Doc Schmatjen

Best dad ever!

My dad passed away this morning. He was 86 years old.

He had a really cool, well-lived life that was ended by Lewy Body Dementia - I highly recommend living your life like he did, but I do not at all recommend the Lewy Body part at the end. That part sucked.

It was a seven-year slide, from when he was first diagnosed, until this morning. We all got very lucky because he was never bedridden, and he knew who we all were right through the end. That is a blessing and a half when it comes to the dementias!

His name was Dave, but only people he met later in life called him that. He was Smidge to his Air Force buddies, and Doc to anyone that knew him from his life prior to leaving home for his very first ride in an airplane – one that he got to fly himself – a T-38 trainer jet owned by Uncle Sam.

Out of high school in the late fifties and looking for his next adventure, he had the choice of buying the fastest car in the county – a flathead Ford V8 – or paying for his first year of college. He said it was a pretty tough choice because the Ford was really sweet…, but he ultimately chose college, and that set the stage for his career.

He majored in Chemistry, so naturally he became an airline pilot. It was a career choice heavily influenced by a war. Vietnam was ramping up as he was graduating from Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas (population: triple when school’s in), and he decided rather than risk being drafted, he’d choose his own fate.

Being a college grad meant he could go directly to officer training school for the Air Force, and being up in the sky seemed like a better choice than down on the ground. He was a smart guy.

After all the free flight training and heavy cargo plane experience during the war, becoming a commercial airline pilot was a natural path, because Western Airlines didn’t care what his college major was.

He met my mom while he was still in the Air Force, and they raised us in one town, despite the fact that his “home airport” changed multiple times throughout his commercial career. So, he tacked on a day’s worth of commuting to either side of his trips so that we didn’t have to keep switching high schools. That was really nice of him.

They also decided to take full advantage of the family flying benefits when we were kids, so we had a lot of amazing cross-country and international vacations growing up. I really only fully appreciated what they did for us once I had kids of my own. The paying for the kids’ airline tickets is one thing, but you also have to be with them in the airports and on the planes! My parents were rock stars when it came to traveling with us. But think about that from my dad’s perspective. He flies to go fly, then flies after flying, and when he gets home, he voluntarily flies again in his spare time, but with his little kids.

That would be like if you were an accountant and had to do math in order to get home, only to have to do your kids’ taxes on the weekends. We were blessed.

By the way, he was also good at taxes.

He also loved to work with his hands. He taught me mechanics as I watched him and “helped” him fix our cars – many times things that I broke. He built houses, he built furniture, and he even built a Zenith TV from a mail order kit when we were little. It worked for a long, long time!

Not surprisingly, he turned out to be an amazing grandpa as well, going by Papa Doc to his six grandkids – only because none of them could have had any idea there used to be a cruel Haitian dictator by the same name. We kept that to ourselves.

Here’s our Papa Doc wrestling with our three boys long ago.

(François Duvalier would never have allowed the boys to pin him like that. He would have had them locked up for treason.)

Of all my memories of my amazing dad, what I will always cherish the most about him is his sense of humor. It was the best.

He had a sharp wit, perfect comedic timing, and he was a lover of puns.

Unfortunately, he was also a lover of long, drawn-out jokes with corny punchlines. Basically, really long dad jokes. He had a bunch of them, but for whatever reason, this one has been rolling around in my mind the last few days.

I will leave you with this. Enjoy, if possible…

A frog hops into a bank and goes to the loan officer, Patricia Black, asking for a line of credit for his lily pad renovations. The frog explains that Keith Richards, the famous rock guitarist, is his father.

She’s understandably skeptical, but takes the frog’s information and then informs him that the bank will need some sort of collateral to be able to loan him any money. The frog says “Sure,” then hops back out to his car, returning quickly with a small porcelain figurine of a little green frog sitting on top of a colorful mushroom.

The loan officer isn’t quite sure what to make of it, so she consults her bank manager showing him the figurine, and explaining the situation. “I mean, what is this? What should we do here?”

The bank manager replies quickly, “That’s a knickknack, Patty Black, give that frog a loan. His old man’s a Rolling Stone.”

[insert groans here]

He lived for the groans.

Love you, Pops!,

-Smidge Jr.