My Dad passed away in his sleep this morning after years of fighting liver cancer and Primary pulmonary hypertension. Some of you know that he has been in bad health for a long time, so I knew this was coming.
He was IHRA national drag bike champ 2 years in a row (74-75 I think?), was always into bikes, but tried to keep me off of them because he had so many injuries from wrecks. Once I got my bike he accepted it and actually was happy to see me doing track days, even came to Barber last November to watch us do our track day, but he was already in bad shape by then, and could not make it to Barber this year or Talladega.
Anyway, not much to say, he lived a LOT in short years, was born to a poor farming family in Louisiana, became a pilot, motorcycle champion, was a test pilot, worked for the stealth fighter/bomber program, used to treasure hunt with Mel Fisher in the pioneering days of SCUBA, then flew L-1011 and other jumbo jets for around 20 years until his health grounded him, and thats just the surface of what all he has done, if you have seen the movie "Big Fish" seriously, thats what the stories are like, been shot 3 different times, in horrible motorcycle wrecks, test flights gone wrong, tons of stuff.
Even after he was told he was taken off the transplant list due to the primary pulmonary hypertension (about 6 weeks ago), he kept on doing what he enjoyed until the end, this picture was taken about 3 weeks ago on a Caribbean cruise for his 1st anniversary with his wife:
