Utahyank

I found a note among my husband's papers, asking that this board be informed, particularly inger and pipps, of the his passing.


Shadetree went on a wilderness hunt this past fall with friends, and while in a remote area, suffered a ruptured appendix.  It was a 2 day ordeal for his friends to get him to a place where he could be picked up by helicopter, and flown to a hospital.  He lingered for a few days, but his organs were so compromised by the ordeal that he lapsed into a coma and passed quietly.


His was a most remarkable life, and I was blessed to share 38 years of marriage with him.  I first met him in 1978 when I was assigned as an Major in the Army to Patrick AFB in Satellite Beach Florida.  I was a divorcee with one son, Shade was a Director with NASA at the Space Center, and a widower with two children still at home.  We met at church, and I was smitten by this big, and wonderful man.  He was born into a rural family in Nebraska, excelled in studies, and entered at the University at age 15 studying Electrical Engineering.  At 18, he was an officer in the Army Air Corp, serving as a Navigator on a B-29 crew.  Following the end of his service after WWII, he served as an Administrator for the Atomic Energy Commission in New Jersey, then completed his academic work at Princeton, receiving a doctorate in Solid State Physics.  Because of his early work in the development of transistors and integrated circuits, he was asked to join a scientific team being assembled by President Kennedy in Florida in 1963 with the purpose being the exploration of space.  When we had been married a few years, he was asked to join the 2nd Reagan administration as a Regional Director in the Department of Interior.  We moved to Utah in 1984, and fell totally in love with the West, particularly the Uinta Mountains.  I taught at a University for a few years, until poor health brought about retirement, and Shade, who was then serving in the same position in the Department of Interior in the first Bush administration, retired a year or two later after the defeat of George HW Bush in 1992.  He was very active into his 90's, with a most amazing mind, until he suffered a stroke at age 88, and never fully recovered his astonishing memory, which once could tell me exactly where to find a scripture I was seeking, or any amount of other knowledge. His health was relatively good otherwise, for his age.  He was 92 years of age at his passing.  He sent regards to his friends here.