived in Washington, we’ve always gone down to their house the day after Christmas to celebrate Christmas and his wife’s birthday.

I count myself lucky enough to have just spoken to him on the phone tonight for about 45 minutes. We were planning to have them up for Thanksgiving and he was just going to send an email to his boss to make sure he got it off. (He was a maintenance guy for luggage scanners at the Portland airport.)

He was always interested in talking about the Gospel and was a Sunday School teacher in his ward. He has touched the lives of many and will be sorely missed. Just tonight we were talking about some gospel matters related to the Fall and Redemption. Even now he probably has learned (or remembered) the answers to many of the questions we were talking about.

Some things you might not know about Bill:

• He could cook amazingly good Japanese food. Usually while spouting wise or clever Japanese idioms – in Japanese.
• He was in a Beach Boys cover band when he was in high school and used to play a killer saxophone.
• He made a pet out of a very mean feral house cat – named “Cat” of course.
• When I was little, like 12-ish, he took me to the movies a lot. Seems like every time a war movie comes on TV, I say, “Hey, Bill took me to see this when I was little.” A Bridge Too Far, The Eagle Has Landed, and more. He also took me to that awful first Star Trek movie.
• He liked to play Risk.
• He had our dad’s gift of being agreeable with just about everyone – even people he knew were complete idiots. :-)
• He was known to sometimes <ahem> “go commando” in his younger years.
• Right before he left on his mission he bought a red Trans-Am.
• He used to be a welder, a sod carrier, a builder of mobile homes, an auto mechanic, a soldier, a silicon fab worker, and an electronics technician. Some of those jobs he liked, some he hated, but he always knew how to provide for himself and his family.
• He was the keeper of the family history – both the genealogy and the stories.
• Every time the family was together he’d find a way to work in the story of how my mom was driving him around on a paper route when he was a kid and (allegedly) laughed when a dog chased him. (Note that my mom does NOT deny this.<g>)
• When he was going to be married, he drove me from Utah, where we lived, to California where his wife-to-be lived so I could stay at my other brother’s house until our parents came for the wedding. When we stopped at a gas station in Sacramento after driving all night, he got out his toothbrushing stuff. I wanted to get mine and he said, “Hey, you aren’t going to be kissing anybody, just wait in the car.”

Thanks, Bill. You were are always a good brother. See ya later.