J. Richard Steffy

I wanted to thank everyone at INA for the support these past few days and for setting up this site. In particular, Claudia LeDoux and Wayne Smith deserve special recognition for everything they did for Dad, especially during the past year when he struggled with his health.

As many of you know, Dad spent most of last January in the hospital. He returned home, hoping to regain enough mobility to return to his computer. As his health declined and it became clear he needed more care, he decided to move into a nursing home. As we looked for a place, he had only one question in his search criteria: could he have a laptop in his room? Once he moved in, I couldn’t get the DSL connection hooked up fast enough for him.

When he wasn’t able to type, he would call colleagues and discuss his ideas. He never stopped thinking about ships. In his final days, when doctors came to check on him, they often wound up talking about Dad’s work more than his health.

The morning before he died, George Bass and Cemal Pulak stopped by. Dad could barely speak, but as Cemal talked of a new find in Turkey, I could see the familiar twinkle in Dad’s eye. His smile said it all. He was taking in every detail.

After they left, he said in a barely audible whisper, “that was nice.” A few minutes later, he he dozed off and never regained consciousness. I can’t imagine a more fitting ending to his life than to share a final conversation about ships with old friends.

On behalf of my family, I want to extend our heartfelt thanks for all the thoughts, prayers and support. Dad would be overwhelmed, as are we.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 8:22 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.