My Dad

The twentieth anniversary of my father’s death is fast approaching.  My dad was an amazing man – generous to a fault and so smart it scared people.

He was living in Conway before he died, doing work for whoever needed a handyman.  He was a very talented finish carpenter.  He and his father had milled all the lumber and did all the interior work for the bar at F.X. McRory’s in downtown Seattle years ago.  He was very proud of that bar and frequented it often, as he did many other bars – wherever he was living.  My dad came from a moonshining family in southern Missouri and he liked to drink, but he was a happy drunk and quite entertaining.  He was a captivating storyteller and befriended folks everywhere he went, which actually ended up being the death of him.

Dad met a young couple in a bar one day, after he’d been paid cash for a big job he’d done in Anacortes.  The couple, Lynda Holman and Travis Cargile, were a bit low on cash and saw all the hundred dollar bills my dad was flashing.  Lynda had promised her son a hundred dollar bill for his birthday, so she started scheming on how to fulfill that promise.

What really happened, only they know, but the story they told went something like this: they met my dad and he bought them a few drinks.  They decided to go bar hopping together and along the way Lynda said she needed to stop in the woods to relieve herself.  It was her plan to “roll him” – shove him out of his van, take his wallet and vehicle and leave him in the woods.  But things didn’t exactly work out like that.

My dad’s driver’s license was revoked for a previous drunk driving ticket, so he let other people drive as often as possible.  Travis was driving, and when they turned up a dirt road out near Concrete, they supposedly hit a deer.  Dad loved to hunt and always had guns with him.  He grabbed his rifle and was going to put the deer out of its misery, but decided instead to let Travis do it.  With Dad sitting in the passenger seat, Travis took the rifle, and as he stepped out of the van, turned the gun on my dad and pulled the trigger.  He died instantly.

They drug him out of his van, took his wallet, and headed up to Canada after Lynda stopped to give her son a hundred dollar bill.  A hunter found Dad the next day in the woods.  The sheriff’s department did an excellent job putting all the pieces together and arrests were made within a week.

Lynda was in prison a little over three years, but is now serving a 28-year sentence for killing her boyfriend.  Travis will be up for parole next year, after serving 21 years for first-degree murder.

To say I miss my dad is an understatement. His death was one of the hardest things I’ve lived through, but I lived through it.  Life goes on.  I so wish he could have met my son, though. I don’t like to dwell on the fact Dad’s gone. I’d rather just think about how lucky I was to have known him in the first place.  Faults and all, he was still a great dad.