Camilla and Solana
Chris, Norma, Bella, Calvin and a very stable, walking Solana came over for dinner last night. Steaks, corn on the cob, Gabi’s beer bread and home-made french fries. Norma brought strawberry shortcake. It was a fine time.
Solana is just amazingly stable. Walking, playing, examining everything. I missed getting a picture of the three small ones playing together: Aaron, Solana and Veronica. Very cute.
Camilla and Veronica
Leftovers from the wake. Morning, May 6, 2010.
There will be a Memorial Service for Calvin Nicklaus Steussy, MD in New Glarus, Wisconsin on July 24, 2010. Please get in touch with me by emailing ed”at”steussy.com and I will send you details.
We just had some very, very good news. Camilla has been placed at the Temecula Preparatory School, a K-12 charter school based on the curriculum of the Hillsdale Academy in Ann Arbor, Michigan. All students get a classical education, including French and Latin in the early years. AP level coursework later. And all paid for by the State of California.
The other three kids are given preferential treatment in upcoming lotteries, so given time all four should be in the same school. We have a call in to see if we can get Daniel into their second grade.
This is really good news.
Calvin and Chris, 1978
Cars. Going to the lab and kicking the machines. Horse races. Cigars. Newspapers. Miga (his dog, 1967 – 1984). Playing tennis. House at Lake Santee. New Glarus. Watching football. Grilling steaks. Reading books; typically spy novels, history and biographies. Using multi-syllabic words when they were completely unnecessary (“Don’t be so lugubrious there, Nic-head,” Dad said during a tennis game Nic was losing.)
Calvin becomes a grandfather with baby Andy.
We didn’t normally think of Dad as a family man, but the smile on his face with first grandson Andy is certainly genuine.
Miga, Dad, Santee
My great stories of Dad? He saved me at age 25, diagnosing me with malaria after a trip to Thailand. I’d been suffering for weeks and none of the US-based doctors I had seen had been able to determine what I had. With that diagnosis and only a couple of quinine pills, I was cured from an otherwise possibly fatal disease.
When I was a child, he must have read me other books but the one I remember is sitting on his lap reading Yertle the Turtle. And, in elementary school, we played the States Game, where I would read off some statistics about a state and he would unerringly guess it within three to four datapoints.
Looking to the future, I asked him six years ago why his children were all shorter than he or Mom were. “They didn’t drink enough milk,” he told me. I mentioned this to Mom recently, who replied, “Oh, I so hated being forced to drink milk when I was a child.” Yet another Mom-Camilla link. My kids now enjoy a diet including four glasses of milk a day, with rigorous enforcement. This is information I can use!
Christmas, with poinsettias and literally hundreds of presents under the tree (we counted 160+ one year when I could count that high). Playing bridge with Mom and friends. Playing Jeopardy in the living room or on the back porch. Ping pong.
Chris and the 300
My travels with him.
Our trip to Baltimore to secure his first Mercedes, shipped from Europe. Going to New York in 1970, when he braved the surly taxi drivers, surlier waiters/waitresses and other busy people for us. The Alaskan cruise, July 1976. Switzerland, 1980. The Canadian rail adventure, 1982. His visit to me in Prague in 1992, to revisit the site of his army bivouac during the battle of Cheb 1945.
Transiberian Railway
There was another visit the following year to me in Moscow. Numerous visits to the West Coast, first to a condo in San Diego and later to our homes at Christmas time. The Steussy reunion of 2008, a vast success. The Freitag reunion of 2009, even more people for this one. Mom’s October crash, 2009, when my 86 year old father would make every conceivable, irrational, irritating and heroic effort to foster his own independence.
My first visit to Indiana with my completed family was April 3 to April 10 this year. It was the first time that Dad got to see his 15th grandchild, Veronica. It was three weeks before he passed away May 3.
Goodbye, Dad.
April 10, 2010. My very last picture of Dad. He's happy.
It’s official. I will be in China from June 18 until July 1 this summer, in and about the Shanghai region. I’m giving a speech at the LISA (Localization Industry Standards Association) conference in Suzhou June 29.
It will be great fun. I have not been to China since April 1989. I heard a lot has changed since then …
Daniel gives Mom his picture
The story here is that this was unexpected. While we had done the flowers and card giving in the morning, Dad orchestrated the whole thing. The drawing above was something Daniel did on his own (during naptime). Very cute.
Some of the photos I found of Mom in storage in Indiana are here:
Gene Woodfin, 1942 (college graduation)
Carrie, Solon and Gene Woodfin, 1922 at the tuberculosis sanatorium in South Carolina. Solon died soon afterward from TB. This is the only photo I have with all three of them together.
We also celebrated Daniel’s seventh birthday here. It was delayed while I was in Indiana. I think he liked it.
Daniel is seven.
I haven’t forgotten about Dad. I still intend on writing down my thoughts on him, but I need to let them gel a bit more. And I have a lot of work that needs to be caught up with.
500 pounds of photos
I’m back in California now. Home with Daniel, Camilla, Aaron, Veronica, Gabi and Pappy.
The last week has been surreal. I will be a very long time processing it, in very many ways. One thing that happened over the week was a quick trip to the family storage shed in New Castle. I had twenty minutes to empty it of all the family photos, as well as mementos for Dad’s memorial (tennis rackets, microscope, etc.). The car sank on its shock absorbers the whole trip back to Indianapolis.
I completed 78 full scans as well as a couple hundred camera scans of the material here. It will take me a long time to sort through it, clean the images and post the best ones. Here are a few of Dad. (Click on any image to download the full size version.)
Official family photo 1969. I'd forgotten it was in color.
Dad bringing his annual poinsettias. December 1980.
Dad preparing to return a serve, late 1970's.
Dad as a young man, undated.
Also, if you haven’t gone there, please check out Helen’s blog here. It has a lot of material on Dad.
Gene and Calvin Steussy, Blue Sky, Lake Santee, 1988
Calvin Steussy, MD pathologist, at work
The Memorial Service for Calvin Nicklaus Steussy, MD will be held at :
Flanner and Buchanan Funeral Center
Washington Park East
10612 E. Washington Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46229
Thursday, May 6, 2010. 4pm to 8pm.
Please note: there will be an additional memorial service in New Glarus, Wisconsin (summer, date to be determined), where his remains will be interred.
Official bio:
Calvin N Steussy died unexpectedly May 3. He was born on Sept. 11, 1923 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After growing up in Madison, he was a freshman at Yale the year of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He enlisted in the infantry for WWII and served in France, Germany and the former Czechoslovakia where he saw combat. On his return, he attended the University of Wisconsin where he met his wife of 60 years, Gene Ragland Woodfin. They were married in Richmond, VA in 1949.
He earned his MD in 1951 and did his residency at the prestigious Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington DC. He practiced medicine at Henry County Memorial Hospital for 40 years where he was a two-term coroner, named Coroner of the Year for Indiana in 1961 and President of the Indiana Association of Pathologists. He was an adventurous traveler, voracious reader, competitive athlete and game-player, and a munificent giver of gifts.
He is survived by his wife, his sister Mary Shanahan (Larry), and five children: Cally Parkinson (Richard) of Long Grove Ill’, “Nic” (Marti) of Indianapolis, Helen (Thomas Williams) of New Castle, Indiana, Edwin (Gabriella) of Temecula, CA and Christopher (Norma Pizarro) of La Mesa, CA and 15 grandchildren. Services will be held at Flanner and Buchanan at Washington Park East at 10612 E. Washington St in Indianapolis Thursday from 4-8.
Gifts may be made to “Flight for the Land” a land conservation charity started by his daughter. His remains will be interred at the New Glarus Cemetery in New Glarus, Wisconsin next to his mother and father sometime this summer, when there will be an additional service.
Flanner and Buchanan Funeral Center
Amsterdam
My father, Calvin Nicklaus Steussy, passed away last night. It was unexpected. He was 86. I’m on a plane in a few hours and will write more later. September 11, 1923 – May 3, 2010. My brother, Christopher, has written his thoughts here, soon after we learned Dad had passed away.
Malibu 2001
Tennis with Tom, 1985
Lake Santee, 1984
Only four of them. 1955.
Wedding. 1949.
Calvin Steussy, 19, with his family
Honeymoon 1949
March Field, CA
