11 Suicide

My father took his own life. Blind, feeble, dependent on medication and on my mother Kathryn, Carroll was told his kidneys had failed and that he needed dialysis. He shot himself the next day. My mother was attending a funeral in Stanton, a tiny Iowa town organized around its beautiful Lutheran church ten miles east of Emerson. Carroll had planned his death around the funeral so that his older brother Harvey and not my mother would find his body, sparing my mother but upsetting Harvey terribly. Coming over as usual for coffee my uncle pushed open the front door and called:

"Carroll?"

Hearing no answer, Harvey searched the house and found my father in the garage where he had no doubt gone so as not to make a mess inside the house. My mother's housekeeping is immaculate and my father's was, too. My father had changed into a pair of coveralls so as not to soil his clothes. On the floor he had laid down a tarpaulin under the cheap folding lawn chair he sat in to do the deed. First he fired one shot up into a rafter to insure that his rifle was operating properly. Then he set the butt of it on the floor of the garage, he bowed his head until his forehead rested on the muzzle, and with a wooden paint paddle he tripped the trigger. A close friend of the family told us there wasn't much blood since the .22 bullet did not exit after entering Carroll's forehead between his eyes. A professional machinist and a fine carpenter he had engineered that, too.

My father died as he lived, a responsible, respected, and decent man.

Carroll's lifelong love and concern for his wife Kathryn, my mother, was protective, practical, and intelligent, just as it was for me, for my wife Ruth and for our two children Mary and Michael; for my first wife Leigh and for our two children Donna and Devon; for my brother Ronald and his family; and for my brother Richard and his family. Carroll's love of his three sons and nine grandchildren, my many memories of the laughter and amusements they so often brought him, the twinkle in his eye, the fun in his smile, the immense satisfaction and great pride he took in their achievements; his generous and ready acceptance of every responsibility; his organized shop and many mechanical skills; his competence, his stubborn determination, and his common sense; his courage; his personal integrity; his stern sense of public decency; his absolute faith in the trinity of nature, science, and conduct; his work for the church and for the cities of Emerson and Shenandoah—this my father's example has supported and guided me for sixty-seven years.

"These are my three boys, Robert, Ronald, and Richard," he would proudly introduce us, "and this is my wife Kathryn. She's deaf and reads lips so you have to look at her and speak slowly."

My father must have been terribly tired, sick, and sad to have done what he did.

No one loved life more.