As you guys are a second family to me, I knew you would want to know. After a 9 year battle with cancer, my father passed away early this morning. He passed away at home. He was 75. He met with a chaplain a couple of days ago and told him, "the woods is my heaven." The night before he passed my mother told me she struggled to keep him settled down. He saw the moon out and thought it was the sun coming out. He said to her, "I have to call Steve to go deer hunting." Despite his battle with cancer, he hunted the last eight of nine years. He didn't hunt this last season but on the second weekend of the hunt he did drive the 140 mile round trip to the family farm (where he was born) and managed to drive his pickup out in the woods. It happened to be a picture perfect fall day that day and he greatly enjoyed it. The cancer really didn't get the best of him until the last week or two. He had bone cancer and they were able to knock this back with chemo several times over the years. It was this summer that the cancer escaped from his bones and invaded his lymphnode system and became very aggressive. Despite pretty bad odds his doctor threw everything they could at him as far as chemo treatment. I know his doctor came to be very close to him and could not bring himself to give up on him. He even told my mother that he realized he had lost some of his professional perspective when he kept trying when nothing was working. He was a carpenter by trade and worked very hard all his life. He worked all week and worked in the woods all weekend. He never had a day of paid vacation, paid sick time, paid dollar of retirement in his life. He just worked hard and never complained a bit about it. I recall several deer seasons that corresponded with chemo treatment. Sometime he would run out of breath and drop to his knees. He would just wait until he got some breath back, get back up and keep going. This occurred when he was dragging a deer, cutting up windfalls across the trails and on and on. Later.
