My dad passed away Tuesday July 24, 2012 at the age of 80 after a multiple year battle with Parkinsons. While it was a sad day it was not a bad day. He was very frail and had not been self sufficient for quite some time. His passing brings to an end his suffering in this world. It is not his demise that I want to remember here, it is his life.
Ralph Piburn was born in 1931 in the Kansas City area to Helen and Earl Piburn. While never completing a four year college he did get an education in drafting and became an estimator for a construction company in Kansas City. He also got his pilots license and followed that up with an Instrument and Commercial Transport rating. He was fortunate while at the construction company that he had access to the company plane for both business and personal travel. Tax codes were very different then and allowed many expenses to be written off that would not be allowable today. He was introduced to my mom on a blind date. The outcome of that was a wedding to Patsy Lou Clauser and the birth of my sister Jennifer and I. Until I was five I did not know people drove more than an hour somewhere. If we needed to go visit Grandma in southern Missouri it was off to the airport and into the plane. I was very young and while I knew we flew a lot I did not understand that the trade off was a pretty meager paycheck for my dad. My mom stayed at home with my sister and I. Pursuit of a better paycheck took us on a journey up and down the middle of the country as my dad continued to work his way up the ladder in the construction business. Stops included Baton Rouge, Springfield, MO, Indianapolis, and then Wausau Wisconsin.
Wausau was where we settled and my sister and I finished high school and started college. Northern Wisconsin is where he and I would fish like crazy and have a family campout every summer for a week or two. We would also fit in plenty of other camping weekends. Dad's ability to draw storm clouds by merely pitching a tent was legendary and earned him the monicker "Rainy Ralph." His fellow employees would ask if he planned to camp on a given weekend so they could adjust their plans accordingly. Rain aside what he really loved to do was fish, and fish we did! In his younger years he hunted but his desire to harvest game faded. Fish received no such quarter. We would fish from the ice out through the summer and into the Fall. With time and experience we actually became pretty good at it. Fishing openers would be in pursuit of walleye, as the season wore on we would go after bass, trout, crappie, and anything else that would bite. One fish that he would not turn down was perch and he was not terribly picky about their size because they all tasted good. A picture of our catch of small perch earned him another moniker which was a play on his initials; RLP. Smart aleck coworkers decided that stood for Real Little Perch. Say what they want to, we would clean them all, fry them all, and eat them all and I have never had better fish anywhere.
Another activity that we enjoyed together was skiing. Our whole family learned to ski once we moved to Wausau though our start may have not been too auspicious. The first year there Jen and I got lessons and really took to the sport. The next year my dad thought he would give it a go. To economize we didn't go the big hill (Rib Mountain, now known as Granite Peak) we went to a town park disguised as a ski area called Sylvan Hill. To further economize formal lessons for dad were dispensed with and left to me to educate him on the finer points. I was eleven years old. I still sucked at skiing. The great thing about Sylvan Hill is that you did not need to learn how to ride a chairlift, they didn't have any. They had rope tows. To the uninitiated a rope tow looks like a simple device and it really is, until you grab the rope. Two things then happen, either your grip power is sufficient and you move up hill or the rope slides mockingly through your mittens. If you are in the lucky minority that has grip power to easily move up the hill and actually know how to keep your skis straight and stand tall you will be delivered to the top of the lift where you will hopefully exit the ski track. At the top if you cannot exit the ski track you will relive the experience in reverse, albeit at a higher speed and without the benefit of seeing where you are going. After several false starts involving crashes and vocabulary expansion for me at the bottom of the lift my dad and I were finally at the top of the hill. After an exhaustive lesson to him on my part on turning and stopping (it may have lasted 30 seconds) we decided to head down hill and see what happened. The inevitable happened. Right at that place where he should have made that first turn he did not. Failing making that turn it was prudent to stop. He could not. Well, could not while standing and in control anyway. The crash that ensued was very impressive considered the meager vertical rise and pitch of the run. Good fortune prevailed and no joints or bones were injured, only a cut across the bridge of his nose. One look at his nose told you it was time to go in and get it looked at by those familiar with first aid. Even a Sylvan Hill rope tow lift operator thought so. The issue though was that dad was having the time of his life and we continued to go up and flail down that hill for hours before heading home. Upon arrival home my mom looked at his nose and said they were heading straight to the emergency room. He said that was fine, but that they were going skiing next weekend. They did.
They were also there to watch me ski race through high school and lend support as gate keepers or score keepers. Their love of the sport despite learning it late in life has certainly rubbed off on me. Their desire to support me in it has led me to do the same for my daughters.
Upon my graduation from high school economic realities suggested that dad look for opportunities outside of Wausau and that took he and mom to the Chicago area. Eventually, a job change took them to the Gold Coast of Chicago where they had a nice lifestyle as empty nesters with a killer apartment with a Lake Michigan view. Unfortunately, my mom became stricken with cancer and passed away in the Spring of 1990. A couple of years passed and he met a wonderful woman named Alena Bila who he married. During his years in downtown Chicago the pressure on him was impossible to imagine. At this point in his career he was a construction manager which meant he owned the project from ground breaking to completion. His reputation as one who could get them most behind schedule project done on time earned him the unenviable task of getting every difficult assignment. This always involved long times away from home, 80 hour work weeks, and the reward of another behind schedule project as soon as he got one done. His skill at this should not be underestimated. He had projects a third done that were destroyed by a tornado yet still started them over and got them done on time. Eventually, he had to retire from this and he and Alena settled in the suburbs of Chicago.
As I look back at his life I hope he felt the same sense of pride that I do. Two kids that he put through the University of Wisconsin. One an esteemed scientist heading up research at a large pharmaceutical company and myself a sales guy for a large technology company. He leaves behind four grand kids that are part of solid, happy families. He also leaves behind families able to enjoy our time together because we learned to do that from our parents. Thank you Mom and Dad for all your gifts, guidance, and support. I only hope I can leave such a legacy and that if I do it because of what you provided me.
Thank you Alena for taking care of him and being his advocate through an incredibly trying and difficult condition. Short demises look like a blessing in comparison.
