Leif being silly on his grandmother's birthday

He could be so funny, so silly, when he felt comfortable and let go. He could be impish, a rascal, but only when he felt comfortable with those he was with.

This photo was taken on July 18, 2002, in his paternal grandmother's nursing home room in Manhattan, Kansas. It was her last birthday. She was 82 and dying of gangrene, but we had a little family birthday party for her, and Leif wanted to bring some amusement and smiles to the occasion, so he took two of the birthday party hats and made horns out of them. We teased him about being devilish.

My mother took this photo, which I hadn't seen until I started going through a huge box of photos she'd had packed up for years. It's too bad his eyes are closed, too bad she didn't catch the cute dimpled smile. We'll just have to imagine it.

It's so hard to believe that less than six years later he was dead. 

He loved goofing around

I was showing old photos to my sister, Lannay, and were were smiling over so many of Leif goofing around and acting silly, some of which I've already posted on this blog, but I keep finding more in the photos that haven't been scanned. He always had such a great sense of humor and liked to pose for silly pictures. Here's one I discovered among Peter W's photos.

It was taken in Hawaii, up in the pineapple fields on the island plateau near Wahiawa when Peter W's mother was visiting us and we took her there to see them. There's no date on the photo but I'm managed to figure out that it was the summer of 1984 because of her visit and the annual letter I wrote that mentioned it. So, Leif was nine years old.

That thing he has stuck on his head is his dad's camera case, the one he had for his 35mm Pentax SLR with the long telephoto lens on it. It's amazing to remember that Leif once was a "little" boy called Alex, and that I was taller than he was.

Leif's happiest Christmas - Manhattan, Kansas - December 20, 2003 - Age, almost 29

Well, I don't know whether it was the happiest Christmas in his entire life, but certainly the happiest one in the last five years of his life. It was when he was with J. and she and her daughter were with us, too. We were actually celebrating early, on December 20, 2003, because Peter W. and I were going out to Monterey, California to be with his mother, Ellen (Oma), and we had the whole extended Kansas family there in our old stone house. He was just glowing and enjoyed acting silly.

This is the way I'd like to remember him on Christmas, this and the way he was when he was a little boy and was ecstatic over some Christmas gift he really liked.

Although he is not here with us today, I'm enjoying looking at the photos of him on Christmases past.

Leif in Pacific Grove, California - July 1980 - Age 5

In his 33 years, Leif traveled many places as an army brat and many he saw only once, but a place he visited more times was the Monterey-Pacific Grove area of California during the years his Oma (paternal grandmother, Ellen Garretson) lived there. These photos were taken on one of those trips, in July 1980 when he was five years old and Peter Anthony was eleven.

The boys liked to go walk on the beach and play in the sand. There wasn't much for them to do at Oma's house except watch television, so we tried to get out of the house and go places together. Oma liked the beach, too, especially at sunset. We also took a lot of walks along the seashore path where there was no beach, only rocks, like these at Lovers Point. That was a great place for the boys (and Peter W.) to climb around like mountain goats.

Sometimes we went to visit Ellen at Christmas time and then we would drive or walk around looking at all the Christmas lights. There were some beautiful and elaborate displays we all enjoyed.

We visited Ellen before we moved to Japan, which was when these photos were taken. We were on our way, moving from Germany to Japan, and wouldn't see her again until we lived in Hawaii and she came to visit us about four years later. We weren't back in Pacific Grove with Leif until the summer of 1985, but we visited her every year at least once, sometimes twice, between 1986-1990 and then 1992-1997 when we moved her to the 710 N. 9th Street house in Manhattan, Kansas. Leif knew his Oma much better than Peter Anthony did, because Peter didn't see her on the trips we took after he left for the Air Force Academy. He did see her when he came to visit us in Kansas with his family after 1997.

Leif was a good traveler, adapted easily, or at least it seemed so, and enjoyed seeing new places and things. Looking back, though, I think he felt in some sense cut off from the world except for his dad and me, because we were the constants, always with him, and everything else kept changing. Because of our moves, he had to leave friends behind and those connections were broken. I wonder if it made it hard for him to make friends and commit himself to friendships because of the sense of loss when leaving them.

The sweater Leif is wearing in the photo where he's climbing on the rocks is the one that Peter W's Aunt Käthe made for him.

Oma died in Kansas in September 2002.

Thanksgiving 1985 - Honolulu, Hawaii - Leif at age 10, nearly 11

Today is the second Thanksgiving since Leif died, our second one without him. Last year we went to the DC area and spent Thanksgiving surrounded by Lannay's family, Peter A's family and Rick's family, a large group of warm and loving relatives that made the holiday special and took away the sting of our loss, though it was ever on my mind. I didn't think I could bear to face Thanksgiving here without family last year and I am grateful we had the possibility of so many of us being together. I needed that and they were all so good to us.

We stayed with Rick and Mac, had such a good time with them and their daughters, enjoyed Mac's wonderful Thai food. We celebrated Marcus's eighth birthday there, spent time with Peter A. and Darlene, too, briefly, as they were engrossed in packing to move to India. We enjoyed a terrific Thanksgiving dinner with the whole gang at Lannay's and Doug's house, and I was glad we could take my mother with us to be a part of it.

This year is so different. Rick and Mac are in Germany. Peter and Darlene are in India. That kind of gathering may never be possible again, so I continue to be thankful for it, that it could happen when I needed it most.

Now we will just have three of us for Thanksgiving dinner, Peter W., my mother and me. I always conceived of Thanksgiving as a large family gathering, and for nearly all the years of my life, it was, whether my own birth family sharing our bounty with neighbors, or us having Peter W.'s relatives in Germany come to our house for our feast, or at least the four of us when we lived far away in Japan or Hawaii. Sometimes we went to the army mess hall to be with others. Back in Kansas after Peter W. retired from the army, we all went to my mother's house, where we had from 13-16 people gathered to celebrate. And then, when we moved to Florida, it was the four of us, Peter W., me, mom and Leif.

How I looked forward to Leif's arrival, waiting for his car to drive up the driveway, usually announcing itself with loud music or at least the insistent beat of the bass. I waited for that tall, strong guy to come in the door and give me a big bear hug. That will never happen again, and Thanksgiving will always be saddened by knowing that.

I wish we could have Peter A's family with us, but the expectation of their presence hasn't been there ever, as he hasn't come home for Thanksgiving since he left home and except for last year, we weren't able to travel to be where he was on Thanksgiving, either, sometimes because we needed to be home for Oma (Peter W's mother) and not leave her alone on Thanksgiving, sometimes for Leif, sometimes for my mother, or all three. But except when Leif was in the army, he was always with us on Thanksgiving, always until 2008, so a part of what we came to count on was his presence.

Last year I knew I had a lot to be thankful for but it was hard to feel it. Grief was too new and too acute, only seven months after Leif's death. It was one thing to know I had much to be grateful for; it was another thing to feel grateful when my heart was broken and I was sad and missing Leif, just trying to get through the days without ruining them for others.

This year, I am still sad at times. I still cry for him. I still miss him, but this year I can feel thankful and grateful for my wonderful, loving husband, for my son Peter A., for my grandchildren, for my mother, for my home and my country, for all the experiences I've been blessed to have, the material things I am fortunate enough to own. In so many ways, life is good. I am grateful for my family, my brother and sisters and their families, for my friends, for freedom and freedom from want and hunger. I don't ever want to forget all the good in my life and only concentrate on loss and mourning.

So today I will be thankful, even though I may have some tears in my eyes when the table is set for only three, and I will be thankful for Leif, for my brilliant and handsome son, who taught me much, who I loved, who I had for thirty-three years. I will be grateful for those years, even though they were not enough. I will be grateful for his life, even though it ended too soon.

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This photo of our family was taken in our living room in Honolulu, Hawaii on Thanksgiving Day 1985. Peter A. would be 17 in a month and Leif would be 11 in two months.

Leif's Nineteeth and Twentieth Homes - Manhattan, Kansas - August 2001 to March 2005

When Leif moved out of the old stone house for the third time in his life, in August 2001, he moved into the first floor of a small house on 11th Street in Manhattan, Kansas, where he shared the place with a college student named Bonnie. It was the first time he'd had a female "roommate" and he said she was "perfect" for him because while they got along great and she was a good companion, he had no interest in her romantically. Leif lived better with someone, and although they lived like messy students, the two of them would set aside time to clean up the place together. Leif wasn't much on cleaning alone, but if someone else was there working with him, he would get busy and get things done. Companionship meant a lot to him.

It was a small place and he had moved back to Kansas with an apartment load of stuff he'd had during his marriage (though at this time he and Nikko were still legally married, she had left him a year earlier). Other than what Nikko came and picked up, a lot of his things were stored in the garage.

He had the place with Bonnie during the 2001-2002 school year and then she developed a brain tumor and wasn't coming back. He decided he couldn't afford the apartment by himself on his GI Bill and small salary as a school crossing guard employed by the Riley County Police Department, but the basement apartment, which was really tiny and crowded, was available, so he signed a lease on that and moved himself downstairs.

It was about that time when Peter W.'s mother, Ellen, fell and crushed her femur. By July 2002, it was clear that she was dying of complications due to years of undiagnosed and untreated diabetes which made healing of her leg impossible. She had been living for five years in a house we bought for her at 710 N. 9th Street in Manhattan, on the same city block as our old stone house, and because all of her things were in the house and we didn't want it to stand empty, we asked Leif to break his lease and move into the 9th Street house. We paid the fee for the broken lease. The house was a far nicer place to live than the cramped basement apartment but since we owned it and it was just around the corner from us on the same block, he also had to put up with our complaints about how he took care of it and mow the lawn. I had all my stock of books over there in the large basement, and had to go there to get books to sell, so I was in the house frequently (but always well announced). It also made it easy and convenient for Leif to walk over to our house for dinner at least on Sunday nights, and sometimes during the week, or for help with his Spanish, German or algebra homework.

Ellen died on September 22, 2002, just over two months after Leif moved into the house. It took me the better part of a year to sell and give away her belongings and he was very tolerant about me coming over there to work on that and have garage sales.

It was a great place for him to live, with a large living room-dining room area, nice kitchen, two bedrooms and bath upstairs and a full basement. Here he could spread out all his things, work on projects such as the fifty-pound chain mail shirt he made, the wooden guns he designed, cut out and sanded, and much more.

It was also where he lived for a few happy months with J. and her daughter, probably the happiest months of his life.

The 9th Street house was where Leif lived until we moved him to Florida with his dad. We started taking trips to Florida to see where we might like to settle. I think the first one we took was to the Tampa area and up the northwestern coast to the panhandle in March 2002. It was there that Leif rented the white Mustang convertible for a day and fell in love with the Tampa Bay area, especially St. Petersburg and Clearwater. He was just beginning to recover from his depression, as I think you can see in the photos of him above, taken in February 2002. He hadn't yet graduated from KSU or met J. yet, and he was beginning to have hope for his future again.

We continued to make trips to Florida during spring break when he was out of classes at KSU and Peter W. wasn't teaching German at the high school or middle school, looking for the right community for us. Once Leif had gone through the elation and heartbreak of his relationship with J., and found he was miserable in Manhattan where job prospects for a college grad (a dime a dozen in Manhattan) were dim, he was anxious to leave, needed to get out of there to survive. He and Peter W. had nothing holding them in Manhattan, once Peter W.,'s German teaching job was eliminated and Ellen was no longer living, and both of them wanted to move south for their health. Both of them suffered from SAD, seasonal affective disorder, and Leif suffered from cold weather asthma. Peter was miserable with allergies to Kansas plants. They wanted warmer climes and needed them.

The fall of 2004, we planned a Thanksgiving trip to Florida, and although Leif was going with us, I think he had given up on moving there with us because he wasn't willing to wait until we did it. At that time, we were planning to wait another four years to make the move. There was a variety of reasons, but some of them were my job, my publishing adventures, my mother, who I refused to leave alone in Kansas, and all that we had to do to get ready for such a move . . . plus we hadn't found the right place to move to yet. Leif felt he couldn't wait another four years and he couldn't afford to move that far on his own. At that time his friend Michael was living in Tulsa and he had visited him there. He decided if he couldn't move to Florida he could at least rent a truck and move to Tulsa, so he put a deposit on an apartment there that fall. I think that was in late Otober.

To our surprise, during our Thanksgiving trip, when we revisited the Melbourne and Sun City Center areas to try to decide between them, we made a decision and found a house. We all liked it, and it seemed like the right decision to go ahead and buy the house. One of the considerations Peter W. and I took into account was Leif. We felt it was critical to give him a chance at a new life in the place he really wanted to be. The town we were moving to wasn't his ideal place, a retirement community with no young people, but it was near many places that were full of them, particularly Tampa and Brandon, near his beloved St. Petersburg, and in a growing job market. We bought the house in December 2005. Leif canceled the apartment in Tulsa and lost his deposit, but gained the opportunity to move to warmer, sunnier climes.
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The photo are:
1 & 2. Leif in Manhattan, Kansas, February 2002, with and without glasses, which he wore for distance vision only.
3. Leif on Bellaire Beach, Florida in March 2002.
4. Leif on a beach in Florida, March 2002.
5. 720 N. 9th Street house in Manhattan, Kansas where Leif lived twice, once briefly with Nikko from about March to July 1997, and then again from July 2002 to March 2005, a few months of which he lived there with J. and her daughter.
6. The house on 11th Street in Manhattan, Kansas, where Leif lived on the first floor with Bonnie for about nine months and alone in the basement apartment for about a month from August 2001 to June 2002.

Leif & His Dad - Bellows Beach, Hawaii - August 1987 - Age 12

One time when we were at Bellows Beach, the guys found a piece of a styrofoam boogie board and decided it looked like a gravestone, so Leif decided to bury his dad in the sand and make a "tombstone" out of it and have me take photos. They had a blast doing it. You can see Leif posing beside the buried daddy and then Peter W. "escaping" from his sandy "grave."

We thought this was very funny, and actually there are more in a series of photos I took. We sent copies to Peter W's mother, Ellen, and she said she about had a heart attack. Apparently, all she saw when she took them out of the envelope with the letter was a tombstone and her son's head sticking out of the grave, not realizing no one would be buried that way if they were dead.

This was in August 1987 on one of our trips back to Hawaii flying space available on military aircraft (usually tanker refueling flights that were training missions for the National Guard) out of O'Hare Airport. We were living in the Chicago area then at Fort Sheridan, no longer in balmy Hawaii.

Leif was 12 years old.

Leif - Monterey, California - July 1980 - Age 5

The summer of 1980, we moved from Sachsen bei Ansbach, Germany to Japan. On the way, we visited England, family in Kansas, Peter W's mother, Ellen Garretson, in Monterey, California, and stopped to enjoy Hawaii.

Leif was to visit Monterey and his grandmother there several more times with us over the years, but this was his first time there. He had a great time walking (and running) along the trail by the sea to Lovers Point, which is where the "little devil with horns" photo was taken. He scrambled all over the rocks. Had me scared, as usual, but he was fearless.

Sometimes Leif liked posing for photos, and he tolerated it if someone was just taking candid shots of whatever he was doing, but he (like most kids) didn't relish posing for family group shots. You can see him acting really silly in the one with me, Ellen, and Peter A, who was eleven years old.

Today is Leif's Birth Day - He was born 34 years ago

We like to think we can plan to have a child. **A** child, yes, but not a particular child. Each of us is a biological accident, the product of a myriad small decisions we make and a million coincidences of life and biology, such that a particular genetic combination happened and a unique individual is born.

Leif was a planned child, a very much wanted child, but there was no way to predict the child we would have. In the days when I was pregnant with Leif, ultrasound was not a standard procedure. We didn't know whether our baby would be a girl or a boy, and of course, we didn't know what kind of personality he would have, how bright he would be, or anything else. Deciding to have a child is one of the ultimate acts of faith, both faith in life itself and in ourselves, in our ability to be parents and provide what that child needs to thrive and live.

All of us who are alive are lucky that that cosmic roll of the dice brought us into being. Had one factor been different, some other person, not us, would be here. On February 27, 2008 I sent this quote from page 361 the book “The God Delusion,” by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, to Leif. I sent it because I thought he would identify with it and appreciate it, but he didn't answer the email. That in itself wasn't unusual. He often didn't answer email, but I think this paragraph is one he would have answered under most circumstances.

Leif variously described himself as an atheist or an agnostic, and he was a brilliant biology student. I wanted him to appreciate his life. I was concerned about his depression, and I thought perhaps this would give him a new perspective. I'll never know what he thought about it.

"I tried to convey how lucky we are to be alive, given that the vast majority of people who could potentially be thrown up by the combinatorial lottery of DNA will in fact never be born. For those of us lucky enough to be here, I pictured the relative brevity of life by imagining a laser-thin spotlight creeping along a gigantic ruler of time. Everything before or after the spotlight is shrouded in the darkness of the dead past, or the darkness of the unknown future. We are staggeringly lucky to find ourselves in the spotlight. However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn't this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place? As many atheists have said better than me, the knowledge that we have only one life should make it all the more precious. The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self pity of those who feel that life owes them something."

The brief spotlight shone all too briefly on Leif. He didn't even live half a normal lifespan, and yet he lived 12,152 days, each day a day of experiences, feelings, potential. Each day he was alive was a day we loved him, and we always will.

Darren, a friend, said we should look at Leif's 33 years of life as a gift. It was a gift, a beautiful and important one, but that doesn't mean that the loss of that gift hurts any less.

Leif was our second child and he was six years younger than his brother, Peter Anthony. We were living in Manhattan, Kansas, in our old stone house when we decided it was time to have another baby. They were so far apart because Peter A. had often been sick with ear infections and other things as a baby and toddler, and hadn't ever slept through the night until he was three-and-a-half years old, and I had been too worn out to think I was ready for another baby. Then we moved from Germany back to Kansas, where Peter W. initially thought he would get out of the army and open his own office. We bought the old house and worked to fix it up and make it livable.

During the first year we were there, we realized that Manhattan had too many lawyers, that it would likely take at last five years to make a reasonable living from a newly opened legal office, meaning it would probably be that long before we could afford another child, and by then Peter Anthony would be eleven. Peter wasn't thrilled with civilian law and said if he was going to join a firm, he might was well stay with the one he was with, the U.S. Army, where he already had some seniority and wouldn't be relegated to less interesting work the way he would be in a new firm, for a long time. That decision, to stay in the army, opened up the possibility that we could afford to have Leif.

My pregnancy was uneventful except that I got some kind of nasty virus when I was three months pregnant, ran a very high fever and was so lethargic I could hardly keep my eyes open and stagger off the couch during the day. I worried about what that fever and virus were doing to my baby, but there was nothing I could do about it except what my doctors ordered and that was primarily to drink a lot of fluids and take aspirin. I just prayed he would be all right. I still wonder whether that illness affected Leif in some way. He claimed he had no sense of smell, for instance. There are effects of maternal illnesses in early pregnancy. I will never know.

They must have calculated my due date wrong, because they thought Leif was due in late December. They said he was full term size at that point, and they started having me come in for weekly appointments, getting concerned about the placenta deteriorating. I was going to the OB-GYN Clinic at the Irwin Army Community Hospital at Fort Riley. They had given me a choice of going there or to a civilian doctor in Manhattan, and I chose Fort Riley, even though it meant an 11 mile drive, because they didn't allow fathers in the delivery room. The doctors in Manhattan did. Peter W. didn't think he wanted to be there and I didn't want him to feel like he had to do it.

Sometime in January, they tried to induce labor, but it didn't work. I guess even then Leif was stubborn. :) They started having me come in twice a week and said that if he wasn't there in a week, they would do a Caesarian. He was getting too big, and they felt the placenta was getting too old.

I as driving myself to and from these appointments, and on January 28, 1975, I drove myself out to Fort Riley for my appointment, planning to go to the commissary (military grocery store) afterward before going back home, where Peter A. was staying with Peter W.'s mother, Ellen, who had come from California to be with us for Leif's birth. My plans were not going to work.

When I got to my appointment at 11:30 a.m., the doctor told me I was already 10 centimeters dilated and I was “going upstairs.” I told him I wasn't feeling anything or having strong contractions, and I needed to go to the commissary and I'd come back later that afternoon. Nothing doing. He was not letting me out of the hospital. I couldn't believe it.

I called Peter W. at work and told him. He was about to head to the gym for a game of raquetball and figured that labor would take many hours, so said he would come by after his game. His boss overheard the conversation and said, “Pete, you wife is having a baby. Get over there.” So, Peter stopped by the library to pick up a book to read to me, and showed up shortly thereafter.

I was in the labor suite with one other woman. Peter started reading to us from Erma Bombeck's hilarious book, “I Lost Everything in the Postnatal Depression.” It hurt to laugh, but laugh we did. It wasn't long though, before I told Peter he'd better go get the nurse. Leif had decided to put in an appearance FAST.

They came in and discovered I'd better be moved to the delivery room quickly. I said goodbye to Peter and off I went. A few minutes later, I was surprised when I heard his voice in the delivery room and saw him. I said, “What are you doing in here?” He said the nurse had asked him whether he wanted to come in. I was surprised he had, but he did great and I was glad he was there to welcome Leif into the world.

It's a good thing the doctor hadn't allowed me to leave the hospital, because Leif was born at 1:25 p.m., all 9 pounds, 15 ounces of him! I had that big baby boy in less than two hours!

Leif was tall even then, over 24 inches long. The average newborn is about 20-21 inches and usually 7-8 pounds. He dwarfed all the other babies in the hospital nursery. They teased me that I was supposed to raise him after I had him and asked what college he was going to.

Leif was a fairly easy newborn, very curious and alert from the beginning. We were so happy to have him!

His birthday was a very special day for us. It will always be special, for that was the day we met him and he came into our arms.

Leif & his Garretson grandparents - Monterey, California - May 1991 - Age 16

We left Colorado Springs and the Air Force Academy after Peter A's graduation and flew to California to visit Peter W's parents, Ralph and Ellen Garretson. Leif was the tallest member of our entire family, from the time he was only 13 and shot up to 6 feet 1 inch. Here he towers over his grandmother and is taller than his grandfather.

Leif didn't get to see as much of his Garretson grandparents as he did of Jerri's mother. They lived in California and Ellen only came to visit us a couple of times during Leif's childhood, once when he was born, and then when he was in about third grade. Ralph wasn't with her. However, once we moved back to the USA from Japan, we went to visit them at least once a year in California and Leif flew along with us until he was on his own.

Ralph took Leif golfing on this trip and they enjoyed each other's company. His "bequest" to Leif was a thick envelope of uncirculated foreign stamps about Mars. Ralph said that if life was discovered on Mars, they would be worth a lot of money. I don't know if that will be true, but I still have that envelope and who should it belong to now?

Ralph died in September 2001 and Ellen died in September 2002. Ralph served as an infantry sergeant in World War II, the Korean War, and had two tours in Vietnam during the Vietnam war. He met Ellen in Germany and brought her to the USA in 1952.

Leif - The Cutest Devil - Halloween 2002?

I'm not sure precisely when this photo was takenm though I think it was October 30, 2002. It was on Leif's computer, along with a bunch of other photos taken at this party, which he apparently gave in Manhattan, Kansas in the house at 710 N. 9th Street.

I didn't recognize hardly any of the people in the pictures. Since they were all in costume, it would have been fun to show more of this one, which I think is really cute of Leif, Shazbot the snake in hand, placing devil horns on his head and looking like a happy rascal. As it is, I just cropped the picture to show just his face and hands.

Leif moved into the house on 9th Street for the second time in July 2002. We had purchased it at auction in 1997 for Peter W.'s mother, Ellen (Oma to our kids), to live in when we moved her from Monterey, California to Manhattan to be near us so we could care for her. When we first bought it in the spring of 1997, before we moved Ellen there that summer, Leif and Nikko lived in the basement of the house while we were painting and cleaning it and getting it ready for Ellen.

Ellen died September 22, 2002. She fell and crushed her femur in June and never recovered. While she was in nursing care during her last months, we didn't want the house to stand empty, a target for thieves, so we asked Leif to move into it. He had just signed a lease for his apartment on 11th Street, and had to break the lease in order to move into the house. But luckily for him, he went from a tiny apartment to a whole house.

Leif lived there from July 2002 until he moved with his dad to Florida in March 2005. During those years, he went through a lot, pulling out of the depression he was in when he came back to Manhattan from the army in May 2001, graduating from college in May 2003, meeting and falling in love with J. in the fall of 2003, when he was the happiest I remember seeing him since high school in Puerto Rico or when he first married Nikko. And then the heartbreak when the romance didn't work out and he was depressed again in early 2004.

He was involved in SCA, worked as a school crossing guard while in college, and then worked at what was then Western Wireless (now taken over by Alltel), and enjoyed the night life of Manhattan in Aggieville, where he liked to play pool occasionally. The trouble was, he felt he couldn't find women his age in the college town, that the "good ones" were all taken, and that he didn't have much in common with the college girls at his age. The career opportunities were slim, too, and he felt he would have a lot more opportunity in Florida.

Leif had friends in Manhattan and more of a social life than he developed in Florida. He also was heavily involved in ZAON. It's a shame he didn't connect more with people here. He was never very outgoing, an introvert, though when he knew people and liked them, he could be the life of the party. Meeting strangers was harder. I understand that very well. I think he got that "hang back and watch" trait from me.

But enough of all that. It's Halloween, a holiday Leif enjoyed. This is the last photo I have of him having a good time on Halloween, and I hope those who were at his party enjoyed it, too.

Happy Halloween, Leif, wherever you are.