Hi everyone. After a long bout with Parkinson's and Leukemia, my father passed away on Friday morning at the age of 73.

At age 20, he was drafted and served in Vietnam in the 25th infantry division. He was decorated twice. Occasionally, he served as a "Tunnel Rat": a soldier who would crawl through tunnels dug by the Viet Cong that were used to covertly move or hide men and materiel.

During the war, he told me he read 3 books: On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Limbo by Bernard Wolfe, and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. After the war he bummed around the country, taking odd jobs here and there. In early 1971 during a trip to Montreal, he met my mother. They were married in December of that year and remained so until his Death.

I'll never forget how he would bust his ass to put food on our table. In the warmer months he had his own landscaping business though in lean years it was often him alone digging trenches, installing sprinklers, shoveling rock, rolling sod and ...