Obituary of William A. Domelle (1918 - 2012)

Last Tuesday my grandfather passed away.  He was just over a month shy of his 94th birthday.  I am grateful to have had the opportunity to visit with him in the past couple of weeks, his health declined very rapidly at the end, and he was able to pass away peacefully, in his own home.

I can't say enough for the good that hospice workers do.  It must be so hard to walk into a house where you've been told to go, and you don't know what you are walking into what with worried and stressed relatives.  Hospice workers are people who embody how we all should be acting towards one another.

My grandfather was born on a farm in northwest Indiana.  He always called it "flat, flat, flat" when I asked him about it.  His parents were immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (specifically from the western part of what is now modern-day Romania) and he remembered them speaking in German to each other when they didn't want the kids to know what they were saying.  :-)

He was super intelligent - the type of person that would say, okay, I'm going to build a house now for my family - and he did!  He learned what he needed to and just did it.  Nothing stopped him.  In the early 1980s, he decided he wanted to learn computers, and he did, in his spare time!  In the last week, I saw receipts and letters and manuals for computers I'd never heard of from the 80s.  He was exchanging letters with people discussing nitty-gritty details about computing that I couldn't even begin to understand.

He was one of the hardest working people I will ever know.

He spent his life doing carpentry and construction, and once he retired from that, he got terrible arthritis.  He never complained though.  And he always ate whatever you put in front of him.  We asked once about that, like my mom would ask him what his preference was for dinner and such and he would never really give her the preference.  He always said that if someone was going to go through the trouble of making food for him to eat, then he was going to eat it.  It is a good philosophy and one which makes me feel I owe my mother an apology for being a picky eater as a child!

I miss you Grandpa, and I love you!

 

Below is the text of his obituary:


MILLERSBURG - William A. Domelle, 93, passed away Tuesday at his home.

Born in Newton County, Indiana, on September 16, 1918, son of the late William and Elizabeth Obendorfer Domelle.  He met his future wife, Anna G. Mix, in 1938, and they married in 1942. They lived in Millersburg for the past 30 years.

He was a retired self employed carpenter.

He was pre-deceased by his wife of 68 years, Anna, 2010, and a son Stephen, 1998.

Surviving are his two loving daughters, Deborah Kleylein, Philadelphia and Rebecca Lucas, Lykens; 9 grandchildren; numerous great grandchildren; one brother Peter, Indiana.

Services will be held at the convenience of the family.

Tombstone Tuesday - John Francis Mix

My Great Uncle John Francis Mix died in 1981.  I've posted his obituary in a past entry (here) and recently I scanned this picture taken on May 26, 1995 of his gravestone.

My Mom always referred to him as Uncle Johnny so that's what I've always called him during my research.  I have a vague memory of meeting him before he died, but it's not corroborated my the memories of my Mom or Aunt.  So much for memory!!!  :-)

He's buried in Hector Union Cemetery, in Burdett, Schuyler County NY.

Tombstone Tuesday - 19 June 2012

This is the grave marker for my paternal grandparents Leon and Sophia (Pawlak) Kleylein.  It's located in Dade Memorial Park in Florida.  It's odd to see my own last name on a gravesite, the only other place I've ever really seen it was in a cemetery in Germany when we visited the area from which all Kleyleins sprang forth (northeast Bavaria).

For instance, below, there's 5 of them just on this one memorial to the fallen from World War I and II that's located in the small town of Unterrodach, Germany.  It's a strange surname, can't really be translated to anything and you might think, oh, it's German, it should probably be "Kleilein" and sometimes it is, but more often it's "Kleylein", even on really old records.  Maybe one day we'll figure it out!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers and mother-figures out there! 

But most of all, Happy Mother's Day to MY mother!  Love you Mom!

Mother, the ribbons of your love are woven around my heart.  
   
~Author Unknown

Destiny Cannot be Escaped

So, dictionary.com provides one of the definitions of "destiny" as "the predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events".

Just keep that in the back of your minds while I tell my little story...

My favorite Star Trek character, ever since I was a little girl, is Spock.  He's so trustworthy and reliable and smart.  He knows everything and he won't yell at you about it, even if you do something really dumb, which we have to admit, Kirk did all the time.

I was introduced to science fiction by my Dad who grew up loving it.  I never became a super-duper die-hard science fiction fan, I admit, but I've read the important ones, the Foundation books, the Dune books, all of Ray Bradbury (oh man I love Bradbury).  And I love sci-fi movies.  It's very likely that one of the reasons I always had a soft spot for Spock is that I felt like he was like my Dad.  Even the pointed ears.  Ok, just kidding on that one.  But they were both tall, slim and had dark hair.  And both always knew the answer to every question and were very logical.  I never felt that I was like that - I'm neither tall, slim, or have dark hair.  I felt like I didn't know anything but had feelings about everything.  I was always a very feeling type person.  I have sympathy.  I have empathy.  More, really, than I wish I had. 

My poor Dad would try to tutor me for my math classes which for some reason, starting in high school, I never did well in.  I remember just not getting ANYTHING he was trying to tell me.  I excelled with the word stuff - english, writing, literature classes were my forte.  To this day I find math very frustrating.  I think one of the issues was that I was one of those people (still am actually) that makes a leap to the answer of something.  I was never someone who could show my work.  Even when writing, I didn't make notes, or create an outline of my paper.  When the deadline came, I sat down and just wrote it.  It sprung fully formed from my forehead as they say.  Sometimes, when we were required to turn in our outlines ahead of time before the actual paper was due, I'd write the paper and then just figure out an outline to turn in.  I just don't think in that one logical step at a time way.

Not feeling like a logical person, I ended up majoring in Psychology in college - it's hard to get more liberal in Liberal Arts than that, right?

One weird thing?  I had to take a statistics class.  I LOVED it.  Totally aced it.  The rest of my math classes were all remedial - only what I had to take in order to graduate and I struggled with them. A strange anomaly in my anti-math career.

Being unable to follow in my Dad's footsteps into Computer Science due to my broken math abilities, I ended up temping when I got out of college and fell accidentally into the Pharmaceutical field.  I worked many years in Regulatory - the department that works with Health Authorities to get drugs approved.

When I finally ended up leaving Pharma a few years back, I ended up at a firm that does consulting work for Pharma companies.  I found myself in the software department, Product Management to be exact.  There I've created requirements for software based on my years of experience in Regulatory.

And meantime, something was happening.  Something quiet and insidious.  I was accidentally absorbing programming concepts from the software developers around me.

It didn't really hit me until the other day.  I was having a conversation with my father about something going on at work.  He responded to me describing situations he's been in (he's been in the technical world for ever - starting with programming, eventually running a data center).

I suddenly realized as he was talking that I TOTALLY UNDERSTOOD EVERYTHING HE WAS SAYING!

Was it the first time ever?  There is a strong possibility it was.

And I realized then that I had actually managed to follow in my father's footsteps even though I had done everything possible to go the opposite direction.  What could be more anti-Spock than a degree in touchy-feeling-tell-me-all-your-problems-and-I'll-help-you-Psychology!!!!  I know, right??????

And yet here I was.  And even crazier?  I love what I do.  How about that?

So beware out there.  Your destiny awaits.  :-)