Eulogy of an Amazingly Interesting Man

I love this picture!! He just looks HAPPY!!!

He was born in September 1929 and he died this last Sunday, peacefully and quietly after spending the day with his beautiful wife and companion of sixty years.  They sat and chatted - though speaking had become difficult for him since leaving his home on Father's Day. Illness had made it impossible for him to stay home.  He sent her home at 5:00 because he noticed that she was tired and was in need of rest.  Around 9:45 the rehab center called her to tell her he had passed on and left this earthly world - not expected but not shocking either.

The overlook to the property he loves

This man, this amazingly, interesting man was my father-in-law, Bill Conrad.  This man made the man I love into the man he is today.  They were extremely close now - they may not have always been, but they were now.  Ted loved to spend time with his father - they shared so many interests.

Looking over the Utah property

I can tell you that really, I have only met with him about fourteen times in the last seven years.  We usually tried to go to visit a couple of times a year.  Most of the time I was with him and my mother-in-law, the time was spent with my mother-in-law - and I adore her.  Ted and his dad would go sequester themselves in the back rooms that were stocked end to end, ceiling to floor with his collections.  But this one time, last year, while mom and Ted were busy doing something else, I spent a couple of hours with my father-in-law and he told me the story of his life, a very abbreviated story - but, he took me on a journey from life in Kansas to where he was now, Colorado.  I remember being so excited when we left that day - going through my mind over and over again on that drive home about wanting to write what I heard - and that story ended up here.

Ted chatting with his hero

Ted and his family moved alot.  Ted went to four different high schools in three or four different states. But, this family had adventures that many of us would never dream of.  Ted's dad had an old Toyota Land Cruiser - and six kids.  This vehicle was an old jeep looking vehicle and he equipped the back of this vehicle with six chairs in the back so each of the kids would have them- three on one side and three on the other.  And as mom told me the other day, "we put seat belts in even when seat belts weren't worn or required".  They lived in the Durango area of Colorado during this time and would go "ghost towning".  They would travel to various ghost towns to look for treasures and take photographs.  There is an old cast iron oven door that has traveled all around the country from town to town, home to home to become a wall mount decoration at each home from one of these journeys.  Ted tells a tale of a time when he stepped on a rusty nail and it going through his foot. The journey to get medical attention "took forever" because his dad kept stopping to take a new photograph here and there.

We will memorialize dad on Saturday morning - his children will all be together again for the first time in many decades - though for only a short amount of time.  He was a man from the midwest who came to love the Colorado area and all of the west - and that's where he requested to spend his eternity.


Bill Conrad had many jobs - teacher, professor, writer, photographer, collector, gun smith, radio man, editor, newspaper owner - - but, his biggest accomplishment is as father, grandfather, great-grandfather and husband.  Rest in Peace dad - your legacy is long and strong.

At the end of his will, Bill put an epitaph - I found it so very much him:

He Tried/To Live/Until He Died