Thursday, December 4, 2014
It is with deepest regrets that I am saying Good bye to one of the greatest men I have ever known.
In the books of great men, we have guys like, Paul Bunyan…. John Wayne….Audy Murphy… John Lennon…..
But they are missing one of the greatest……. Wayne McCullough
When I first met Wayne I was just a teenage kid, dating Carol’s much younger sister Ann.
Wayne was the biggest and scariest guy I had ever seen, and I was worried He wouldn’t like me. How wrong I was.
He liked almost everyone. And everyone just loved him.
We became like Brothers, He helped me…I helped Him…But I learned more from him then he ever learned from me.
I learned how to be cool.
Think like a man, not a kid.
Respect others and gain the same from them.
I always envied his restraint…..he almost never lost his temper…..probably a good thing huh?
I always viewed him as one of the lucky guys..
Good job
Loving wife and family
Many friends who respect him
And big enough to stomp the shit out of anyone who didn’t
We had a lot of fun. Remember water skiing at BA beach when I came out of the water naked, and he decided to run up and down the shore trying to knock me down….didn’t work did it?
How about our trip down to Sand Lake, Wayne and I went snorkeling to find some Crabs….Oh he found crabs all right…scared him when the bottom was covered with them and they all moved…He came shooting to the surface and was shouting something…hell I thought he saw a Shark………nope…crabs, lots of them…
Or riding the little three wheelers backwards down at Gause, School and crashing into the backstop with Carols and breaking the headlight…we had to fix it before Carol found out
Watching Carol go headfirst, into the big Mud Hole, up at Jones creek when we were riding. ……..Totally precious….I love you Carol.
Skinny dipping at the indoor pool in Portland when we stayed the weekend with Diane
And Carol tries to hide her nakedness behind an inner tube….remember inner tubes have a hole in the middle…..picture that one with a smile.
He and I demolishing that house in Camas where my childhood friend, Rusty Brumfield had lived, and I found baseball cards in the floor that Rusty and I had played with, before he had drowned in the Oak Park gravel quarry right in front of me, back when I was a little kid.
I took lots of that salvaged lumber, and made a barn into a Home with Wayne’s help, up at my mom and dads house on S street, we had some laughs doing that job.
And how that man loved that boat he built, what a noisy scary ride that one was huh?
I can remember He and I, just like many others I am sure, just blowing up the middle of the Columbia River with tears streaming out of the corners of our eyes cause the wind hurt our eyes, and loving every scary moment of it…Those were the days…Right?
How we all survived is a miracle, and now we have those memories to carry with us and make us smile.
It has always been said that you cannot pick your family, but you certainly can pick your friends.
And the best thing you can hope for is to find friends who are like family
And I found that with Wayne and Carol a very long time ago.
