My father passed away last week after a four year battle with stomach cancer. He remained on his own in his home with me till about five months ago and had a good life. He was born in December of 1947. Not long after his parents Raymond and Shirley Konen, featured prominently on this website in Letters from WWII and Travel Journals, were married. He retired the year I had my first divorce so he never really was on his own during retirement, but we all enjoyed it. He loved to take the car out for three or four hour drives into the southeastern Wisconsin back country and though he lived in Spring Grove, he preferred the walmart out in Harvard to the five closest to him. He loved going out for frozen custard or ice cream. We would drive two hours to hit a new ice cream stand. He stopped driving about three years ago and every sat. my Sister would take us out and drive wherever he navigated us. He was like a London cab driver with his knoiwledge of country roads in the five hour vicinity. He celebrated all holidays as much as possible with as much decoration and fooding as possible. He loved spending the day watching strange movies from the 1930's and 1950's on his roku and boy did he find a lot of them. He also watched and read an extraordinary amount of English Murder Mysteries. In Fact I created this cup and T-shirt for him.
He kept a small circle of a few friends, three daughters and five grand daughters. He will be missed and remembered. The following flowers were gifted arrangements for his services and will be featured as prints and other items in my store under the name November Flowers so that he may be remembered with great joy. He never once suggested I quit my job as a print on demand artist, even though he knew how little I derived in dollars from it. He loved hearing about all my sales. He loved seeing my new artwork and before he was sick we used to go out driving with my dslr camera looking for places to photograph. I'd see a place on a country road and say pull over and he he would stop the car and I'd get out and snap a couple of photos later to be printed on coffee mugs and such. He always told me I was an amazing artist and encouraged me to create. Always. If your heart seeks to make condolences please consider making a donation to the American Cancer Society in his name. Thomas Konen. You can find his Obituary Here
