Sad Day
And such a waste. Donna and I attended the wake/viewing of a co-worker tonight. He was more than an acquaintance, not really a friend, but only because we traveled in different circles. He was that way, friendly to everyone and I bet that if you needed help he would do it without regard. Wayne was in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the Fourth of July weekend he was riding his trike (a chopper with a VW bug engine) down a main commercial street in town when a woman jumped her red light and pushed him into a ditch and ran over him. After a hospital stay he returned home to start recovery. He needed skin grafts for his arm that was burnt on his hot exhaust when the trike rolled over him and lots of physical therapy. We thought all was well, but a short while ago he started having seizures. Unsure what was causing them he was readmitted to the hospital, where died from a reported blood clot in his lung. I apologize if I’m hazy and maybe wrong on some of the details, but I’d ask about how Wayne was doing every other week or so and mostly got the positive side of things. Because we are a decent sized company in a small town, where Donna and I worked with Wayne also employed his wife, his brother, an aunt and his sister-in-law. His other brother was who I entrusted some of the Miata maintenance to when the warranty expired. In a weird twist of fate, the woman who hit him is the niece of some one else who works at the plant too.
You hug the crying wife and squeeze the shoulder of the red-eyed brothers, but the hardest part of the whole evening was seeing 6′-6″, 250 lb, Robert Turner, a Vietnam Vet who still has a limp from a shrapnel wound and tough as nails, reduced to blubbering at the loss of someone he has worked side by side with for the last 27 years.
So long Wayne, the world is a much worse place now that you are not in it.