Uncle Mike

As I mentioned previously, my Uncle Mike died on July 31st.  Though he had some medical issues, it was still quite a shock because he was the youngest of my mother’s siblings. We weren’t as close as we should have been, but on reflection I don’t know f anyone sans Mom and Aunt Carol was. Uncle Mike was a psychologist and had an observer personality. He was one of those people that though you were talking to him, and he was talking, you were really the one revealing things. As one of those personalities, too, it made for some unrevealing conversations between us. Though, in the last handful years he’d started talking about things, like some of the stuff he did in Vietnam, etc. Sadly we didn’t get to see him much because we live down here and he was in Waterloo, Nebraska.

If you asked how much time we spent with him my first answer would be that he wasn’t around much, but after thinking about it, that’s not true. He just came in and out. I think we actually spent more time with him than we realized. It just wasn’t solid time because he yo-yo’d back and forth between Iowa and New Mexico until recently.He always seemed to be the more sophisticated, with it kind of uncle – the perpetual bachelor with his video games and such. He was the one gave us our first Nintendo, in fact. When I was 12 he bought himself a new one and gave us his old one (my mom wouldn’t let us have one because they “ruined your imagination” but since it was a gift she couldn’t do anything about it, LOL!) He was also the one who got me to eat McDonald’s Cheeseburgers. For some reason as a small child I didn’t like them and so as I got older I never bothered to try them again. Then when I was babysitting for his girlfriend of the time’s kids, as a surprise they brought home a bag of cheeseburgers. Turned out they were good after all 😉

he was also very supportive of my writing endeavors and was a vampire fan (he loved True Blood). He also wanted to be a writer and had several books he’d written but never published. If we can find them I may try to type them up and put them on Smashwords as freebies. He had one that was accepted to publish back in the 80’s but then the publishing company folded.

I could go on with a lot of boring trivial crap like that, but no one really cares except me. I was originally going to just do a cheating post and type up the eulogy the minister wrote, but it’s kinda long. SO, instead, since we scanned off a bunch of pictures to send to my Aunt, that’s what you’re getting. Also of note, I got a couple of his old photo albums from when he was in Germany and am going to scan those pictures off to for no particular reason except that I can;t stand to see a photo thrown away. A photo is a captured moment; someone thought that it was special or important enough to immortalize and to throw it away is like saying that that moment or that memory is irrelevant or meaningless. I dunno. I’m weird I guess.

The memorial display at the church

1957 – 3 yrs

with his teacher Mrs. Ossian – 1959 5 yrs

1960

my mom, mike, and my aunt Carol – 1958

1966 – playing baseball for Imogene

1971

72 or 73

his first wife Jan – we never met her as it did not last very long….

In the army – funny story, the military tried to claim he did not exist after he died… I guess that’s what happens when you end up in Military Intelligence, huh? Luckily he had kept his discharge papers…

with his horses in Utah ’78

with Jeanie (the little boy is hers but not his)

mom, uncle mike, aunt carol

2008 – Aunt Carol, mom, Uncle Mike