My wonderful, loving father died of a heart attack on Friday night at the age of 74. He was in his beautiful home, with his wife of 44 years, talking to me on the phone when he collapsed. I am devastated, but also so grateful to have had so much time with him as a parent, mentor, and friend.
He had been sick with Graves’ disease (severe hyperthyroidism) and resulting severe anxiety and cardiac complications since at least November, only diagnosed this April. I spent a week with him in May in Albuquerque, a trip for which I will forever be thankful, after which his surviving brother Martin also visited for a week, a visit which he described as the best of their lives. While the very end was unexpectedly sudden, he talked frequently about death in the last days and knew he was loved.
He was one of the smartest and most intriguing people I have ever met, and the very best storyteller. Born in Reno on August 24, 1948, he grew up a world traveler, lived in Nevada, DC, Afghanistan, and Korea as a child following his father’s engineering projects. He survived a traumatic 1967 in which his middle brother disappeared and was eventually found dead, followed by his mother’s suicide, which left him functionally alone at the age of 19. He went on to be active in protesting the Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s, as well as working on a number of projects creating maps and atlases. In August 1978, he met my mother, Paulette, and they were married on December 8, 1978, in Portland, Oregon. I was born 14 months later.
In the 1980s in California, he founded American Document Network (ADN), one of the first companies that brought fax machines to America, and the first to envision them as a network of publicly available numbers to facilitate same-day written communication across the country. By the time the company was forced out of operation by conspiring competitors, there were “fax stations” at copy shops and professional offices in almost every state in the US. He continued work in sales, building, and interior design in California, DC, Oregon, and eventually Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he settled for the last 3 decades of his life after collecting over 100 residential addresses (none for more than five years) in the 45 prior years. Among other pursuits in New Mexico, he bought and rebuilt his interior/exterior design magnum opus, the beautiful house at 1514 Silver Avenue that stands as a legacy of his keen eye for space, structure, and aesthetics, as well as his enormously diligent work.
He is survived by his wife Paulette, son Storey and his wife Alex, grandson Graham, and brother Martin. Arrangements are yet to be determined, but will be shared in this space and elsewhere. I flew home to Albuquerque Saturday night and will be here indefinitely as my mother and I navigate this difficult chapter of our lives.
Thank you to everyone who loved and spent time with my dad. He will be deeply missed.
