If anyone is reading this:  The memorial for Cale has been canceled.
So sorry.
Cookie 

The memorial date is set:
May 2nd
12:00 noon
Sunset Memorial Gardens
7405 Mullen Road
Missoula

I would love to hear your stories about Cale.
We will celebrate his life and have a light lunch.

Cookie 

Thinking about trying to recall and share 38 years of someone's life seems so inadequate. 
So now I'm just going to share some memories as they come to me. 
It is Christmas Eve and you are supposed to be here with me, Grandma and Grandpa Cale. I hope to understand someday..why you are not here.
 
Cale asked me to come to Tucson and share his 21st birthday with him and Lisa. I was happy to do that, to see both of them and share his celelbration of 21 years.  We drove to Lake Havasu and I watched them race around the lake on jet skiis.
The following Christmas he brought Lisa to Missoula to share our Chrismas with her.  We went up to Lost Trail to ski and celebrate New Years Eve.  My good friend Sharon Benson and her family and Lisa, Cale and I shared cabins at Lost Trail Hot Springs.  We skiied and went to a dance and good times were had by all of us. Good memories.

When Cale was four he moved to Seattle with me. I started him snow skiing with me at five years old.  A humerous memory when standing in the lift line to get on the chair up the mountain.  Someone ahead of us yelled 'single', meaning there was room on the chair for another person that could come up from the back of the line.  Cale yelled, "my mom's single!"  We had a good laugh at that one.
Cale attended elementary school and Mount Ranier HS  In the fourth grade he was asked to join a gifted student class.  Cale took karate classes, Little Theatre Jester drama classes and played scoccer in grade school.  
When Cale was nine I took him to Cuzco and Pacchu Picchu, Peru.  We also visited Equador where he got to view Halleys comet and place one foot in the Northern hemishere  and one in the Southern hemisphere.  We spent 3 days in New York where he visited the twin towers and ice skated in Rockefeller Center.
 He also went to Alaska on many trips with me.  We fished and camped with friends; cousin Daniel joining us for one month during the summer.  We visited friends and relatives in Central Alaska at their mining camps and various road houses and hot springs.  We flew into Minchumina and McGrath and gold camps where my aunt worked and Johnson's Creek where friends mined. 
I took him up to watch the takeoff of mushers in the Yukon Quest from Fairbanks. After which we drove to 101 Steese highway where my Aunt Max lived.  Many mushers stopped there during the race and Cale got to ride in a dog sled.  We spent summers together with friends at Mason Lake on the Olympic Pennisula camping and water skiing.
Cale played football his freshman year in high school. 
After high school Cale moved to Tucson AZ with his first love Lisa.  There he worked for Banana Repulic and the U of AZ as a computer tech.  After their break up he moved to Missoula (where I had moved back to) and spent the winter with me acheiving many Microsoft certifications online.  He moved back to Seattle (where the good jobs were) and worked for a variety of companies including Boeing and Microsoft.  
Cale received a security clearance with the US military to work as a contractor.  I went with him to start his first job at a military base in south Korea where he worked for one year.  He went on to work as a contractor in the Philippines, Taiwan, Iraq and Hawaii.
Cale loved to travel and being able to do that with his job was important and exciting for him. He went to Mexico and Cuba with his father.  He continued his computer education and earned several Cisco certifications and was working on the biggest one when he died.
Cale was a happy baby and child.  He always had a ready smile and charmed everyone that met him. He had a positive attitude, great sense of humor and was fun to be around. His computer skills were exceptional and he loved his work.  He was working for Microsoft again when he died.
You will always be loved and never forgotten Cale.




 

Cale was even happy as a baby and toddler.  He would smile so easily.  When he was three years old his father helped him memorize all the capitals of the world.  People didn't believe he could do that but when questioned, he answered correctly every time.  One day someone asked him the capital of Germany.  His response was "east or west'?  Of course that was when the Berlin wall was still up.
His favorite capital to recite was Kathmandu..he liked saying that word.  It would make him giggle.  Around the same time, his Great Grandmother (Cale called her Grandma 2) was reading him a story and had to clear her throat. Cale asked her what was wrong and she told him she had a 'frog in her throat'.  A cookie was offered to both of them and Cale, very seriously, asked her 'can you eat a cookie with a frog in your throat?"