Why I serve.

June 7, 2008 Larry Wilson Sr.

Saturday June 7, 2008

Laura’s dad passed away this morning of leukemia. He was 82, and would have turned 83 August 16th, the day after my mom’s birthday.

If I can get off of my  jobs, the college and KNPR, we will fly to a service in Washington State later this week.

Larry was the type of man who could make anyone feel better, with this long stories, jokes, salesman’s sense of timing. He could be short, because when his mind moved on to something else so did he. He would walk by a Trivial Pursuit game and know the answer, even to the hardest question. To say he was  well read would be an understatement, in fact yet another book deliver arrived for Larry while Laura’s brother Tim was on the phone with her. History was his passion, but he could read about and talk about almost anything.

Laura was his favorite, as first-born and for many other reasons. He was there for her, at least in his latter years. He would spend most of his hours away from home as she was growing up, as a milkman and then a real estate salesman who was peddling Apple Valley to those who lived in Los Angeles and were seeking resort like escape for the common man (boy has that town changed).

We celebrated my 50th and his 80th birthday together on a board on Lake Mead. We had a birthday dinner in Washington State for our 52nd and 82nd birthdays.

I would tell people you cannot feel old when you celebrate your birthday with a father-in-law within one week of being thirty years older than you are.

Now he is gone.

First published June 7, 2008