Interesting pair of obits from the NYT:
Wayne Merry has passed away at the age of 88. Mr. Merry, Warren Harding, and George Whitmore were rock climbers:
…
They subsisted on cheese, raisins, canned fruit and sardines. They carried water in an old paint-thinner can, and drank wine. “We trained on red wine, if anything,” Merry told The Yukon News in 2015.
They relied on improvised implements, including pitons that they fashioned from the legs of old wood stoves and tools from a hardware store that they repurposed for climbing.
“I wouldn’t hang a picture from them today, but back then we hung our lives on them,” Merry told Yukon North of Ordinary magazine in 2016.
Brad Gobright passed away last week at 31.
Mr. Gobright died in a fall while rappelling with a climbing partner in Mexico.
In non-rock climbing related news, this is a nice tribute to Tim George. Dr. George was a pediatric neurosurgeon at Dell Children’s Hospital:
In 2006, Bill Dollahite’s son Scott was badly hurt playing football for Cedar Park High School in Waco. Doctors told him Scott was paralyzed. The family decided to move him closer to home.
“We took about a three-hour ride in the worst weather in the world … following an ambulance,” Dollahite said. In the middle of the night, the ambulance pulled into what was Brackenridge Hospital, “and here comes Dr. George.”
George was still new to Austin; Dollahite is not sure if he even had an office. Dell Children’s was under construction.
“Dr. George looked at him and goes, ‘You know, let’s not give up everything just yet. Let me take a look at this, because everything looks too perfect,’” Dollahite said. “Long story short, Scott went into Brackenridge quadriplegic. A couple of days later, he walked out. No ill effects after that. By the miracles that Dr. George did, he gave him his life back.”
Dr. George went on to take up racing as a hobby. He was competing in an endurance race at Sebring in Florida last month (as part of a team with Scott Dollahite) when he suddenly became ill, pulled into pit row, and collapsed.
I never watched “Will and Grace”, but Shelley Morrison had a long career before that show: “Laredo”, “The Flying Nun”, “240-Robert”…
It looks like we lost a distinguished, but well lived group the past few days. The story about DR. Tim George is especially uplifting.
I have begun to find my sense of mortality, through reading people’s obituaries. In our local newspaper the typical eulogy goes something like, Heathcliffe loved to play cards with his friends, golfed twice a week, fished and hunted on the weekends, and never missed his local sporting teams on the television. But his first love was his family.
I don’t know who they are trying make feel better, but I have read a few truthful ones and I think I prefer those. Where they say that nobody liked the old bat and she was mean and stingy, and never thanked anyone for anything, but expected them all to jump to her finger snap. And that now that she was gone, that farm was getting sold and turned into condos and they were going to be rich, and not smell like pig shit all the time.
As I said, I have read the obits, and follow some of the things that people have done with their lives, and have come to the conclusion that people have choices in life. And that the choices you make determines exactly where you will go in life. I know it sounds simplistic, but it isn’t.
We always tell youngsters, you could grow up to be president some day. No, most likely you won’t, unless you come from a family with money and a strong background fame. But there IS no limit on how hard that child can push themselves to try to achieve as high of a position in what ever place in government that he or she has a passion for, in order to effect policy.
Or the little girl might not be a ballet dancer, but a musical conductor for the symphony. The young man might no be a pro baseball player, but he can coach his daughter from T ball through high school, and send her on to college with a full scholarship.
The thing is, if your life didn’t turn out how you planned, so what? Do something else that can bring your soul joy. Find your other passion, or apply your first passion in a different way.
Life is precious, and we need to make sure that we treasure each and every day we are blessed to spend it above ground. Don’t waste your time dwelling what might have been, or trying to figure out why. Sometimes there is no why. There’s just is. And the future.