Mark T. Welch tied on his Flyin’ Shoes* Feb. 13, 2022. He lived for 8 years without an esophagus, colon and a few other organs. He might have gone earlier, but nobody could have tried harder to stay alive with so little of a working physical body.

Mark was born March 3, 1950, and grew up in Highland Park, Dallas, making friends that would last a lifetime. He was the trainer for the Highland Park Scots football team, an Eagle Scout with Troop 70 (the inspiration for his ability to create a tasty meal for a crowd), a budding hunter and fisherman, an excellent birder focusing on their calls, a player on the Black Bandits soccer team, a counselor at Camp Longhorn (keeper of the snake pit), and a proud UT graduate (Hook ’em Horns).

After graduating from SMU with an MBA in Finance, Mark went on to do his time in banking and ultimately found his true calling as CFO then CEO of 501 Studios, a film and video post-production house and studio in Austin. He was at the center of so much that he loved: film, video, music, and all the people who made it happen. One learned never to doubt his armchair critique of a TV show set design, a convincing commercial, or the long shot of a Western landscape. The misuse of loon calls in far too many productions was an endless source of bewilderment and humor.

In the late 1970s, he began to bow hunt for elk in the Flat Tops Wilderness of the Colorado Rockies and reconnected with his “big brother,” James Wood. The number of years he took off for Colorado in September is somewhere between 24 and 26, depending on who’s talking, and it was a chapter of Mark’s life that gave him incredible purpose. There is a reason he gained the nickname “Nature Boy” when he was young.

Because of a chance introduction through James and his wife, Felicity Hannay, Mark convinced Lucy Stolzenburg to abandon her single life at the foot of the Rockies and move to the Texas Hill Country to help raise two boys (and contemplate the possibility of taking all that male-produced laundry to town because the well might go dry). Marrying him was the wisest decision she ever made. Mark opened her heart to true love, family, friends, and a career she could have never imagined.

Mark leaves behind those who loved him: Lucy, his son and daughter-in-law, Matt and Sarah Welch, Matt’s stepbrother Greg Anderson, his dear friends James Wood and Felicity Hannay, and neighbors Lynn and Mark Denton. Sadly, Mark’s son Tim passed in 2021. There were many friends and neighbors who made his life so rich and for whom he held on for oh so long. We will miss the opportunity to turn to him and ask, “Now what is that bird we hear?” or, “I bet you know that native grass next to the trail.”

Mark’s ashes will be spread in the many natural environments that he loved, from the Texas Hill Country to the Colorado Rockies to Port Townsend, Washington.

The large photo above was taken at Matt and Sarah’s wedding in 2019, a ceremony that brought Mark great joy and confirmed that Matt was making exceptional choices and was incredibly lucky to have found Sarah for us all.

1. *Townes Van Zandt’s Flyin’ Shoes  https://www.youtube.com/watch…                                                                                                                                                                                     

Send to someone

Share this obituary with others

https://everloved.com/life-of/mark-welch/obituary/

Copy