Before I was so rudely interrupted...

...Four months since my last post.    I know, I know, neglect is a form of abuse.  

But I had some good reasons:

>>Starting school in my pursuit of my long-delayed Bachelor's (and this time, I don't intend to blow it);
>>My job spreading into the hours of my week like the Blob;
>>The gentleman I'm about to tell you about now.

He was born in Minnesota, July 21, 1939, the youngest of four siblings.   He grew up with that famous Mid-Western work ethic - you want something, you work for it.   Period.  End of Sentence.    Before he moved to California in the late 1950s, he worked with his father's water well-drilling business - any lessons about hard work were well-learned by this age.    He served in the Navy, was married in 1960 at Santa Monica, CA, was stationed at Moffett Field in the South Bay Area, and eventually settled with his wife and newly-adopted son in San Jose.   The house he and his wife purchased in 1969 is still in the family, 43 years later.    He worked for the Post Office for over thirty years, often working six-day weeks at 10+ hours per day.    (Ask any letter carrier what that kind of work entails - your moving, sorting, walking with heavy loads, driving, you name it.)    Even after his retirement in the late 1990s, he still kept moving,  doing handyman projects around the house (and the house his wife inherited from her family in Arizona), periodically visiting their Arizona house and his family in Minnesota.    He was always physically active, lifting weights and taking walks regularly.    



Late last year, this gentleman was diagnosed with Pulmonary Fibrosis, a degenerative disease where the lung tissue is overtaken by connective tissue.   This causes the lungs to lose their flexibility and expandability, necessities in that life-function of respiration.   Even so, he tended to his wife as best as he could, and continued to stay as active as he could given his condition, which gradually deteriorated over the course of the disease.    On February 24th of this year, at 11:47am, his spirit and his body finally separated, his spirit to the universe, his body back to the earth from where it came.

This man was my father, Gerald A. Boll.    His wife, of course, was my mother, Sharon.    They stayed together for fifty-one years, through the sunniest and the most inclement of weather, psychic and otherwise.   They raised two boys, thirteen years apart, which in many ways was like raising two separate families.    Our family was truly the last of a breed - that of the single bread-winner.   Never once did I, my brother, or Mom, ever worry about where our next meal was going to come from or whether a roof was going to stay over our head.   He was the rock that kept the family above water, a rock that, if it can be examined, will be found to contain a large amount of character, among many other things.    His life, and his death, contained a treasury of memories and lessons for those of us who were fortunate enough to have been in his circle.

So Dad - thank you.    For Everything.  

Gerald Anton Boll
July 21, 1939 - February 24, 2012