I attended high school with Bart.  We played football together and I remember more than once when Bart had a sugar issue with his diabetes, the coach would holler out, "Somebody run to the Tastee Freeze and get a candy bar!"  He and I worked on securing the concrete "wolf" statue for the Cut Bank High school - Bart's creative idea.  And one time he rode with our wrestling team to the state competition in Missoula in 1972 - as the "official" reporter for our high school newspaper, The Livewire.  I made the "threat" that if I won I would "steal" the street sign near our motel with my first name on it.  After the tournament, Sunday morning, Bart came to our back window and asked if I wanted it,  I said, "Sure" (especially if he was fetching it!) and he pulled the whole thing, both street names off the post!  "What do we do now?"  It wasn't long until the police showed up and we nicely handed it back to them.  I always wondered later that if the cops pressed charges, "Just how would that look in the Cut Bank Pioneer Press to read that the Cut Bank High School student body president was serving time for theft!"  :-)  But they didn't, knowing it was simply an innocent high school "celebration"!  Bart and I had many good conversations about God and His son Jesus Christ and the wonderful gift of salvation especially over that last year of high school.    I was unaware of his passing until now, yet I will genuinely miss him, a dear friend.

One of my favorite memories of grandpa is when while him and grandma were staying at our house and he wore a Superman onesie and then told me and my sisters a bedtime story. It just showed us how much he loved us and how much we meant to him because he did it just to make us laugh.

Facebook post from Dad on May 2, 2020: 

"I saved your life"

Many years ago, without going into all the details, I was at Mom and Dad's Kalispell house, and my blood sugar had dipped life threatening low. I lost consciousness and paramedics had to be called to resuscitate me with needed injections.

I was home alone with Dad while Mom had gone to a wedding shower many miles away. I was napping downstairs and unaware that my blood sugar was falling while Dad napped upstairs in his chair. Alzheimer's had fully gripped him.

I vaguely remember somehow making it upstairs to the kitchen barstools in an attempt to get sugar. Then I completely blacked out. Dad awoke and saw me struggling. He came and braced me from falling off the stool. He was incapacitated by Alzheimer's and could do nothing but hold me. He didn't know anything else to do, but hold me.

By the grace of God, Mom felt the need to come home early, and upon finding me called 911. I was literally minutes, not hours, away from dying if my blood sugar wasn't reversed.

I can only imagine Dad's panic as he stood alone and felt me passing away. Maybe the closest feeling was that I felt later as I held his hand in the hospice as his life passed in his last minutes.

Later, when the paramedics left and things settled, Dad went back to his recliner. I heard him repeating, "I saved your life. I saved your life" For a brief moment I thought "no, Dad, you just held me up. It was Mom coming home early and calling 911 that saved me.

But I stopped. In a second I realized he had saved my life. He didn't just save it that day, but everyday he had been my dad, and taught me about life, and being a man, and caring.

With each example he as saving my life.

But, now I know, as other times threatened my life, it isn't just Dad who saved my life. Cindy, my wife has saved my life. She saved it while giving me a reason to live while holding my hand when I was on a ventilator in the hospital room, and saved my life in so many ways, in so many times.

And my children, and my family, and anyone who said a kind word when a kind words was needed. All have saved my life.

I forgot to thank Dad for saving my life. I don't want to error again.

Thank you, Cindy, and Mom, and children and family and all others. Thank you for saving my life each day I live.

Thank you, my Christ. for saving my life eternal.

❤️

Always a Beaver. Taken on Fathers Day

Courtney, both mine and Dave’s condolences to you and your family…