Your father-in-law sounds like an amazing and very brave man. Is he a well-known person?
In some circles he was, yeah. He died in 2000. He honestly was the best man I've ever met, and I respected him greatly. I'm very honored to have known him and thankful that he was there to be such a good influence on my kids.
When he was dying, my MIL completely denied it and wouldn't talk about it etc. That meant that nobody would talk about it or admit he was dying. I don't think his kids really knew he was because of how she was. I told my husband that he was dying and that he didn't have long and because his family never talked about emotions or anything unpleasant and he was so hesitant to do that, I had to make him talk privately to his dad and tell him that he loves him before we left to go home. He was very glad I did that and very nervous and uncomfortable at the time, doing it, but afterwards he thanked me and he's told his brother and sisters that thanks to me he was able to have closure and know that his dad died knowing that he was loved.
I talked to my FIL alone the day we left. We both talked about the fact that he was dying but my MIL couldn't admit it. I thanked him for being there for us and for being the influence on my kids that he was, and we said our goodbyes. I also was a devout Catholic at the time and gave him my beautiful crystal rosary. He was a devout Southern Baptist. I told him that I knew he wouldn't want to use it for prayer and that it was blessed by a priest so when he felt he needed strength, which he would need before long, to hold it and pray. He thanked me and said he would. The next night he was taken to the hospital with a dissecting aneurysm. It was leaking so it took several hours for him to lose consciousness and die, but he asked for that rosary and they buried it with him.
I can't stand my MIL. She's silly, shallow, emotionally dead, and a real b*tch. She cares more about money than people, and she's the most selfish person I ever met. He loved her though and probably wouldn't have lived long without her if she had gone first. As it is now, she's deaf as a post, senile, can't walk or stand or take care of herself, and is close to 90 and in decent health otherwise and still living at home but my brother in law and his lazy *ss spoiled 22 year old son lives there with her and my BIL takes care of her. My nephew stays in his room playing video games, smoking pot and being waited on hand and foot by his dad. My BIL takes care of his mother and the kid. This is mean, but I do wish it had been her that went first.
I remember when he died that my MIL got a letter from a couple of presidents and from Donald Sutherland, along with several high up people in the government. She's got those somewhere in her room with the other papers. I also remember during the first gulf war, back when they kept showing that bomb that could go through a door. My FIL watched it and took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed at the tv and said he worked on that tracking system. He oversaw it. He was glad to see how well it worked.
I've got tons of stories about him. The John Wayne one was so cool. John Wayne wanted to hold the starlight scope that my FIL had brought to the movie set. He had brought it in a military transport plane, in a briefcase handcuffed to him, with a military escort to the set and nobody could touch it but him. He got to meet John Wayne of course, and JW wanted to hold it. My FIL said "I can't believe I'm telling you no, and I hate to say this to you, but no sir, I can't let you touch it." Then they talked about military equipment.
He met Donald Sutherland when my FIL was somewhere on some business for the govt and Sutherland was in the same place filming a movie. There was a cafeteria there and every morning everybody went there to eat. Sutherland saw my FIL sitting there alone eating every morning going over papers and noticed that my FIL had a different pipe he smoked every day. After about a week he came over to him and asked him why he had a different pipe and they struck up a conversation and they started eating breakfast with each other every day. They exchanged addresses and would write to each other occasionally and saw each other whenever my FIL or he and my MIL were vacationing in the same place Sutherland happened to be at the time, and my in laws would go on vacation every year to great places so it was a few times. He never told anybody about being friends with him or bragged about it. The only way my husband and his siblings found out was when they saw vacation pictures one time that had him in a couple of them with my in laws. Most people I know would at least mention it to a friend! My FIL never did. He didn't see Sutherland as any different than anybody else, just somebody whose job was to be in front of people entertaining them. Then again, he met a lot of well known government people. I have a photo of him at some white house dinner in a tux at the table with a lot of people. My MIL has pictures of him shaking hands with Presidents and other folks like that. They aren't displayed or anything, just stuck on a page in her photo albums. They have the 42nd Rainbow Veterans hat he had from being president of it and the ceremonial cane that the president got for it and a framed one dollar bill that he got as "salary" for being president of the thing all displayed on the wall, but thats the only thing like that they have in the house, and that's not really a big deal. If I was them I would have framed the photo's of him shaking hands with presidents and put them on the wall lol.
. He was part of the escort and protection of supply ships moving across the atlantic. He served with the Canadian expeditionary force, on flower class corvettes and two destroyers, he was a gunner and eventually a sharpshooter by the end of the war. He took part in the liberation of the Netherlands.
