Christine Herndon Provence Schulte passed away on Thursday, November 5th, 2020, in the presence of her loving daughter, Sandra.
She was born on October 1, 1927 in Madill, Oklahoma to W. C. “Pete” and Ossie Biles Herndon. She graduated from Madill High School in 1945 and went on to get her associates degree at Murray State School of Agriculture, Tishomingo, Oklahoma in 1947. It was there that she met Elmer A. “Bunk” Provence. They married on Oct 16, 1948 in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She went on to get her B.S. in Business from Oklahoma State University in 1956.
After graduation, She and Elmer moved to Lawton, Oklahoma where she worked as a bookkeeper from 1957 until 1963 when they adopted their daughter Sandra Kay. The family then moved to Altus, Oklahoma in 1965.
Christine returned to school at Southwestern State University in Weatherford, Oklahoma and graduated in 1971 with a second Bachelor’s Degree in Business Education. She became a business teacher at Altus High School in 1971 and taught general business classes and typing. Many of her students fondly remember their experiences with her and credit her with their success in business. She continued teaching at Altus High School through the 1984 school year.
In 1984, she and Elmer both retired and moved to their farm outside of Sterling, Oklahoma, where she attended the First Baptist Church and was a member of the Sterling Ladies Town & Country Club and the Arts & Craft Club. She was also a member of the Comanche County Retired Educators Association and the Oklahoma Retired Educators Association.
Elmer Provence passed away on Dec 17, 1997. She lived alone in the house she and Elmer built until March 2, 2002, when she married Henry J. Schulte. The Schulte’s lived together on his farm on the opposite site of the same highway that bordered the Provence farm until Henry passed away on April 8 of 2006.
She continued to be active in the social life of her community of Sterling until stricken with illness in 2016 when she moved to Austin, Texas in order to be closer to her daughter. We owe a debt of gratitude to Paul Yanez and all the nurses at Clare Creek memory care home for their tireless work. We know that Mary Belle and the other ladies at the home will miss Christine a lot.
She was preceded in death by her parents Pete and Ossie; her sisters: Janice Robinson and Betty Jane Matthews and her brother, Grover Herndon. She is survived by her daughter Sandra Kay Steele, her son-in-law Anthony Steele and her two grandchildren Alyssa and Gregory all of Austin, Texas, and numerous nieces and nephews.
We are born with the seed of who we can be, unrealized at our core. To live fully we must find that seed and become the potential person we were always meant to be. It will be the hardest struggle that you can know in order to become that person, and yet it will be the adventure of a lifetime to engage in that struggle.
anonymous
Services will be held at Sunset Memorial Gardens in Lawton, Oklahoma where she will be laid to rest on November 11th, 2020 at 10:30 am. Donations may be made in her name to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, The Susan B Komen Foundation or the Disabled American Veterans.
It was the iguana you noticed first. That much I can say for sure. The bright green iguana named Miss Iggy, who would one day go on to be an invited guest at conventions, a star attraction herself, before age crept up on her too and stole her away. It was the iguana I noticed first. I have always had a fascination for lizards. They simultaneously repulse and attract me with their odd movements and strange eyes. The next thing you might notice would be the smooth mane of raven-black hair. Then it would be the impish grin that seemed always to threaten to spread across her face. Above that expressive mouth were the sparkling eyes full of mischief. That was Roxanne, when we first met.
It was at an Armadillocon. I don’t remember the number or the year, but I know we were there as part of our Star Trek club, and I’m reasonably certain that the only reason I met Rox there was because the Wife was having one of her usual gabfests with her, and I needed the Wife’s attention for something else at the time. So here I was studying the iguana and the face while Rox and the Wife discussed the mutual experiences the two of them had growing up, and the various kinds of fandom the two of them were interested in. They both had a lot in common in those days, still do for the most part, but back then the trials that they both had faced resonated between the two of them.
It is a queer coincidence that Rox died this weekend, a day after Sean Connery. That is one of the things that I remember about her, the fascination we both shared for the movie Highlander, which is the role that I most strongly remember Sean Connery for. When Cat and Rox invited me to stay with them while I took my architectural exam, I remember that she and Cat, her husband, and I sat and watched an episode or two of the series. I can’t say I shared her fascination for the show, but we did both enjoy the narratives that could be constructed around the character of an immortal figure striding unknown through history. The ability to have a single persona witness the rise and fall of civilizations, virtually unchanged.
I had a real appreciation for the easy way that she could write narratives. I have always admired those great storytellers that can weave a good yarn out of almost anything, even if I don’t appreciate the actual stories themselves. The ability to just take a random object and craft a backstory for it is a true talent. The ability to make you see the thing in a new light, even without ever seeing the object at all, but describing it through words alone to the point where you swear that you know exactly what that object looks like. As I said, it is a true talent, and she had that talent in spades.
I wish I could say that I had read all her books and loved them, but I haven’t. I tend more towards an appreciation of a good biography or tome of history than I do almost any work of fantasy. The Wife and Daughter have read most of her books, and they recommend them highly to anyone who will listen to them. For myself, I was more interested in the person, rather than the stories she told. When Rox was at the table with you at dinner, the conversations were always light and lively. She was always quick to laugh and a joy to be around. All of us here in the Steele household are missing her greatly right now. I am so crushed by the news, even a full day later, that I can barely string these few words together as a tribute. I’m sure I will have more to say in the coming days. As the immediate grief lessons, the words will come back to me. They always do.
She was the one who encouraged me to start writing, if what I wanted to do was write. She was the one who suggested starting a blog and just putting my thoughts down in it a few at a time, as the ideas formed in my head. Just write it down, she said. So I did, and so I have. So I will again.
There has been too much death this year. 2020 is indeed a beastly year, and it can’t be over soon enough to suit me.
Her obituary as it appeared in the paper and online follows:
Barbara Ann Polk left this earth on February 9th, 2018 to be with the angels, while in the company of her family. Born June 8, 1941 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, she was her mother’s youngest child and her father’s second child. Barbara moved many times in her life, Sacramento, CA; Leoti, KS; Sweetwater, TX; San Angelo, TX; Albuquerque, NM; and Buda/Austin, TX. She graduated from Angelo State University in 1992 with an RN and worked as a nurse and hospice care supervisor for many years. She was preceded in death by her mother – Lucille R. Lavo Zonge, her father Randolph Daniel Zonge Sr., her stepmother, Marie Mendler Zonge, and her brother Kenneth L. Zonge. She is survived by her brother, Randolph Daniel Zonge, Jr.; her children: Ray Anthony Steele, Jonnette Ann Kraft, Dawn Marie Wostal, John Russell Steele and her seven grandchildren and her three great-grandchildren. The family will have a private memorial service for her in the fall. She requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to World Vision. (www.worldvision.org)
There are several other articles on the blog that I wrote for my mother over the last year of her life while I was with her. Articles that I’ve written about my feelings for her and about her and the things that remind me of her. They are collected under the simple blog tag mom.
I am very nearly without words today. It takes great effort to even think in words. Melodies and harmonies are all that are running through my head. I cried when we lost George Harrison. Despaired when Prince died too young. But those are just the wounds that spring to mind because they are contextual. Revived because of proximity.
Tom Petty was more than a musician to me. Tom Petty described my soul to me, and he didn’t just do it once. He did it over and over again through the course of my life, the course of his career. I identified with his music in ways I simply cannot describe.
He died doing what he wanted to do, ending a tour in support of his latest album. He went quickly and without suffering. Most of us want to be that lucky when it comes our time to go.
I could post tracks all day long, and I did post tracks all day long on the day I learned of his death. I read about it not too long after getting up that day, but his death wasn’t officially confirmed until later.
Petty’s final show was last week, performing three sold-out shows at the Hollywood Bowl to conclude their 40th anniversary tour, CBS News reports.
He told Rolling Stone that he thought this would be the group’s last tour together.
“It’s very likely we’ll keep playing, but will we take on 50 shows in one tour? I don’t think so. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was thinking this might be the last big one. We’re all on the backside of our sixties. I have a granddaughter now I’d like to see as much as I can. I don’t want to spend my life on the road. This tour will take me away for four months. With a little kid, that’s a lot of time.”
It was the day after the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas. One more mass shooting in a near-infinite string of tragedies that, quite frankly, I refuse to pay attention to anymore. If anyone cared we’d actually talk about gun control in a way that might be productive. But we can’t and we don’t and so, like September 11th being my dad’s birthday, I didn’t and won’t post about another mass shooting that won’t change anything. Jim has it right. We are Bang, Bang Crazy.
So instead I will mourn the death of a man whose work I cherished above most others of his caliber. He lived a full life and died early. Not as early as many who had the kind of talent he had, but he also didn’t live as long as the rare few do. I’ll miss him. We all will miss him and the music he might have gone on to make.
A Facebook friend and fellow fan challenged other fans to quick, give me your favorite Tom Petty lyrics. Rather than give her my favorite (which is Breakdown above) I posted the lyrics that I went to the point of actually signing up to edit that day, Learning To Fly. I signed up so as to get the correct stanza structure for the song set down properly on Lyrically. Someone had just pasted content from another website (probably) and/or didn’t understand how poetry is written and why. But that is how much I thought this was the song to remember him by on that day.
It has now been about two weeks since the day he died, but I’m back dating this article to the day, the day, because I really don’t care if anyone reads this or not. I finished watching the documentary Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers: Runnin’ Down A Dream a few days ago. Watching it brought back some memories that I really wanted to put down in this post.
His album, Hard Promises came out the year I graduated. I remember going to the Hastings record store next to the Safeway I was courtesy clerking at in 1980 and buying that cassette (vinyl was and is the purview of music collectors with money. Something I’ve never had any of) and subsequently Damn the Torpedoes. I remember not being willing to buy the first album because of the cheesy cover art, which says a lot about the importance of graphic design. The title of You’re Gonna Get itI deemed too juvenile, like Fair Warning, Van Halen’s fourth album.
If you’re poor fighting is the norm. You fight to get everything, all the time. When your stepfather is abusive, conflict is a foregone conclusion. Using the phrases of the abuser you’re gonna get it is descend to their level. I always tried to be more than that, more than the abuser was in their petty little mind. So violence was to be avoided, not encouraged. If violence is inevitable you make sure you emerge the victor, you don’t worry about methods beyond their capacity to produce desired outcomes. Hit them from behind, above, with a blunt object and keep swinging until the target stops moving. Easier to do than thinking.
Tom Petty knew how to fight and proved it repeatedly. Proved it by filing for bankruptcy to get control of his music back, winning the first case against a record company, leading the way for others who had signed usurious record contracts to also get control of their music back. His lawsuit altered the face of the music business, leading the way towards the music industry of today which exists to serve artists and not the other way around.
After completing his Southern Accents tour, he was one of the best-selling artists in music history. So what does he do next? He and the Heartbreakers agree to go on the road, touring with Bob Dylan as his backing band. Who else has progressed from headlining his own shows to being the backing band for another artist? Has anyone else ever done that? After a few more albums and more success, they joined Johnny Cash’s studio back up band.
“What they call country today is like bad rock groups with a fiddle”
We lost Bill Paxton (1955-2017) It is quite a blow to me as a film buff. I remember pretty much every movie he’s been in, and his characters in each film. What I found surprising going through my traditional (morbid?) ritual of watching something that featured the recently deceased, I couldn’t find anything that I wanted to watch that he starred in as a leading man.
Everyone remembers Twister, obviously. I probably remember it a little differently than most people do. I grew up in tornado country. As good as the rest of the film is, I can never get past the final sequence of the two lead actors running uphill to lash themselves to a pipe in a wooden shed, with horses calmly ignoring the digital storm they couldn’t see roiling all around them. This poorly thought out and executed sequence pulls me right out of the film and worst of all, ruins the whole thing for me. The rest of Twister deserves the kind of tribute that the storm chasers gave him upon learning of his death. I hadn’t known it was such an inspiration to young kids of the time, motivating them to go into the field of meteorology and storm chasing in particular. Any film that inspires young people to do something good with their lives has to get a passing grade no matter what its other failings might be.
Similarly I wanted to like the film A Simple Plan but was put off by the fact that it was sold to us as a comedy in the trailers and promotional material, but was so definately not a comedy in viewing. It is a tragedy and a drama and worth watching. No matter how good it is it’s not going to be remembered in a kind light when The Wife wants a comedy and she’s mad and crying. That doesn’t bode well for the film ever being rewatched in this household.
We settled on Apollo 13 and Tombstonefor our tribute to him, two excellent films in which he plays positive if lightly comedic supporting characters, which was actually what Bill Paxton was the best at.
This shouldn’t be seen as a slam or a put-down. The leading actor or actress in a film or play is only as good as their supporting actors allow them to be, and he was a consummate artist at playing the comedic foil or the well-intentioned loudmouth. My favorite film features him in a role he was essentially made for as an actor, the role of PFC. William L. Hudson in Aliens. It was just one more in a series of great supporting roles that enabled the top billed names to shine through his artistry off-screen as well as on it, but the stars were right in that film.
My favorite director combined with my favorite actor and actress of the time, with hands down one of the best supporting casts ever assembled. Case in point. I stumbled across this interview in my teary-eyed path down memory lane, and marveled at how these two work the interview together.
My favorite actress and one of my favorite supporting men, just naturally continuing the leading lady / supporting actor relationship established in the film; him laying up subjects for her to embroider as a leading lady should. Just a gentleman and the support that he should be, happy to be part of the interview.
I’ll have to sit down and watch his directorial efforts Frailty and The Greatest Game Ever Playedjust to confirm for myself that they are as good as my friends have said they are, but he will always be Hudson to me. I hope he doesn’t mind if I remember him that way.
It’s shocking and sad that American film and television creators won’t be able to rely on Paxton’s rough-hewn decency, his game sense of humor, and his canny ability to steal a scene. Paxton was dependably watchable in projects that weren’t as good as he was, and great in roles that gave his characters the scope and depth to display their irreverent and essential humanity.
Leonard Nimoy’s death represents a figurative passing of an age in a way that so many other’s deaths cannot. When I heard of Robin Williams death at his own hands a few months back, I burst immediately into tears. It was such a shocking event, it was so hard to imagine a man who was so alive being able to take his own life like that. I was prepared for the news of Leonard’s passing because of his announcement of suffering from COPD.
His star was tarnished for me when he agreed to appear in the Abramanation. Had he died before 2009 I would have mourned his loss as heavily as the Wife did. She adored the man and his works in ways that made me look like a passing fancier. I couldn’t possibly compete with her devotion to him and Star Trek fandom in general. I’ve never felt that strongly about much of anything aside from architecture and archeology. I was and am so conflicted about this subject that I started this entry to commemorate Leonard’s death a week after he died, and then didn’t finish it until two and a half years later (the date I’m typing this at now) I thought at the time let’s see what the effect of his death is before making a big deal about it, but in my heart I just couldn’t speak ill of the dead so soon after their passing. So I left the paragraph above sitting all that time, and refused to delete it when I scrolled past it for two years running.
I can’t help but wonder what Leonard Nimoy (whom I will hold blameless) saw in this film to recommend his tacit approval and his venerable image to it. Spock prime stands in sharp contrast to the new cast, carrying with him into history a mantle of respect this revisioined Star Trek will never achieve. Because unlike Star Trek and it’s 42 years of history, the Abramanation is just entertainment.
But I’m pretty sure what he saw was money. And why not? He’d never gotten the wealth or admiration he deserved from Hollywood or his peers. Never received the acknowledgement for creating a character so adored by people everywhere that even today, fifty years later, few actors can even come close to achieving. Every attempt at a portrayal of the emotionless Vulcans Gene Roddenberry originally envisioned looks silly compared to Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. Writers don’t even know how to write those kinds of characters, as exampled by every single series since Gene’s death. Stories in which Vulcan society is morphed into some kind of vindictive hellhole that looks a lot like humans trying to paint an alien world devoid of emotion, and failing at it spectacularly. I’ve read a lot of Star Trek novels over the years, few of them come close to imagining the kinds of Vulcan that I saw hinted at in Gene’s canon.
The problem is that the world went somewhere else between 1967 and today than where it went in the future that Gene painted back then. Emotionlessness has become synonymous with sociopathy, with dark plottings of revenge, as if T’Pring was actually representational of all of Vulcan. Never mind that revenge is an emotion, too. We are so bathed in emotion as human beings we don’t even know what it is to not have them; which is the genius of Nimoy’s portrayal.
On the positive side of future history departing from Gene’s vision, we didn’t destroy ourselves with eugenics wars in the 1990’s; on the negative side, we can’t seem to recognize the ghost of eugenics when it raises its ugly head and calls all Mexicans rapists. On the even more negative side, we still don’t have a moon colony much less warp technology and transporters, which were always trappings of story-telling and not actual predictions of future technology. But not having a Moon colony yet? That’s just blind human stupidity. There is absolutely no reason for that not happening aside from our inability to see our own impending doom.
Like a man happily puffing away on a cigarette for most of his life never realizing that he’s destroying his own life-support mechanism and bringing a too early end to his own life in the process, humanity doesn’t realize that all life on this little ball of mud can be snuffed out in an instant. Nature doesn’t care about our petty little problems. The pale blue dot can be wiped away in an instant by some minor space collision or other, and the universe would never notice. Not even an artifact of humanity left over aside from a couple of probes we’ve managed to send beyond the influence of our sun. Is that our future?
“Keep a little bit of madness in you. Just a little touch of it. Just enough, so you don’t become stupid. A little madness will keep you alive, because no one in the world knows how to tax that.”
I owned that work on cassette. It was one of my first purchases, if not the first comedy album I ever owned. I listened to it so often I memorized it, before the tape fell apart and I had to stop playing it.
I loved Mork & Mindy. Watched his appearances on Carson. Went to see every film he was in, just because he was in it, and for no other reason.
I was outraged at Dead Poets Society, though. (spoilers!) I’ve watched it since, and I know now that I was wrong, that I shouldn’t have been so angry at the suicide portrayed in that film. But at the time I felt it was a betrayal, that it was an acknowledgement of the darkness in the world, that the film let the darkness win, by killing what I saw as the main character, the character I identified with at the time. Worse, I associated Robin with the film, because I had gone to see it specifically because he was in it.
All of us fight our own inner demons. I’ve fought with depression for many years, longer than I can count. Menieres has only made it harder to cope with, but the darkness has been there for as long as I can remember. It’s been with me so long that I don’t even remember when I made the pact with myself that I wouldn’t contemplate suicide.
It’s a sad observation of human existence that suicides increase when someone else commits suicide; this is especially true of prominent figures. Watching MSNBC’s coverage, I was struck by this when they flashed the numbers for suicide prevention on the screen. I feel it is a shame that Robin let depression win; and as someone who fights depression, and who knows there are others out there engaged in a daily battle with it, I have to see it as letting depression win. This is not a judgement on Robin, or an observation of failure on his part.
Depression is not cancer; or maybe it is. Cancer of the mental processes, perhaps. In any case, when the physical body fails (and it will, for all of us) then it really is over. But when the mind gets trapped in that inward spiral, no one can break you out of it unless you want them to, unless you want to keep living. That is a choice you make.
I will not leave a body for relatives to find, to ask themselves “what did I do wrong” when it isn’t about them. It’s about me. There will be no notes. No questions. Because (fate willing) I will not have to make that choice. I just hope I have time to write down all the things I think need to be related before that Mind That Bus moment happens.
Like Dead Poets Society. It’s not actually about the suicidal character; or rather, it not just about him. It’s about the mousy little guy who follows along for the whole film (my first conscious introduction to Ethan Hawke, another actor whose films I try not to miss) never hazarding more than is required of him because he is too afraid to take that chance. It’s about all the other characters, sucking all the marrow because they had a teacher who encouraged them to live life to its fullest. Because we’re only here for a brief moment, and then we’re gone.
Afterword
On the revelation that Robin suffered from early stages of Parkinson’s, and that he had that road ahead of him clearly mapped out by others (including his friend Micheal J. Fox whose charity he donated to) I can easily imagine that he chose his time to leave rather than wait for the disease to rob him of his independence. Preferred to be remembered this way, rather than risk being the subject of pity; no longer able to ask people to laugh at him, with him.
That he had to kill himself the way he did is more an indictment of current societal norms than it is of Robin Williams himself. When you are stricken with a disease for which there is no cure, one that will slowly destroy what you were if not actually kill you outright, you are faced with some pretty hard choices. One of them is the ability to say “Ok, I’ve had enough now. I’d like to just check out.” A choice which is denied to the sufferer in nearly every case; requiring those determined enough to seek solutions to the problem, to resort to cruder tactics than they would have preferred had they actually had a choice.
I am convinced that Robin Williams is one of those people. Being denied the right to end his life legally at some point later, he chose that time and that place to act, right or wrong.
For me, it was the wrong choice. But then I’m not Robin Williams. Never wanted to be him. I just enjoyed his pointed wit, his ability to flit apparently effortlessly through characters; his willingness to laugh, and to encourage us to laugh, at his all too human foibles. In the end, it was those foibles, those failings, that killed him.
We sat down and rewatched Dead Poets Society as a family last week. Just wanted to see if his chosen ending for his life alters the way the film feels. In reflection, I think this film actually captures the real Robin; both the flashy in-your-face moments of characterization, and the quiet man who contemplates the meaning of life, tries to communicate the drive to find meaning to younger minds. In any case it holds up well, and I think I’ll have to dig up some of his other early works, dust off the Laser Disk player if I have to. Re-experience his work again, while the pain is fresh. Just to see if I can still laugh with him. I think I need a good laugh.
“O Me! O life!…
of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless
of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself,
(for who more foolish than I,
and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light
of the objects mean
of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all
of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest
with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring
What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here
that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.”
I ran across this article submitted by Susan Schneider Williams (Robin Williams’s widow) to the journal Neurology. He apparently suffered from Lewy Body disease, undiagnosed until after his death. She discusses her experience with him in the final days of his life in the article and in this audio clip from the journal.
Although not alone, his case was extreme. Not until the coroner’s report, 3 months after his death, would I learn that it was diffuse LBD that took him. All 4 of the doctors I met with afterwards and who had reviewed his records indicated his was one of the worst pathologies they had seen. He had about 40% loss of dopamine neurons and almost no neurons were free of Lewy bodies throughout the entire brain and brainstem.
Robin is and will always be a larger-than-life spirit who was inside the body of a normal man with a human brain. He just happened to be that 1 in 6 who is affected by brain disease.
Not only did I lose my husband to LBD, I lost my best friend. Robin and I had in each other a safe harbor of unconditional love that we had both always longed for. For 7 years together, we got to tell each other our greatest hopes and fears without any judgment, just safety. As we said often to one another, we were each other’s anchor and mojo: that magical elixir of feeling grounded and inspired at the same time by each other’s presence.
One of my favorite bedrock things we would do together was review how our days went. Often, this was more than just at the end of the day. It did not matter if we were both working at home, traveling together, or if he was on the road. We would discuss our joys and triumphs, our fears and insecurities, and our concerns. Any obstacles life threw at us individually or as a couple were somehow surmountable because we had each other.
The causes of his suicide are far more complex than anyone could understand until long after he was gone. I’m just now (Oct. 2017) able to look back on him and his work with a calm dispassion. Finally over the emotional hurdle of his leaving us in this way.
Here is a link to the book on Audible (or Amazon) I fell asleep to this audiobook for about two weeks or so. Because of this I’ve been having a lot of flashbacks to the times I laughed and cried with him over the decades. It wasn’t the greatest biography I’ve ever read, but then I read a lot of biographies written by a lot of talented people. It is definitely not the worst one I’ve read, either. I could have done with less dramatization of Robin’s work by the performer. No one can do Robin except Robin. The publisher probably should have spliced in actual cuts from Robin’s audio recordings for those segments. It would have cost them licensing fees, so I know why they didn’t do that. Still, it would have made the book far more enjoyable to listen to. Reading it may change the experience since you’ll be hearing Robin’s voice in your head if you have an active imagination like mine.
I learned things that I didn’t know about the subject of Robin Williams, the man, which is really all I require of the biographies I read. There were plenty of personal insights from family and friends and from interviews with Robin himself. I recommend the book even if you are only half the fan of Robin Williams that I am. Another great intellect has left us. He would not believe this of himself, but he made the world bearable and a little more understandable for me while he was here. I will miss him.
In the early 1980’s I was working at a production company. We were editing a segment for director Howard Storm. I was amazed then and after seeing it again amazed at Robin’s natural ability to make people laugh. I never had the privilege of meeting him but like us all, will miss him terribly. The world has lost a little happiness.
Time has passed, the Wheel has turned. It is time for you Bear to move on. You will walk hand in hand with the Lord and Lady and with your ancestors who came before you. Great Mother, welcome Bear back into your womb. And Great Father welcome him back into your divine instruction. Let him come to you and know that he has been blessed by your gracious gift of Life. Let him come into your Divine Love, and let him know that he has left behind a life of legacy, that he shall be remembered and loved. As he enters your world, wrap him in your loving arms, and welcome him back home. Let him speak to the Ancient Ones to learn the greater mysteries that lie beyond the veil. Give him the strength to take these final steps, and allow him to do so with peace and dignity. Those of us left behind shall indeed mourn his death, but we shall also know that his Soul and Spirit is coming back to Holy Mother and Holy Father, and that he shall be made whole again. We shall cry, but we shall also laugh, for we shall celebrate the Life that had been given to Bear. And let him also know that as we now merry part, that we shall also merry meet again. And we now, with these candles respect the flame of Bear‘s life, and though these candle flames shall die out, we know that Bear shall live on, and his flame shall never cease to burn, and we also know that he shall be reborn anew. Take him by the hand and guide him back into your heart, for this is what is right and just. Let him walk unerringly down the path that leads to your Love. This is our will and so mote it be. Amen and Amen. – Crimson Peaceful Wolf – Wiccan Prayer
This is the text of the Obituary that ran in the local paper, both here in Canon City where he lived, and in Leoti where he spent a large portion of his life.
John Hyland ‘Jack’ Steele Jr. died peacefully in the presence of family at the St. Thomas More Hospital in Cañon City late Saturday, June 27, 2009.
He was born Sept. 11, 1938, in Witchita Falls, Texas, to John Hyland and Dorothy (Heim) Steele; they preceded him in death. He also was preceded in death by his son, Kelly Steele.
Jack served his country in he United States Air Force for six years and, for most of his life, received joy helping countless people have a good experience buying a car. He never met a stranger and was loved by all who met him.
He leaves behind the love of his life, Charlene “Charley” Steele and children: Ray Anthony Steele, Jonnette Ann Kraft, Dawn Marie Nickell, John Russell Steele, and Damion Lee Steele; his seven grandchildren and his sister, Jean Mohri.
Jack was a fighter and fought until the end.
At his request, there will be no services. In lieu of flowers, Jack would appreciate donations to Fremont County Orchard of Hope, 111 Orchard Ave., Cañon City, CO 81212.
Arrangements handled through Wilson Funeral Home.
I have never been embarrassed to say “my father is a car salesman”. Horse trading is a long and honored tradition, and my father just applied the same principles to cars that was once applied to horses. In more than 30 years of working the deal, I never met anyone who thought they hadn’t gotten a fair trade from him. Even after he was forced into retirement by his battle with cancer, he could still be found sizing up, buying and selling cars and trucks in his spare time.
A good portion of the population in Leoti probably remembers him as Hyland Steele’s only son, Jack who inherited the service station that Hyland built. A volunteer fireman and occasional fire chief, my father was active in that small community in ways that would put most activists to shame in this day and age.
John Hyland Steele, Jr. was born in Wichita Falls, Texas. My gramma (Dorothy. From Kansas) when talking about those times, remarked “if he’d have waited another hour, he’d have been born in Oklahoma.” that was the life of people who worked the oil fields in the 1930’s. It wasn’t long, though, before they settled in Leoti, and that small town remained home for three generations of Steeles.
I remember fondly, riding the tractor with my Uncles and my Grandfather, working the farms that belonged to friends and relatives. I earned my first wages working in the service station, and my second job was in the fields, clearing weeds from around crops too sensitive to be mechanically maintained.
What I will remember most about my father though is his love of fishing and hunting. Long stretches of the summer season would be spent washing lures in Swanson Lake near Trenton, Nebraska. Winter weekends were to be spent in Twin Buttes, Colorado hunting Canada geese; or quail, pheasant, deer and elk when in season. Fishing, more than anything else, defined the good times that I remember from childhood.
His health in his later years was so poor that I can’t even begin to understand how he managed to drag himself through each day. But he did it for years. He fought his cancer tooth and nail till the end, and survived far longer with it and its after effects than any of the MD’s thought he could. He breathed his last with his youngest adoptive son (as I was also adopted) by his side.
The obituary we paid for in the Canon City Daily Record never made it into any online databases because they didn’t have a partnership with an online database (neither did Leoti) in 2009. The current owners of the paper are not interested in making good on payments made to the prior owners, and are only interested in getting me to give them money to do the job I thought we already paid for. Consequently the only place I can currently (3/31/2018) find my father referenced is on this blog, and on Tributes.com which just happens to reference my blog as the source. I will update the broken link to the official obit if the physical papers in either Leoti or Canon City are ever scanned and uploaded to the internet.
Mary Ann Johnson was born October 23, 1942 in San Antonio, Texas and died July 7, 2008 in Austin, Texas. The daughter of Solomon Wilson Johnson and Betty Marie (Hutton) Johnson, she lived in many locations around the world while her father was in the air force, including Japan, Bermuda, and Alaska.
Ann overcame significant physical challenges and graduated from Southwest Texas University before completing a career as a Disability Examiner for the Social Security Administration in Austin.
Ann was an avid “Trekkie” which led her to a vast circle of friends around the country. She helped in establishing at least two Austin Star Trek Fan Clubs: IDIC and The Star Trek Austin Regulars (STAR) in the 1980’s and 1990’s. She is a current member of the Eastern Star and any donations can be made in her name to the Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital, Dallas, Texas.
Ann is survived by cousins and many friends. Funeral service will be held at 10 a.m., Saturday, July 12, 2008 at Cook Walden Funeral Home, 6100 N. Lamar, Austin (Viewing permitted one hour before services). Graveside service will follow at Live Oak Cemetery, Manchaca, Texas.
Beyond the rim of the starlight, my love is wandering in star flight. I know he’ll find In star clustered reaches Love, strange love A starwoman teaches.
I know his journey ends never. His Star Trek will go on forever. But tell him while He wanders his starry sea, Remember, Remember me.
I was woken from a dead sleep this morning at 7:00 am to be told that Ann Johnson had passed away during the night from respiratory complications.
Several years ago when she left her townhome for an assisted living facility she asked me to oversee the moving of her stuff. It took me far longer than any reasonable person should expect; about a year all told. The delay was on my end, not hers. Patience was never one of Ann’s virtues, but she showed far more patience with me than I had any right to expect.
During the course of sifting through the volumes of video tapes housing the most cherished memories of her lifetime, the crates of magazines and fanzines for the various shows and groups she was following or was a member of; and, of course, the tons of collectibles and artwork that she had amassed through a lifetime of collecting, I found the following photograph.
I thought at the time “this is the way I want to remember Ann.” I’m glad that I was able to dredge up a copy from the records so that I could post it here.
I stumbled across this Obit The Wife wrote for Ann while going through electronic documents the other day. I have combined the obituary with the article I wrote the morning that she died and made a whole new article of it.
