Calvin Cope Hale II - Yup, it is true. If you are reading this, I am dead. I am not up in the clouds looking down at you playing a golden harp. I am not meeting with friends who died before me.
I've not gone home to anyone's arms. I am dead. I am also not burning in a lake of fire or being tortured for the rest of eternity. I am just dead. And someday, you'll be dead too. It's just the nature of life.
I was born on April 6, 1947 in Pittsburgh, Pa. I died on January 12, 2020 in Lexington, Virginia. I was 72 years old.
I was fortunate to wear many hats while I was alive. A partial list includes Boy Scout (Eagle Scout), soldier (Vietnam), professor (University of Missouri, Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences), scientist (thirty-five-plus peer-reviewed publications), vineyard owner and winemaker (Lexington Valley Vineyard), lifelong dog owner (too numerous to list), self-taught gourmet in the kitchen. (A note here, anybody that can do biochemistry can cook. One only needs apply one's self).
As important as the aforementioned hats were, they were not my favorite or most cherished hats. Rather the greatest joy in my life was my relationship to my wife, Janet Dolores Hale nee Schwan, daughter, Lisa Jeannine Decrozant nee Hale, son, Ryan Heath Hale, and grandson, Heath Barton Boettcher. As of this writing, these family members survive me.
As you can imagine, there will be no fancy funeral or anything close to that. So there is nowhere to send flowers. However, should you feel the need to do something in my name, I do have a few favorite charities/nonprofits that I have supported over the years. They include: The ASPCA, Planned Parenthood, The Southern Poverty Law Center, and The American Civil Liberties Union.
And finally, a few words from the poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox's closing lines of her poem "Solitude":
"Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain."
Kind of sums a lot of things up, don't ya think?
