I went to his funeral, and it was so typical of Mark. His children were quite distraught and one of his daughters spoke at the funeral. Very touching.....he really has nice kids.
Lucy shared with me that Mark didn't want to be transported in a Chevy hearse so they put his casket in the back of a brand new shiny white Ford truck, the family was transported in a school bus (part of Mark's Ford Dealership business) behind the Ford truck and they went thru town, circled once around the Ford dealership for old time's sake, across the street past policemen Randy Schmidt and Jim Ryder who directed the traffic for this, and on to the gravesite across from the dealership.
On the grave was our class of 69 floral wreath, another floral wreath from his children and one from Lucy. It was a funeral Mark would have been proud of....Lucy did well. They played Mark's favorite songs and blasted them throughout the church, and the Catholic priest told Mark's favorite jokes.
The priest said that he himself had also been diagnosed with cancer so he and Mark would drive together to LaCrosse for cancer treatments for them both and to and from would tell jokes to each other, to keep their spirits up. Mark told him if he died first, he wanted his funeral to be uplifting and spirited, so that priest decided to tell everyone at the funeral their favorite jokes.
His funeral was indeed uplifting. It was as if he and that priest were in competition for who could come up with the funniest joke. It said to me....that the things in Mark's life that were important to him were his wife, his children, his work, and the class of 69, and humor. It looked like Mark was well loved and he loved back. I will miss him, too.
I don't know if you know this story of Mark, but Mark was bestman in my first wedding in 1971. We were married in January and when we got in our car to leave PDC for Madison, halfway to Madison...something was smoking under the hood and this horrible smell was throughout the car. After stopping and checking under the hood, we found a wedge of Wisconsin's finest Limberger Cheese melted over the engine of the car.
Bob and Mark were both practical jokers, always pulling pranks on each other. They continued to get even with each other throughout the years, but this one took the cake by far. When Mark came to Bob's 50th Birthday party in Madison in 1998, he did it again to Bob's car and got away with it again. Throughout those years when Bob and Mark would get together, before Bob drove away he would always check under the hood for cheese, often finding it and pitching it before he took off. At Bob's 50th he forgot to check and Mark got away with it, permanently.