Well, my father-in-law passed away today at about 3:15 pm, approximately five minutes before Richard and I arrived in Youngstown. His last few days were relatively peaceful, I understand, and he was himself until the very end.

Everyone who knew my father-in-law will agree that he was a character. The first time I met him, we were eating dinner and my mother-in-law asked me if I wanted seconds on something . . . he quipped, "She doesn't look like she misses too many meals." Luckily, I realized immediately that you just couldn't take those kinds of comments seriously, or I would have suffered greatly over the years . . . but as my brother-in-law pointed out to me long ago, this kind of honesty and plain speaking meant that you always knew where you stood with him. Happily for me, I stood in his good graces.

Possibly my favorite father-in-law story concerns the time he was playing in a golf tournament with a fellow he didn't know very well. My father-in-law was a fabulous golfer; there are newspaper clippings all over attesting to the local tournaments that he and his brothers won. On this particular day, though, Emil's partner wasn't playing too well, and Emil got more and more disgusted. Finally, at the end of the tournament, he told the guy, "I know what you need to do! You need to take two weeks off the game!! AND THEN QUIT!!!" We've laughed over that one for years . . .

So, it's with some amusement and a great deal of pleasure that I tell one last Emil story from the past 24 hours. Last night he was very weak, bedridden, and asking for morphine. Kathy apparently wasn't getting it for him fast enough because he said something on the order of, "Jesus Christ, I'm dying! Give me some morphine!"

So he died the way he lived: Completely aware of what was happening to him, completely in control, and completely willing to call 'em as he saw 'em . . .

I'm going to miss him. I really am. 'Bye, Grandpa . . .