From an email to my daughter, Kathy.  06-27-08.

When I was young I knew that I would not have my father around for long. I guess I was 15 when I realized that with his lifestyle, I would be lucky to have him for another ten years. To think that he would live to his 60s was, at the time, almost incomprehensible. I really thought someone would shoot him or he would catch the house on fire by smoking in bed or die in a drunken car wreck....something would happen. It was really amazing that he lived as long as he did.

Even later, I could not imagine that he would ever be able to grow old. He just wouldn't be able to adjust to a slower life style. In his last years he was slowing down a bit but there was still much of the wild, untamed part, that would never change.

I was away when he had his first heart attack and then later when his heart got worse, I didn't really even know that it was so bad. At the time Mother was dying of cancer and Pop never let on that he was not doing well. He stayed in his apartment for nearly a year, barely able to climb the stairs to take a shower. He very rarely left at all and if he did, Betty or one of her daughters drove him. He was still drinking Schlitz but only a couple a day (or so) and had cut his smoking way down. But no bars, no staying out all night playing poker or just drinking, smoking and having fun. Just sitting in that apartment day after day. He was running some parlay cards for some of the car dealers but he had someone take them around to the lots each week.

What exactly happened is not for sure but he called a couple of his old friends and invited them to go to the horse races. They said that at the races he drank like he used to do, smoked like the old days. And that he yelled and cheered the horses and just had a ball. He won a little money and he was joking and seemed to really enjoy getting out again. Then they got back in the car and headed back to Houston. As they neared Beaumont, they said all at once he just grabbed his chest and said "OH!" and was out. They pulled into a gas station where someone called an ambulance. A young man at the station performed CPR and got him to breathing again, but he died on the way to the hospital.

I don't know this for a fact, but we had many conversations about how he did not want to live a "lessor" life, saying that he if ever got cancer, he would not go through all the treatments and surgeries just to prolong his life for a while. He said when it was time to go, he would just go. I believe he had simply had enough of the "lessor" life he was having to live and decided it was time. I don't think he meant to go die. I think he decided that he was either going to LIVE and be able to do the things he loved or that would be it. So he made the call and he spent the last few hours living the way he wanted. Then he died. I don't think it could have been any better for him than to go like that.

I didn't know I would cry when I wrote this but I am. . . I know you miss him and so do I. . . So do I.