1. Around 10:30, Joni and Stu swung by and picked me up and we bolted uptown to the funeral home to pay our respects to Gary Sieverding (KHS Class of 71) who died a week ago and to support our Class of 72 classmate, Wanda, who had been married to Gary for nearly forty-nine years.
The room was packed. Gary lived in the Silver Valley his entire life and knew a lot of people and has numerous relatives here and elsewhere. Gary's sister, Patty, eulogized her brother and told several stories about Gary not only being accident and injury prone, but some of the creative ways he dealt with stuff that happened to him. Once he pulled his own tooth when he had a toothache. He treated cuts with super glue rather than get them stitched up. He had a badly infected toe that he made better by soaking in some kind of solution day after day, refusing to let a doctor treat it.
Gary was a wizard working on cars, fixing them, rebuilding them, restoring them and Patty spoke most sadly about the fact that after he suffered a stroke a few years ago, all of his know how about cars and trucks vanished. It was a grievous loss for Gary.
The service featured a slide show focused on pictures of Gary throughout the years, from the time he was a little boy right up to his final years.
2. When the service ended, I piled into Diane's son-in-law's Dodge Charger and she and I rocketed out to the land on the Coeur d'Alene River, just north of the Pine Creek/Pinehurst trailhead on the Trail of the CdAs, that Diane and one of her sisters recently purchased and we walked to where Diane plans to park a trailer once the weather warms up. It's a nice chunk of land with a lot of trees and places to be near the river. Diane is stoked about spending time there relaxing.
We then made our way up French Gulch a short ways and attended the post-funeral potluck and Celebration of Life for Gary.
Gordon and Sheila Milholland hosted this reception in a good-sized shed on their property. I sat at a table with other members of the Class of 72 and had a great time talking with Stu, Jim and Sue, and Mitzi. I drank a couple of Miller Lites while we visited and enjoyed being a part of such a warm and fun get together, a fitting tribute to Gary's enjoyment of fun, food, friends, stories, and laughter.
3. I wrapped up this Kellogg High School-focused day by going to the monthly All-Class Reunion meeting at 6:30. Because the different people who have been assigned tasks have been doing their work, we didn't have much to talk about. Lori summed up what has been done, addressed a few things involving money, and by around 7:00, we didn't have anything else to talk about and the meeting ended.
Back home, Debbie filled me in some on her day of conferences with her students' parents.
She has fewer conferences on Tuesday and then will have Wednesday through Sunday off.
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