Walt Halen is 100

I was laying in bed this morning listening to the pitter patter of rain on the roof and down the rain gutter, my hand on my wife’s back and cat nestled between my legs thinking about how my Dad would have been 100 years old this week.

Wait a minute. What’s this “would have” stuff. He is 100 years old this week. October 20 to be more precise. When he passed away, died, moved on, transitioned, took his last breath on March 17, 2017 he did not become a “was.” His body, the one that helped bring me into the world, had reached the end of it’s functionality.

But, in my belief system at least, life doesn’t end when the body dies. My Dad, Walter Eugene Halen, is as alive today as he was on the day he was born, when his small town doctor took him to his house and nursed him back to health from a bout with double pneumonia, when he walked across the newly completed Golden Gate Bridge with cousin Ted, when he was an 18 year old recruit to the Citizens Military Training Corps stationed at Camp Roberts on California’s Central Coast, when he walked the streets of Calcutta, India assimilating experiences that would lead him to study Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley in the late 1940’s, when he survived a serious car crash before I was born, when he took us camping every Summer at Morro Bay State Park, when he taught me to backpack and love the outdoor natural world, when we kicked the table out from under the dinner table horsing around at dinner, when he taught Sunday School at the First Methodist Church of Visalia.

When he practiced tough love on me to get me back into life after I moved back home in my mid 20’s, when he worked 34 years for the Tulare County Health Department, when he continued working in public health at the Tule River Indian Reservation until his mid 80’s when it became too difficult to drive up to Springville.

When he finally agreed (with my Mom) that it was time to move into a place where they could be properly taken care of and moved down to Camarillo into Alma Via to be close to my sister and her family, when he (with the help of Grandson Brandon), planted a small garden in the courtyard at Alma Villa, up to the very moment that he took his last breath.

And still today. Dad is still around. Physically only in photographs, but his spirit lives on. For me, I know he is here because of my ferocious defense of liberalism and the fairness, justice and equity that he spent his life sharing and teaching. If my words in this Blog sometimes seem extreme, partisan and maybe even a little over the top, it’s because of what he taught me and continues to teach me. He was not the fiery type. That’s me. He is the steady, committed, faith driven man that believes in the sanctity of life and the practice of the teachings derived from his deep belief in God.

Happy 100th Birthday, Dad. Here’s to 101!