cc: file, Andrea, Tony Hafen, Sara and Des Penny, & Maxine Shirts
"Have you each got your will put together? Andrea and I have a hand modified will in the black file cabinet under the stairs, and after the events of this week, it seems like a good idea for each of us to have a current Will. If you want to seal them and have us store them, we would be glad to provide this service for each of you.
Charles Caron, a member of Nottingham Country Ward for several years was riding his motorcycle last Monday, took a corner too fast, could not compensate, and ended up hitting a truck head on. The funeral was yesterday.
Charles and Julie Caron were on the Activities Committee with me for about a year (../0245.html, ../0309.html, ../0315.html, ../0316.html, ../0325.html, and 0401.html). Their only daughter, Emily, is autistic (Asperger's Syndrome), and so we always had the Ward Activities Committee meetings at their house in order to minimize the effect on Emily's schedule. Julie always made brownies or lemon tarts, and a couple of times Charles made homemade ice cream.
Quoting from the Program from yesterday's funeral program:
My week seemed to be centered around the accident. Andrea
called me at work about 10:00 Tuesday morning to tell me the
news. When I heard about the accident, I couldn't help but
reflect on my concerns for both Roice and Ben when they took
up the motorcycle as a means of transportation, my concerns
when Roice broke his collar bone practicing for a motorcycle
race (../9707.html), Bradley Jay Hall's motorcycle accident
and untimely death (../0126.html), and, of course, the serious
accident my Dad and Uncle Bud had on a motorcycle back before
World War II. I went back and reviewed the Thoughtlet I
wrote about Uncle Bud (../9937.html), and was surprised there
was no mention of this accident.
Above my Dad's left eye was a triangular indentation, about 3/4" high and an inch across. The print of Melanie's painting is too small to tell if Ken included it in his painting of Dad. Dad was a single, hardworking bachelor. He was 33 when he married Mom. He had a motorcycle, an airplane, tractors, trucks, cattle, and horses. Once he was hurrying into Cedar City on his motorcycle with his younger brother, Uncle Bud, on the back of the motorcycle. There used to be a hemispherical bridge over Coal Creek, and I can imagine kids going over that bridge at breakneck speed to have the gravity thrill when coming down the other side. The problem on this day was there was a semi-truck across the street on the other side of the bridge, and the bridge was sufficiently high that they did not know about the truck as they hit the bridge at full throttle. Dad laid the bike on it's side, and they slide under the truck. Uncle Bud lost three inches off of his leg, wore special work shoes with a lift on his short leg, and walked with a limp the rest of his life.
There was another accident that had happened, and when Dad and Uncle Bud made it to Dr. Broadbent's office, Dad ended up sitting in the waiting chair for several hours while they fixed Uncle Bud's leg and took care of the injured people from the other accident. Evidently, Dr. Broadbent could see he wasn't going to get to Dad, and so he took a metal instrument, pulled the broken bone back out so it was almost even, and sent Dad home and told him to take a nap and not to work too hard for a couple of days. Dad told me the story a couple of times in the years just before his death. I had never really noticed the triangular indentation until he pointed it out to me and others we were with during these conversations.
I have never had a desire to ride motorcycles. Although I did buy a dirt bike for Roice and Ben and Paul, at the suggestion of Ed Quillion (sp?), in the late 1980's. However, I never did go riding with you guys, even though this was suppose to be a bonding purchase, largely because my Mom and Dad had such strong feelings about motorcycles. I am certainly glad to see Roice and Ben have passed the motorcycle age and have not been hurt worse than they were. My stomach was in knots when Todd Staheli took Andrea for a ride on his Harley in the London countryside. Oh well! I think we all have irrational fears.
I can not help but draw a correlation with Brad Hall's accident the 26th week of 2001 and Charles Caron's accident this week, the 28th week of 2004. Both Brad and Charles were very quiet, did not seem to have that many friends in the Ward, and were possibly using the motorcycle as a way to vent the frustrations and pressure and loneliness that can come with the suburb and our high pressure lives. I know there were times in the late 1980's and early 1990's when I felt completely isolated and alone and like no one cared if I was here or not. Reflecting on these times, I'm sure it was my own insecurities, lack of social skills, lack of folks with similar interests, combined with the stress of six young children and a depressed wife. Julie is always happy and willing to do anything for anyone, and so circumstances were different for Charles. However, Emily is a hard and demanding child to raise, and both Julie and Charles had opened up about their frustrations and sense of isolation, specifically due to the demands of taking care of Emily.
I can see some of you kids going through a similar trial at some point in your life. Hopefully you will always find friends (like Melanie's friend in Vidor), and hobbies (like Heather's bicycle riding), and work (like Ben's and Audrey's comments of enthusiasm about their jobs), and service (like Paul's comments about serving in the Bishopric), and other similar positive distractions, particularly if you ever find yourself starting to feel down and want to overcome this depression by driving too fast or doing something else overly dangerous. I guess it is one of my hopes that these Thoughtlets will provide a window into the choices other's make, so you can choose to make better choices than particularly I have made by learning from my mistakes.
Anyway, back to my week. Monday was a holiday at work. We all planned to go the Houston Museum of Natural History. However, Rachel didn't feel like it, and so Matt, Andrea, and I went. We saw the Macchu Picchu exhibit. It is wonderful. I didn't realize how late the Inca were, relative to Book of Mormon times. The Book of Mormon ends in 421 AD with Moroni's burial of the Golden Plates. The Inca were at their peak around 1400 AD. Any of you that make it to Houston before the Exhibit closes sometime in September. We are members and if we take you it is a cheap date. We also went to the IMAX movie about Bugs (Matt's choice). I enjoyed it, and Andrea fell asleep. Then we stopped and ate at a restaurant named Amazon Grill. It was really, really, really, really good. Then we went to Finger's to look at new couches for the Living Room. It has been a couple of years since we gave the old couches to Roice, with the intention of going out and replacing them. Oh well!
Work was a bit slow this week. I'm waiting for some new well's to be digitized and put into the database before I can put together maps for delivery of the first TileTM in the new GDC Interpretation Product. Tuesday morning I had a meeting with Jack Land about some other data we might add to the first TileTM, and then we had a lunch with Fugro about still other possible data to include. Wednesday there was a meeting with Mike Dunn and Richard Verm about the software product GDC is going to use to support TilesTM.
Wednesday evening I went out with the missionaries. We taught a 16 year old boy who his just moved back in with his Dad and Step-Mom. Good kid, and interested in reading the scriptures and praying. Then we went over to John and Katy McReynolds, where we ended up talking about Charles Caron, and the similarities between their daughter and Emily. We each shed some tears.
Thursday there was a meeting concerning the free tests being done for China. In the evening, I passed off another scout on the Architecture Merit Badge. Good kids, and it is fun to talk to them about what they did to earn the Merit Badge.
Friday morning we had a status meeting on the TilesTM. It is neat to see a team of people come together to bring a new product to market. It will be more interesting to learn if the market sees the same need we do and if they are willing to purchase the product we have put together. With Mike Dunn's permission, I packed up and left the office at 12:45.
I drove to Lupe's, Todd and Michelle's favorite restaurant in the whole world, at Highway 6 and I-10. Andrea and Matt had driven to The Woodland's and had picked up Wesley, Logan, and Madison, who had come to Texas for a week of vacation with their friends. Sister Songster picked up Rachel and met us at the restaurant with her daughters. We had a wonderful lunch. The Staheli kids are doing excellent. It was Wesley's 14th birthday on Wednesday, and it would be hard to convince anyone she isn't 16 or maybe even 18. Logan is all boy, and Madison is all girl. They both liked the sand box outside of the restaurant. We talked until about 3:30. Rachel took Andrea home and Matt went to the Songster's. I went over to the Army Corps of Engineer's office at Barker Reservoir and talked to them for a while. Interesting. I'm sure I will write more about this in the future. Matt and Rachel were working in the evening. Andrea and I went to the Songster's for the evening. I fixed Wesley's broken sun glasses with a bag tie. There was a birthday cake and lots of good food. There were two families they knew in Brazil. It was a nice evening.
Saturday we trimmed the hedges. I went for a run around the block. We worked on the hedges until noon. Matt and Rachel were both working. Andrea and I went to Charles Caron's funeral at 1:00. I was particularly impressed with Shane Gillette's talk. Bishop Camp's and President Jone's talks were very good, also. Shane was obviously a close friend, and his words were very good. A celebration of a life well lived. We drove the missionaries out to the cemetery. I was able to tell Julie that we are available to help and will be at her house any time she needs help within 10 minutes. Then we came back to the church and visited with friends and family. There was a very nice meal, and we ended up staying until about 5:00. Considering the circumstances there was a peaceful spirit there.
Andrea had been to several stores during the week looking at couches. So we drove down the freeway to Metropolitan, between Dairy Ashford and Kirkwood. We ended up buying a new couch, a loveseat, a coffee table, an end table, and a sofa table. It was a very hard decision for Andrea. I asked her how long it took her to decide to marry me. She said, `About 10 seconds after you asked!' Then I said, `So buying a couch is a much harder decision?' She responded, `This involves spending money!' Both the salesman and me were rolling in the aisles. They are very nice couches, and I look forward to showing them to each of you when you visit. Or maybe I'll take a digital photograph and include it in a future Thoughtlet so Sara can see it while in Benin. I think she was convinced it was an OK decision. We got home just in time for me to watch Kenny Rogers in `The Gambler,' a western I had never seen before.
Today was a nice day. Just a busy day. I especially liked sacrament meeting. I wrote three possible stanza's for prime words, based on a quote from (a) Abraham 3:25-26, and (b) Barbara Salt's talk:
In the afternoon it rained real hard and the power
kept going off. We had a practice set for 2:00, and
it got postponed until 2:30. Alan Peterson, Steve
Salt, Ty Perich and his sister, and me met at Steve
Feil's house and we practiced `Come, Come Ye Saints'
on harmonica, banjo, violins, guitar, and accordion.
It was a lot of fun. When I got back I worked on this.
Then at 7:00 Andrea and I went to listen to the
missionary homecoming talks by Brother and Sister
McGruder and also President and Sister Del Jones.
President Jones was our Stake President before Mike
Pickerd and before serving as a mission president
in Tempe, Arizona. Very motivational talks. Makes
me want to serve another mission for the church.
When we got home I made my calls. The order was different because it was late and I was driven by time zones. So there is some news. Kate's Step-Dad had a couple of heart attacks on Tuesday, and then a stroke when he got to the hospital. He is stabilized, and they believe he will get full mobility back. It has been a scary week. Paul was the only member of the Bishopric at church today, and Ella was supposed to be born today. Paul needs to write all of the stuff that happened to him today. Bottom line is Kate is going to be induced at 7:30 AM tomorrow. Andrea is going to come back from Coeur d' Alene (0429.html) on Thursday and stay with Paul and Kate to help. I might come back to Salt Lake the following Friday for a meeting at Evans & Sutherland concerning the Science Center Ray Gardner is working on down in Hurricane, and then stay for Ella's blessing on Sunday. This all depends on how things go this next week.
Lot's of news this last hour. I'm still motivated by the talks about serving another mission. Especially when I think of the comfort and peace the gospel can bring to a family in stress, like it did this week for the family of Charles Caron."