It could have been him

Today we went to a "showcase" performance, one where nine professional acts (eight musical and one magic) gave twelve minute performances to be rated by the large audience to give local entertainment directors as sense of what their audiences might like to have booked. In the audience were also entertainment directors from the surrounding area. These acts were all talented and varied, and several had bands that had guitarists. One even had four! Two acoustic, an electric guitar and an electric bass guitar. 

I couldn't help but remember Leif playing his four guitars, starting with a blue one he got in high school when he first got interested and started taking lessons in Highland Park, Illinois. That was his "starter" guitar, a decent instrument which he kept the rest of his life. He added a a green Kramer Floyd Rose guitar, the guitar he designed and made himself, and the blue bass guitar he is playing at left. That was the only one he ever played (briefly) in a band while he was a student at Antilles High School on Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. This photo was taken when that band was performing at school. 

Leif loved music and had a huge collection of CDs, spent a lot of money to put a top of the line stereo in his car, and loved playing his guitars. He would practice for hours, learning some of the famous riffs and guitar solos, though never to his desired standards. I still hear them played on the radio or in television shows or movies and always remember Leif playing them.

The groups we saw today had some excellent singers. Leif could sing, too, though we didn't even know that until he turned up on the Antilles musical stage acting and singing the part of Kenickie in "Grease."

So,  couldn't help but think, if he'd had the burning desire to be a musician, he could have been on that stage. 

He Could Play The Guitar Solo from "Sweet Child O' Mine"

We were at the pool the other day and another song Leif loved was playing, "Sweet Child O' Mine," by Guns N' Roses. He loved Slash's soaring guitar solo and worked hard to learn to play it. How I wish I had a video of him playing it, and also the "Star Spangled Banner" and other songs.

It struck me that there was something "Bach-like" about the "Sweet Child O' Mine" guitar riffs, and that made me smile, because my mother hates Bach but Leif loved his organ fugues and "stole" my CD of Bach's organ works. (I did eventually get it back.)

I no longer have any of Leif's guitars. I finally parted with them, as I wrote on this blog. His brother has the one in this photo, the one he designed and made himself in high school in Puerto Rico. It was a good instrument and very distinctive.

I hope the people who bought his Floyd Rose and bass guitars enjoy them as much as he did. His first guitar is still with his nephew, I think, though I doubt he will learn to play it.

It's amazing how music affects our memories, how many memories are tied to music. Leif loved music and had a huge collection of CDs. Since his death I have been asking family members who visit to go through them and take whatever interests them, but I still have quite a large number of them no one has chosen.

Leif liked strong stimuli, whether driving fast (or any other speeding vehicle), heavily spiced or very "hot" food, or loud driving music. Much, thought not all, of his music collection fit that description, but among it were surprising departures.

Since Leif has departed from my life, I know far less about the current music world. He kept me at least minimally educated about part of the music scene.

This photo was taken April 1991 in his room at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. It's been posted on the blog before, but I have so few photos of him with his guitars I have to re-use it.

Where is the compassion for Robin Williams?

This is Leif at the age of 16, in his room in our house at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, with the guitar that he designed and made.

His initial time in Puerto Rico was difficult, as he was initially not accepted by the kids at Antilles High School, and was attacked by one group of guys and beaten up. But he overcame that and found a group of good friends and a place in the school. The years in Puerto Rico became some of the best ones of his life. Although he was sometimes angry and frustrated, he was also creative, had friends, enjoyed the sea and guitar lessons. He had hope. The future looked bright. He had every reason to think life would treat him reasonably well . . . and so did we.

It was in some ways unfortunate that we had to leave Puerto Rico the summer between his junior and senior years of high school. It's tough to go to a new school as a senior, hard to fit in, hard to make friends, especially for an introvert like Leif. Yet staying in Puerto Rico would have offered him less opportunity, and he would have had to return to the USA for college anyway.

All that aside, there was no hint in these days that he would ever be seriously depressed or suicidal. There were times, as there are for all of us, when he wasn't happy, but he found much to enjoy in life and went out to meet it with open arms.

Robin Williams' suicide this week has opened a bigger public dialogue about suicide than we have seen before, it seems to me. I think it is because it's so hard for people to believe that a man who could act so funny, so silly, so seemingly full of the enjoyment of life, could be so deeply depressed that he would take his own life. It's because he was so much a part of our lives that we all feel the loss, unlike with many others who have taken the same course of action.

I've seen so many comments on Facebook, discussions, sadness, even anger, misunderstandings, blame. Some people can't understand how someone who was rich and "had everything" could be unhappy. Why didn't he just "walk away"? Some can't fathom how he could do that to his wife and children, and think his act was cowardly and selfish. Some people who have struggled with depression can't figure out why Williams' couldn't tough it out like they have. Some have no sympathy for him, only for his family members left behind.

I understand where they are coming from, but depression is no respecter of wealth or position. Nor does someone like Williams do it "to" his family . . . more likely, he was just trying to escape his own deep misery and felt he had tried everything and failed. More likely he was in such a deep hole of hopelessness that he felt he had failed his family and they would be better off without him, if he was even able to consider them at the end.

None of us will ever know the depth of his struggle, how hard he fought to escape depression and addiction. Most of us will never know what it's like to feel so terrible that we try drugs and alcohol to "self-medicate" in an attempt to either feel better, or feel SOMETHING. My father said he felt "dead inside" for the two years before he took his life. Leif listened to a Johnny Cash song that said he hurt himself to see if he could still feel, not long before Leif took his life.

I think it's time we learned to be less judgmental and more compassionate, less angry and more understanding. Some people will be able to fight depression. Some will not. Just as some people can fight other illnesses and either be cured or manage the illness for a long time. Other people find no effective cure or die younger from the same disease. It's time we recognize that mental illness is as much an illness as a physical illness, and just as devastating. It's time to stop blaming those who suffer.

It's also time to have compassion for those left behind, those who every day of their lives will wonder if there's something they could have done to save their loved ones; those who will wonder every day of their lives what put them over the edge? The eternal question of "why" will haunt them. They will not only grieve as we all grieve when we lose a loved one, they will be tormented by questions that will remain unanswered.

So my hope is that all those who are blaming Williams for "taking the easy way out" or "taking the coward's way out," or for being "selfish," will keep their compassion for his family and extend it to him. We have not walked in his shoes.

Twenty Years Ago

Twenty years ago I took this photo of Leif in his room in the old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas. He had just graduated from Manhattan High School. You can tell he was a big fan of Cindy Crawford. He hung his guitars from the ceiling. The one he's holding is the one he designed and made.

Leif had a black and white decor in his room. The walls were white and the mini blinds and ceiling fan light fixture were black. His choice.

In this photo, his hair is pulled back in a long pony tail and he's that very slender young man he was from about seventh grade until he was in his late twenties. I loved those cute dimples he had.

It's hard to believe, or even imagine, that twenty years have gone by since I took this picture, and even harder to accept that it's been over five years since his death. He is still such a big part of our lives, you'd think he still lived in Tampa. I doubt that he had any idea how much impact he had on us, or on others.

When he told me in a chat about how he had been suicidal at Fort Drum, New York in the army, after his marriage broke up, he said what stopped him was knowing what it would do to me. I guess that didn't figure into his decision on April 9, 2008 . . . or if it did, he probably thought there would be some acute grief and we would get over it. I'm sure he had no idea how it would affect our lives so profoundly, but then, he probably was not in any mental condition to contemplate that and probably thought we'd be better off without him. We are not.

My Little Happy Wanderer

Leif was my little "Happy Wanderer." He loved to be out, going places, just about any place, the city, the woods, the beach. When we lived in Germany, we went on lots of Volksmarches (organized hikes I've written about before). Our boys had their little backpacks to take things along with them. Leif, when he was this little, often took a stuffed animal along for the ride.

This photo was taken in the Fürther Stadtwald, the City Woods of the city of Fürth, Germany, in the fall of 1977 when Leif was a little over two-and-a-half years old.

I was looking for a photo that I was pretty sure I didn't ever have, one of me singing to my boys, or playing the guitar and singing, and since I didn't have one but wanted to post a list of songs I used to sing to them at night. Sometimes we also sang them while driving in the car. I'm sure the list isn't complete, but I'm surprised I remembered over sixty songs I sang.

This photo goes with "The Happy Wanderer," which I used to sing to them. I loved that song, which I learned in grade school. Here is the list I came up with. Happy memories come with all those songs. Some of them, many of them, I learned as a child. It was fun to teach them to my sons and pass them on.

1. America the Beautiful

2. Ants Go Marching, The

3. Battle Hymn of the Republic

4. Daisy, Daisy

5. Dixie

6. Do Your Ears Hang Low?

7. Down in the Valley

8. Edelweiss

9. 500 Miles

10. Found a Peanut

11. Four Strong Winds

12. Goodnight Irene

13. Greensleeves

14. Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley

15. The Happy Wanderer

16. Henry Martin

17. Home on the Range

18. Hush Little Baby

19. Inchworm

20. Itsy Bitsy Spider (or the Eensy Weensy Spider)

21. I've Been Working' on the Railroad

22. John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt

23. Kumbayah

24. Mary Had a Little Lamb

25. Michael Row the Boat Ashore

26. Moon River

27. My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean

28. My Darling Clementine

29. My Grandfather's Clock

30. Oh, How Lovely Is the Evening

31. Oh, Susana

32. Old Black Joe

33. Old MacDonald Had a Farm

34. On Top of Old Smoky

35. On Top of Spaghetti

36. Once Upon a Dream

37. Puff the Magic Dragon

38. Red River Valley

39. Rockabye Baby

40. Row, Row, Row Your Boat

41. Sail, Baby, Sail (The Slumber Boat)

42. She'll Be Coming' 'Round the Mountain

43. Shenandoah

44. She's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage

45. Somewhere Over the Rainbow

46. The Sound of Music

47. Summertime

48. Sweet Betsy From Pike

49. Taps (little did I know it would one day be played at his inurnment service)

50. Try to Remember

51. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

52. Way Down Upon the Swanee River

53. When Johnny Comes Marching Home

54. When the Red, Red Robin

55. When You Wish Upon a Star

56. Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

57. Yankee Doodle

58. Yellow Rose of Texas

59. You Are My Sunshine

60 plus (And Christmas carols, of course)
And I just remembered "Frere Jacques"

Leif in Blue on a Sailboat in the Caribbean

I love these photos. Peter W. took them when we were out on a sailboat when we lived in Puerto Rico in 1991. Leif was such a "Tarzan specimen" then, so tall, slim, muscular and handsome. He was letting his hair grow long, was finding good friends and dating, doing well in school, making his own guitar. He loved the sea and sailing. This was the summer that he went on the teen sail adventure in the British Virgin Islands and came home really looking like Tarzan with his long hair in tiny braids -- not the Tarzan ever actually had that hairstyle, but this was the Caribbean version. :) The memories of that time are good, happy ones. I'm glad he had some good times. Though not all his time in Puerto Rico was happy, I think some of the happiest times of his life occurred there, like his first love, K., and his triumph as Kenicke in the musical "Grease," his sail adventure, guitar playing, his group of friends. How I wish the successes he felt then had continued.

Today was a beautiful day, one that would have been lovely for a sail, a day at the beach, or Leif's other joy, a motorcycle ride. As we were driving down Dale Mabry in Tampa, a silver RX8 was alongside us. It might have been Leif's car. We thought of him, talked about him, reminisced, and how we missed him. BOB (big orange ball) was smiling on Tampa today. I wish he'd been there to enjoy it.

There are always so many reminders of him. I was thinking yesterday, as I was driving home from doing some errands, about this blog, about how I've been writing for more than three years. Haven't I said it all? Told all the memories, some more than once? Asked all the questions? At least all that I can put out here for an internet audience to read. What is left for me to write? And then I'll have a new dream, or something will trigger another memory, or I find a new picture or set of photos I'd like to post, and the blog goes on. I'm glad, for as long as it lasts. It's become a part of me.

Shot Through the Heart

Leif was almost twelve years old when the hit Bon Jovi song "You Give Love a Bad Name" made it to the top of the charts, but it remained a favorite of his for many years and it certainly was a poignantly true song for him as an adult. These are only part of the lyrics from this website:

An angel's smile is what you sell
You promise me heaven, then put me through hell
Chains of love got a hold on me
When passion's a prison, you can't break free

You're a loaded gun
There's nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done

Chorus:
Shot through the heart
And you're to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give love a bad name
You give love a bad name

Paint your smile on your lips
Blood red nails on your fingertips
A school boy's dream, you act so shy
Your very first kiss was your first kiss goodbye

You're a loaded gun
There's nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done

The song, written by Jon Bon Jovi, Desmond Child, and Richie Sambora. Leif had a huge respect for them, particularly Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora. By the time this photo of Leif was taken, he was taking electric guitar lessons and he practiced hard, trying to play some of the guitar solos of his favorite rock guitarists. I remember him listening to Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, and many others.

This song just came to me the other day, the lyrics reminding me of all his romantic heartaches, and the words ring so true. The damage WAS done and no one could save him.

I wish I had a recording of Leif playing his guitars. I wish I had a video of it. Three of his guitars still sit here in my house, including the one he designed and made himself.

I believe this photo of Leif was taken by Peter W. during our trip to Canada in August 1989 when Leif was fourteen. I think it was taken in Quebec City, but I can't be sure. He looks like he's trying to fly.

I Will Remember Him Always

What will I remember about my Leif? Everything.

I will remember the beautiful child that none of us realized was as vulnerable as he was. I will remember the tall, strong boy and his wonderful smile. I will remember how frustrated he could get when he wasn't able to make his hands do what his mind envisioned.

I will remember the brilliant mind and incredible memory my son had, and how we recognized it when he was so young.

I will remember the soccer player who could boot the ball three-fourths of the way down the field.

I will remember the teen who was tall and slim, a black belt in judo, a guitar player, a singer. I will remember his as Kenicke in "Grease," with all the girls screaming for him. I will remember him graduating from high school.

I will remember the handsome young man who married when he was only twenty years old and the devastated man who nearly took his life when his marriage failed.

I will remember the proud, tall soldier who graduated from infantry basic training and who was proud of his ability with a machine gun, and the broken soldier who was medically retired from the army when he was only twenty-six years old.

I will remember the recovering man who graduated from college and was proud of his new car.

I remember how happy he was when he fell in love again, and how utterly devastated he was when she left him, how I was worried he would not survive.

I remember him on his motorcycles, the three different ones he owned in his lifetime, the ones he drove far too fast, and I remember him in the hospital after the accident he had.

I remember how he loved cars and his RX-7s and RX-8, especially the RX-8, how he drove like a race car driver, what he really always wanted to be.

I remember him helping us with the house and yard, helping us move. I remember him helping my mother with her computer.

I remember him playing chess with Madeleine and being silly with Aly.

I remember him being in debt and spending money foolishly.

I remember him being in dark moods and fearing for him.

I remember his guns, his music collection, his passion for technology and science fiction.

I remember his hugs, his smiles.

I remember how desperately he needed and searched for love.

I remember how Leif wanted to be the hero, that he was the gentle giant who would fight to defend his family, his friends, his country. I remember his personal code was to never show weakness, and how he kept his deep and towering emotions inside. I remember how he wanted to be needed, to be respected and loved.

I remember bringing him into the world full of hope for him. It is hard to accept that our dreams for Leif will never be realized, that he will never find his purpose and defeat his demons, that he will never have a family, that he will never be there for a birthday or a Christmas, never be there to teach us about the latest technology and set things up for us, never again tease me about driving like an old lady.

it will always be hard to know and remember that our love was not enough to save him, that no matter what I tried, I could not help him be happy, or take away his pain.

I remember that in many ways, he lived a life rich in experience, and we tried hard to provide some of those riches of experience, but I also remember that his life was drowned in depression and loneliness.In the end, he was overwhelmed.

I remember how he wanted to be a hero, wanted to be needed, wanted to be strong. I rememberhow, through so many disappointments and crises, he held his head high and did not let others see his pain and frustration. Finally, it was too much. I will remember how he bore that burden until the end.

Most of all, I remember how much I loved him. I love him still. I will always love him.
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This photo was taken of Leif on Bellows Beach on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, one of his favorite places. It was in August 1989 when he was fourteen-and-a-half. It was then he was reading Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" with such deep and avid interest.

Guns.N.Roses-Sweet Child O'Mine

This was a song Leif loved when he was in junior high and first began to play the electric guitar. He worked very hard to learn the song and I well remember him playing it. I wish I had a video of him playing it. He could have sung it, too, but I never heard him do that.

Leif With an Accoustic Guitar - circa 1999

I keep discovering new things about Leif. I'm sure that for everyone we think we know, there are many things that we don't know and probably never will. Many families seem destined to learn new things about their deceased loved ones, sometimes secrets they wanted to hide, sometimes just interesting tidbits that round out our image of the person we have lost, and sometimes, intimate details of their lives that would have remained private but for death.

I knew Leif played the electric guitar, and that he had four of them. We gave three of them to him, and he made the fourth. I posted photos of them on this blog long ago, as well as photos of him playing in a band at Antilles HIgh School. However, as far as I know, he never had an acoustic guitar or any interest in playing one. Therefore, I was quite surprised to find these two photos of him clearly playing someone's acoustic guitar.

The photos were of several guys, dressed informally, sitting on folding chairs in what appears to be a basement or garage or some such, with a concrete floor. They have beers. I don't know any of them. The photos were mixed in with photos from the time he was in the Army, so I'm guessing they are Army buddies, but whether this was taken at Fort Drum or while he was in Bosnia I don't know. The only clue about the time frame is his hair. It's a military haircut and he hadn't yet started shaving his head, so I'm guessing it was taken either in late 1998 or in 1999.

I find myself wondering whether he was also singing or what they were all doing. Leif had a great singing voice, but the only time I ever heard him sing was when he was playing the part of Kenicke in the Antilles High School production of "Grease."

Leif has considerable musical talent, a characteristic he shared with both me and my father, his grandfather, but like me, he didn't keep up with his instrumental music as he got into adulthood, unlike my father, who continued to play piano all of his life.

Leif's Eighth Home - Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico - July 1990 to July 1992

In the summer of 1990, we moved from Fort Sheridan, Illinois to Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico, a small post on the outskirts of San Juan but still quite inside the larger city area. The city of Guaynabo was outside the post gate, and we were in a large metropolitan area. We lived in field grade officer quarters that were single family homes on a loop road up a hill. Our quarters had a large half circle back yard ringed by 29 coconut palms. It was lush and beautiful, but the lawn was so spongy and thick it was very hard to mow. Leif had that job and it was a hot, sweaty one which he did not enjoy. The coconuts grow in large clusters like grape clusters and are very heavy with the big husks that have been removed by the time you see them in grocery stores in the US mainland, and if they fall on you they can injure or kill you, especially since they can fall all at once. People soon learn not to park their cars under a bunch of coconuts, too.

Leif also learned to use a machete to clear brush around the yard, and he was good a loping off the end of a coconut so he could drink the juice. I once looked out the window an saw him stripped to the waist after mowing the lawn, with a coconut impaled on his machete, holding it up and literally pouring the juice into his mouth from above. With his tanned skin and long hair, and muscular body, he looked like Tarzan out there. I wish had I gotten a photo of that, but he refused to pose for me once I got the camera.

There was also a big mango tree at the far edge of the back yard. Mangoes are delicious when properly ripe, but when myriads of them fall to the ground and spoil they smell like turpentine.

From time to time, a small flock of blue macaws would fly over about five a.m. making a fearful racket. They were beautiful to see, though, so we didn't mind. Less edifying were the rats that ran along the electric wires and up the palm trees, and tropical roaches are enormous. Luckily we never had either of them infest our house.

The house was made of concrete block. When we were there, the quarters did not have central air conditioning. Instead, the screen was on the inside and the windows (except for the big picture windows) had no glass and the outside of them were aluminum louvers that could be opened at any angle or closed. You could open up the house and let the breezes blow through. The trouble with this was, those of us coming from the north couldn't take the heat and humidity, and neither could our belongings. Without AC, everything soon got mildewed. So, in those days, we bent one or two of the louver frames outward, took out the screen, and installed a window AC to cool the place and lower the humidity. Then we had to cover the screen on all the other windows with clear plastic to keep the AC in. Leif helped install the air conditioners.

His school was just down the hill, but to get there you had to take a trail through want amounted to a tropical jungle. He attended Antilles High School for his sophomore and junior years of high school. I've already posted photos and accounts of what happened when he tried to be on the soccer team, how he became a certified SCUBA diver and helped do underwater cleanup, and how he was in the musical "Grease" playing the part of Kenicke. He also had a small part in "Guys and Dolls" the precious year. I've also written about the guitars he had, including the one he designed and made while in Puerto Rico, the band he played in for a short time, and his friends. I don't remember the names of all of them, but I do remember Lenny, Ricky, Jill, Rebecca, Janice and Clarissa very well, and his guitar teacher, Edwin Santiago.

When Leif first got to Fort Buchanan, he had some difficulties. Antilles High School was an American school on a U.S. Army base, but most of the students were children of people working for various civilian federal agencies like the Treasury Department or the FBI, and most of them were Puerto Rican. This meant that although the classes were all taught in English, during breaks and after school, most kids were speaking Spanish. Despite his abilities Leif never really learned Spanish and his friends were mostly children of the "norteamericanos." During his first few days of school, he got "tested" as the new "gringo" and was attacked and beaten by some of the locals on a pretext. One of them hit him in the face with a ring that made a nasty cut and bruise. I caught him one day heading to school with a pair of nunchucks stuck in the back of his waistband and told him he couldn't take them to school. He said he needed to defend himself. He knew how to use them, and I was afraid he would injure or kill someone if he tried to defend himself with them. I insisted he would have to either find a way to get along or we would talk to the school about the situation. I think that was when Leif learned the macho walk, the intimidating carriage that made people think he was not to be messed with, and when he began to formulate his belief that a man should show no weakness. He had no further trouble with those guys, but to my knowledge, there was no more fighting.

Inside the house, we had a small kitchen, a large dining room-living room combination, a kind of enclosed porch we used as an extension of the living room, and three bedrooms. Leif's was decorated in his favorite black-and-white color scheme.

We saw as much as we could of the island of Puerto Rico, from the beaches to the mountains, from the cities to the countryside, and while there, we also took trips to the U.S. Virgin Islands and a Carnival cruise to the Caribbean. We especially enjoyed Old San Juan and the fortress of El Morro and often shopped at the San Patricio Plaza shopping area.

Puerto Rico was where Leif really came into his own as a young man. It was where he first fell in love with Karen, who he carried a torch for for a long time. It was where he first acted and sang on stage, where he first gave parties and had a group of really great friends. We were very sorry to have to move him from there to Kansas after his junior year when Peter W. retired from the Army. It was hard for him to leave his friends behind and start over as a senior in a new place.

When he graduated from Manhattan High School in Manhattan, Kansas, his primary graduation present was a trip back to Puerto Rico to see his friends and be there with them when they graduated.
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The photos are:
1. Leif in the spring of 1992. This photo was actually of him and Karen in a car on a date, but I cropped it to show only him. I think he looks like he could have been Puerto Rican. This was the first time he wore a beard and mustache. Note the earring and his already-receding hairline.
2. Leif in April 1992, also originally of him and Karen.
3. Leif by the sea in 1991, with El Morro and San Juan in the background.
4. Leif by the sea in 1991 with "many faces" caused by a filter Peter W. used to take the photo.
5. Our quarters (house) in October 1990.
6. The back yard of our quarters in October 1990.
7. The back yard of our quarters looking from the far end of the yard in October 1990.

Leif's Guitars

These are two of Leif's four guitars. The blue bass guitar was in the photo of him playing it in 1992 that I posted earlier today. He also had a blue standard guitar, the one he gave to his nephew, Marcus.

The green guitar was originally his pride and joy. It is a signed Kramer Floyd Rose that he bought in about 1988. The brown one is the one he designed and made in about the fall of 1991 when we were living at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. The body is made of mahogany and is his original design. Note how deep the curve is by the horn where your hand would need to get to the strings for the top notes. It was tricky to attach the neck of the guitar to this and make it strong enough to hold and last.

When Leif first made it, he had a purple stain on it, but he later removed it because he had envisioned a high-gloss finish like the green one on the Kramer, but that wasn't something he could achieve at his high school shop. He talked on and off for years about putting another finish on the body but never did.

He put a lot of labor, hours, and expense into that guitar, and enjoyed playing it. He researched good components, pickups, etc. for it, and purchased them in various places from a huge music store in San Juan to ordering from the Musician's Friend catalog.

Like any project of Leif's, once he got started, there was no stopping him, and he would work for hours without a break. Sanding the wood on the body was a particularly long and tedious task, but he kept at it for 5 hours at a stretch. The other students at Antilles High School could not believe he was making his own guitar, and his shop teacher initially didn't approve the project, feeling it was too complex, but as usual, Leif proved he could do it and do it well.

At the time, he did the wood finishing on a mahogany body for a second guitar he wanted to make, but he never did it. That design is very different from the one in the photo. He still had that guitar body among his possessions when he died, and we have it now. I wish he had completed it.

When Leif lived in Puerto Rico, he took guitar lessons from Edwin Santiago and very much enjoyed that association. We lost contact with Edwin some time after we moved away from Puerto Rico, but if someone who reads this blog knows him, I hope they will let him know about Leif and how much he learned from Ed.

Leif the music lover and his guitars

Leif loved music from the time he was very young and had extremely eclectics tastes. He played electric guitar beginning in junior high when we lived at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, and played bass briefly in a band when he was a junior in high school at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. The photo of him above is from the one and only performance of that band at Antilles High School, in the spring of 1992.

That year, he also designed and made his own electric guitar with an unusual neck and fingerboard connection the came up with to make fingering high notes easier. I'll have to post a photo of it one of these days. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of him playing it.

During those years, he practiced and learned to play some of his favorite guitar solos from rock albums. He had huge music collection and those albums from the 1980s were still among his songs on iTunes.

I wish he had continued to play throughout the years. His guitars always meant a lot to him, and he displayed them with the amp in his living room wherever he lived, even if he didn't play. I know the "language" of the guitar solo spoke to him . . . though many other kinds of music did, too. He listened to everything from Bach to heavy metal, from punk rock to some techno genres, from Kitaro to Mariah Carey. Listening to his music now makes me cry. Most of what he loved is full of emotion.

Leif gave his first guitar to his nephew, Marcus. We hope he will learn to play it.