If I live as long, I only hope that my life touches so many. Its still only a short list of all that he accomplished.

Hear is extended list of my fathers accomplishments:

My father was frighteningly intelligent.

Graduated from high school at age 16.

An alumni from the Illinois Institute of Technology. My father majored briefly in chemistry (at the insistence of his father) and after picking up little more then a collection of great stories, he was asked by the school to change from chemistry to math. He excelled at this until the money ran out.

My father was part of the Air Force. A veteran serving during the Korean war (entirely states side though).

He helped start one of the early software companies; Pansophic (a name he created). He was responsible for the development of their first product. He was a guiding light until forced out by the questionable business practices of others in the company.

He had a thirst for knowledge that he some how managed to (in one way or another) pass on to his children.

He had an artistic side. You hear a lot of people muse, wonder out loud, where they get their artistic tendencies from. I never had to worry about it. I only needed to look towards my dad to see where mine springs from.

My father excelled at every place he worked, and in every position he held.

Father sort of fell into computers. While working at one of his first jobs after leaving the Air Force (Walgreens?) he was shown a computer, told it wasn't working, and asked if he could fix it. After looking at it, he gave it a good whack, and it started working again.

In the early days of computers (circa 1970), there existed the Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals (do they still exist?). To qualify for certification, you needed an advanced degree in computer science (rear in the late 60's, early 70's), or have the equivalent of 15 years of work experience. Never having earned a collage degree, my father was particularly proud of earning the certificates pictured here.

He fathered three children. You don't have to look very deep to see my Father in Mark, Linda and I.

He adored his grandchildren. My niece and my father had a very special relationship. The kind of grandfather that every kid wishes for.

My passion for computers springs directly from my father. When we moved to Florida, my father started working for a company called American Bankers Insurance Group. Working in roughly an R&D role, he took part in bringing the first PC's into the company. Not having a life at the time, I hung out at ABIG on Saturdays, and was lucky enough to get to play around with personal computers before most people knew they existed. This was back in '82. Being the person he was, they let him take one home to work on after hours. From that point on, there has always been a computer in my life, and my father encouraged me to make the most of it.

With all that to show for, you may wonder how things ended the way they did.

My father's medical problems go back quite a ways. For the last 10-15 years there had always been something to complain about. It started out with being diagnosed as tendentious. You can see in old photos that Dad always seemed to have his head tilted to one side. So when you think about it, its not surprising that the tendentious reoccurred, and turned into double vision. At that point they started talking myosteemia gravis (a form a muscular dystrophy). But it never progressed. The drugs they gave him to increase neuron activity seemed to work, and the symptoms never got any worse. They assumed arrested development of the disease, and everyone ignored the persistent symptoms.

That is until he had a small stroke.

Actually, it was categorized as a period of extremely high blood pressure. I remember that weekend pretty vividly. It was during one of my parent's many trips for the Florida Moose Association. It was a Sunday, and they were on their way back home from Key West. They had just stopped (as the story goes), and my father had gotten out to get something out of the trunk. As he was bending over, he was blinded by a bright light, and he fell to the ground, overcome by an intense pain in his head. As chance would have it, a State Trooper was passing by, and stopped to offer help, and call an ambulance. He was sent home after a brief stay at the hospital, given some drugs to control his blood pressure, and told to contact his doctor Monday morning.

My mother, father and I went to dinner that night (Papa Nicks). The mood was light. He was envisioning going on high blood pressure medicine, and eliminating salt from his diet. No one really guessed what was coming up.

He went to see the doctor. One of the first things they did was a CAT/MRI scan (thinking back, I wonder, given the symptoms he was showing, why he wasn't given one before this). The test shows a large tumor buried deep in his brain.

Now I know I would completely freak out if someone told me that. To my father it was just another datum to digest. He actually seemed relived on some level. It explained a lot, and he was happy to relate the stories of what was going on.

It seems the tumor was pressing on a major nerve bundle (the 7th nerve I believe I heard it referred to as) and was the cause of most of his health problems. The tumor finally reached the point where it started to press against a blood vessel in the brain, and thus was the cause of his small stroke.

Things happened pretty quickly at this point. The tumor was serious and had to be dealt with as soon as possible. My father was checked into the hospital to undergo tests leading up to the eventual brain operation. The first time I knew my father was worried was when my sister and I visited him in the hospital. He was to undergo a balloon angioagram to test the strength of his heart, to see if he was up to the operation to remove the tumor. The test is serious, and is known to result in deaths. He said he was worried.

He related that list of factoids to my sister and I as dispassionately as I just did (including the fact that he was worried). And even though he said it without emotion, there was an edge to it. Things were going to change, and there was nothing he could do about it.

It was one of the weirdest moments of my life.