January 28, 1939 – December 31, 2025.
Stanford grad. Navy officer. Worked every job in his grandfather’s hardware store — stock person, bicycle assembler, advertising manager, store manager, President — over decades of genuine work. Built a sports club with his own hands, then rebuilt it bigger with his wife. Loved dogs, the desert, handball, windsurfing, sailing, and eventually Africa. Married 60 years. Heart several sizes too large.
His last words were something like: “I’m going to get out of this goddamned hospital if it’s the last thing I do.”
It was.
He was managing his own affairs, in his own voice, from a body failing in multiple directions simultaneously, until at least mid-October 2025 — writing letters to contractors about firewood storage compliance, filing complaints with his dermatologist about a recurring lesion, giving his phone number at the end of each. A few days before he died, he took his scooter and the dog down the block. Tipped over. Busted shoulder. Too compromised to handle treatment.
Imperial Hardware Company — founded by his grandfather Howard P. Meyer around 1906 — legally dissolved the same day he died. He had worked to leave a clean slate, and he did.
The letters he wrote me at 48, when he was carrying a major stockholder buyout and 225 employees and I wasn’t calling enough — I found them painful to read. He had the habit of writing long, emotionally raw things he apparently couldn’t say on the phone. I had the habit of not writing back. We worked it out eventually, in the way families do.
Dad gave money without drama. Down payment on the house. Cash gifts over the years with the note: “Dad would like us to travel and enjoy life more while we can.” He was right about that too.