(The following note was written by Mr. Franz Gisin of Shocking Technology)


"Gary and I were in the process of retiring the ESD table in the lab when he passed away.  Today we finally got around to it.  As you know, when we zap devices, we use an ESD 'gun'.  So just before we dismantled the table, a few of us here at Shocking Tech - that worked with Gary directly - all zapped the ESD gun 21 times – sort of a high-tech tribute of a Naval 21-gun salute.  It helped bring closure for some of the Shocking Tech team."

"Gary, My Love"
song written by Claire Doerr

My love, you are my everything
You made my life begin
And I love you so
I wish to live because of you
And I'll die without you
With you, there'll be no sorrow
There'll be tomorrow
My love.

I was so saddened to hear about the lose of Gary.  I have so many fond memories of us growing up and spending time together in S. Dakota. I look through old pictures of our mothers, Rae Marie, Gary and me playing together when we were very young.  As I got older, my favorite days were those when Joe and I were at your place. We had so much fun together.  I remember playing in the barn, the old farm machinery and so many happy times together playing in the garden and the "Tree House" .  I learned to ride a bike with Rae Marie and Gary at their farm.  When you left to move to California, I felt that a part of me had died and I missed you all so much.  

The last time I saw Gary was the Christmas that we all spent together in Denver at Alice's place in 1987.  I hadn't seen any of you since we left S. Dakota in 1967.  When I walked into the room Gary said "Who the Hell are you?"  It was so much fun getting to know each other again as adults.  It was such a special Christmas for me to spend it with all of you.  I am so glad that we had the time together.
Gary will be in my thoughts and prayers.
Betty (Doerr) Peters, Rochester Hills, Michigan

It is so sad and such an empty feeling to know that Gary has passed on.  I remember Gary going camping with us and to the beach when we were little. He would come visit family in the Bay Area whenever he could. And yes, his smiling face is all I see when I think of him now.  He was fun to be around and so witty with his jokes.  We are all blessed to have known him and to be able to call him family. He will be missed, but we will never forget him.  He is with his Uncle Joe now and I am sure they are both smiling down at all of us - assuring us that everything will be okay and wanting nothing more than for all of us to smile everytime we think of them.

When Gary was about 2 or 3, I left home for the Navy for 4 years and saw him briefly when I was on leave every year but I did not get to know him very well but I did notice the wonderful smile on his face. He seemed to be very happy to me.
I met with him several years later when he was in the Navy and had some special training somewhere in the SF Bay Area where we had a brief hookup and exchanged our happenings in life at the time.
When he got out of the Navy he came to Silicon Valley and obtained a job there and he settled in Sunnyvale.
I used to see him on weekends, when he and I had time, and the visits were very enjoyable to me. He was the center of the laughter and beer sipping sessions that always occured in his garage meetings.
He was more of a little brother to me more than he was as a nephew. He was always working on something in the garage on a project either for his own use or for the company he worked for, namely a prototype of some gizmo for his workplace.
I will miss the weekend meetings very much but, moreso, his wonderful personality and pleasing smile.
God Bless you Gary: Uncle Chuck

Dear Family and Friends, 

Before sharing some memories about Gary, I have to say, on behalf of the entire Doerr family  a huge THANK YOU to Franz Gisin for countless hours spent with individual family members, explaining the events of Gary's last day among us. I especially thank you for all the help, support, and the strong shoulder you made available to Claire and myself during this confusing time. You are a "prince among men." I also want to say thank you to LeeAnn and Shocking Technology for your kindness and all the help and special things you have done for Claire and me. Your high opinion of my brother is obvious by your treatment of us, and we are ever so grateful for the tribute you pay him through us.

About Gary, I don't even know how to begin. One week ago today I got the type of phone call that we all dread, telling of the death of a close friend or family. This couldn't be true, not Gary; He isn't even 60 years old! It wasn't possible. I got into my car and flew over to Gary and Claire's house, 4 miles away and one look at Claire's face told me that something very awful had just happened among us..

Claire and I held each other crying and just rocked back and forth for a long time. There ARE no words for this. All the words just fell into a big hole in my heart, free-falling, never hitting bottom. 

When Franz, Gary's boss, called to say he wanted to meet with me the next day, I felt such hope. I was remembering when Gary was in the Navy, he & I used to write to each other. Just about everything he did was classified, so his letters never really said much of anything and after he'd spent six years in the Navy, I STILL didn't know what it was he actually did, or even where he was most of the time! 

I thought that maybe Franz would be telling me that Gary was beginning a top secret classified project, so sensitive that they were faking his death, in order to (?)..... something, I didn't know what. This was a level of security clearance I'd never actually heard of, but maybe...

My heart sank when I saw Franz had with him a book about executorship of wills. My imagination was then freshly out of alternative explanations for the awful news and it began to sink in that it was what it was: A piece of the worst news I'd ever had. Dang it, Gary!

Gary was my early childhood buddy, 1 1/2 years younger than me. He was always the best-natured person I ever knew, the only person who ever actually ATE my mud pies and pretended they were delicious. What a sport!

Our pre-school years were truly golden. We lived on a farm in South Dakota prairie country, and us kids didn't begin working on that farm until we were 5 or 6 years old, so we owned all of our days. Our Dad, before he headed out to the fields in the AM, used to round up me and Gary and give us our marching orders for the day, mostly dire warnings about all the stuff we explicitly should NOT do.".... and don't you dare ever, ever go down into that barn, because the floor is collapsing and you will be badly hurt or killed."

Gary and I, hidden in the tall weeds, watched him disappear as he walked over the hill to the field where he was working. The big X on his back from the straps of his overalls slowly sank into the terrain. The nanosecond we could no longer see the blue of his cap, Gary and I burned a beeline straight to that barn! It was our favorite place to play. 

Another magic spot for us was the tangle of old rusted out defunct & broken farm machinery behind the barn. There were jagged metal edges, broken glass and barbed wire, just the sort of place every parent hopes and dreams their child will have as a playground, right? This was like our "jungle gymn" and fun to climb, balance, & hang in, but the main reason we liked it was that it was a great place to find "parts", stuff for making inventions. We both loved mechanical gizmos, planned to build an airplane, like the "barnstormers" we heard stories about, and fly away, as soon as we had enough "parts".

We were forbidden to go in the graineries also. Same rickety reason. Hated to press our luck, since we'd never been caught in the barn, but finally, we couldn't stand it anymore. We just had to see what was "up there", in a seldom-used grainery with a ladder that went up to a 2nd level. As Gary & I neared the top, the ladder began to wobble and his hand reached over the edge to grab anything he could hold onto. What he grabbed turned out to be a dirty old chewed-up woollen blanket, and that was how he pulled a huge nest of rats down on our heads. Screaming and hollering, we ran to the safety of Grandma's porch. Gary said a rat bit him. I asked what did he do then. He said he bit the rat back. He probably did! That was Gary.

He was brave and creative and had a heart as big as the moon. Gary was always inventing, building, making things, and experimenting. Gary and my other brother, Marvin built "forts" everywhere we lived. These forts were sometimes massive earthworks, sometimes 8 feet deep. 

Gary is the only person I ever knew who began driving a tractor when he was 5 years old. He was so little that his foot didn't even reach the brake pedal! I remember my dad running alongside to jump on the tractor because Gary couldn't stop. Gary had a wonderfully logical mind and from the get-go, had a talent for "figuring things out". 

Thanks to Gary, Bob and I became PC literate! In 1994, neither of us knew how to turn one on. Gary made fun of us, ragged,and heckled until we couldn't stand it any more. He gave us our first hard drive & taught us how to build a 'puter from motherboard up, since (his opinion) building it was the ONLY best way to learn how to use it. Those were such fun days - weekly upgrades, incompatible software, fried graphics cards, and my scratched coffee table top!  At Gary's house and at our house, we had "guest computers", same as other people have guest towels.

As adults, Gary and I didn't always parse the world in the same way, but one major trait we shared 100% was our definition of a quality life, which required 2 conditions: being over-worked and a continuously high learning curve.

My husband, Bob, says that whenever he needed an expert opinion on anything electronic that he was making or fixing, there's only one person worth asking, my brother Gary. He knew everything! Gary was Bob's electronics guru and Bob feels lost without him. Dang it, Gary!

The last time I saw Gary before he died was about a month ago when he stopped by my house to show me his "new" car, a rag-topped Mustang. We talked about work, the abyssmal economy, priority tasks we'd assign to a fleet of bulldozers, and made jokes about how if things got any worse in California, we'd BOTH end up living at Mom's house in South Dakota. We immediately began scamming & one-upping each others covert tactics for snagging the biggest bedroom, our sister Skweezie's room, I think. Before he left, Gary hugged me and said, "I still love you." I hugged back and said that I loved him also. And then he drove away. He just drove away and won't ever come back.

I guess if a person has to have "last words" spoken with a well-loved brother, it doesn't get much better than that. Gary, my brother, my friend, I will never stop missing you; No one could ever be what you have always been to me. 
Rae Marie

I was stunned to hear of Gary's passing.  He was younger than me.  I first met Gary at ROLM when I joined the Compliance Team from Phones, way back when.  He had his seriousness along with fun.  He spoke of his liking for beer - which can be quite good.  He'll be missed.  

David McBrayer
Castro Valley / Seattle, WA

With Loving Memories from Judy Doerr and Brian Tolstedt

I have so many beautiful memories of my dear brother Gary. Most of them involve a lot of laughter and play. If truth be told he was a 6 year old in a man's suit. He never forgot how to be a child and thereby always had that  beautiful glow in his eyes of pure innocence. 

Crafty from a young age while he was still living on the farm in South Dakota (he must have been only 6 years old), he would regularly steal his uncles six packs, He would take them down by one of the barns (and invite me, I was 2) along with a can opener. Guess he didn't know what the pop top was for. Anyway, (over the years) several fights ensued between the uncles over who was stealing each other's beer. Gary never did get caught. But I believe he did fess up a few years back,
Also on the farm, I know that once, Mom went into his room and caught him sucking on a bar of iron. He explained to her that iron was good for you, and how else was he going to get his iron.

For several years after he completed his 6 years of service in the Navy, and had moved to California. He had quite a few friends convinced that he was related to "The Doors" convenient last name (Doerr), Jim Morrison probably named the whole damn band after Gary.

We had the pleasure of a visit from Gary and his beloved Uncle John (AKA J-Bird), last summer in September, here in Montana. How cute the 2 of them were when they arrived and placed the 2 smallest suitcases we've ever seen, behind the door exactly 1 inch apart, (very military style). We were thinking maybe a shaving kit could fit in them (no change of clothes? how about underwear???) Oh so cute!!!  We floated down the Madison River and fished - Gary let 2 big ones get away. It's the truth big brother. Regardless, there was a lot of laughter as we sat in the back yard, talked and watched the aspens quake.

Pickles were a big part of Gary's favorite pastimes, eating pickles. It runs in the family, we eat them for breakfast and throughout the day. I've even seen Gary take a jar into bed with him - (midnight snack) My husband and I probably can 120 quarts of pickles every year, and 2 years ago Brian, my husband, sort of over canned 90 jars. Gary heard about this and was appalled. "You don't cook pickles, don't you know that" he said. So he knew that we kept them in the basement - we couldn't decide what to do with that many jars of slightly mushy pickles (how much relish can a person use). Well within 15 minutes of arriving in Montana last summer, Gary found his way to the pickle stash, emerged from the basement looking like a kid in a candy store,  cracked open a jar and said "these are just the way I like my pickles". So sweet to see the happy face on Gary when they left 4 days later, as he carried out 28 jars of pickles, What haul!!. We wish he would have taken them all.

Gary achieved much success in his career as an engineer ("ing-an-ear" as he would say), but that pales to the many hearts he captured in his life. I miss my dear brother beyond words, but I know you will always be with me.

We love you
Judy Doerr & Brian Tolstedt

Gary Remembered

Gary, Gary-----words will never be able to express all the profoundness that your life has meant to all who know you. As a child he was a perfect baby, never fussy. He was a very soft hearted being---as a pre-schooler I found him sniffling in his bed one night, after spending an evening with the cousins hunting pigeons in the barn--”They killed all those baby birds”. This was the same reaction he portrayed after attending a rodeo---”They were so mean to those little calves.” His older sister perhaps took advantage of his sweet nature as she had him pull her in a wagon around the yard, never mind that she was older than he was. 

One of his favorite playtime activities was Zorro, -scaling a brick wall of his Grandma’s house to the second story porch and then proceeded to jump off the porch to what I imagine was an imaginary horse. This same daredevil ness was present, no doubt when I looked out my kitchen window to see Gary riding his bike down the hillside steps of our steep backyard terrace. 

He loved baseball. When we lived in California during his pre-teen years, he thought nothing of jumping on a bus to watch the San Francisco Giants play at Candlestick Park. He was quite adventurous which often manifested itself with a case of poison oak , from visiting the creek which he was forbidden to explore. This exploring nature is evident, no doubt, in later years when he would go scuba diving in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Sardinia in search of buried treasure. I expect there were many of these kinds of adventures that mothers never find out about.

He loved fishing and would rise before sunup and take his fishing pole and go fishing for trout in Spearfish Creek. He even won a rod and reel for catching the biggest fish. 

After high school, he spent 6 years in the Navy serving on an atomic powered submarine, the USS Shark. The Navy was his window of knowledge to electronics. One of the proudest moments I had was when I read that his commanding officer had written that Gary single handedly worked tirelessly until he restored power to a failed air-condition system, where for 3 days the temperature was 115 degrees or more. Throughout his life, it seemed there was nothing he could not do. Just name it, and Gary could do it.

He worked for several computer companies in Silicon Valley, and he always mentioned his good friend Franz. His business card said that he was an electromagnetic compatibility engineer, but to us he was that happy, always smiling personality that we will all miss.

Love,
Mom

I love you Gary. I will never stop missing you. Putting together a slide show for your ceremony was almost more than I could bear. It's done and I hope it's OK. I remembered something you once said to me as you watched me working on some digital graphics...You said,"Oh that's nice; Except you use so many of those fruity colors." hahaha. You are a brat! But anyway, I didn't use any fruity colors for the captions & borders on your slide show, because I remembered that you don't like it. Your sister, Rae Marie

Hello Rae and Claire,
 
Honestly speaking, I was shocked, when I heard, that Gary is not with us any more.
 
Gary was one of my best friend I have in the Silicon Valley, whenever I came out, we met us and had a lot of fun. We where talking about our common past within Siemens, where we worked on several projects together and Gary always joked about his long and extensive carreer at Silicon Graphics, where he followed Franz, but get layed off within some month.
 
I always brought a 5liter Barrel of good Munich beer with me, sometimes we drank that together in my Hotel suite (Staybridge suites in San Jose), sometimes he enjoyed it himself. Gary loved that stuff!
 
Also he took me out to some micro breweries in Santa Clara, where we discussed intensively not just technical, but general topics of mutual interest. I always enjoyed the time with him.
 
One funny thing I have to tell you also: Gary and I where going to a shopping mall together, cause I always buy some pair of Levis, when I am in the US. He always made jokes about me and he said "Karl, you are the most extensive shopper I know - for a men I mean", cause I am looking around, trying things on if they fit etc. He was on the other hand, the fastes shopper I know, even for a men. He always just grabbed a pair of Levis of his size, going to the checkout, not needing more than some minutes to be done, mainly spending this minutes at the cheout, but not for selecting.
So we where in this JC Penneys at Woolfe Rd., Cupertino, and I was waiting in line at the checkout. When it was my turn to pay the Levis, the cashier lady asked me "How much is it? There is no prize tag on it". Gary immediately responded instead of me:"Oh, it´s one dollar, it´s on sale". The cashier lady was pushing some knobs on the checkout trying to get the 1 Dollar prize in the machine, but Gary then said "Look, Karl is not working here, but you work here, so you should know how much it really is...."
 
Interestingly, in one of the latest emails this year he was sensing his age and he wrote this:" I know the feeling about aging because I turn 60 in less then 3 years. One day you wake up and ask yourself, where in the hell did all the time go? I must be having fun because the years went by so fast."
 
Even though it is very sad, that I can not do anymore, what I promised to do next year, to have fun together - I am pretty sure, Gary had fun in his days and with the friends and family members surrounding him. He always told when we met us : "Karl, you know, I love this woman, Claire".
 
Please keep me in the information loop, I will not be able to attend the funeral, but the next time I´ll be in the Valley I´ll visit him where he finally rests.
 
 
With best regards,

Karl-Heinz Schraink

 

Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG

 



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I am truly saddended to hear about Gary. I worked with Gary at ROLM and will always remember his intellect, willingness to get the job done, and that laugh - oh, that laugh. Please accept our deepest sympathies during this time of loss. Gary will be missed.

I am really sorry to hear about Gary's passing. It was a hi-lite of our childhood when he would come to visit. We were inspired by his remarkable ingenuity and great sense of humor. I'll never forget his shoulder-hopping laugh and smile. RIP Gary and condolensces to the family.

My sincere condolences to the family of Gary.  I met him working at Cisco Systems.  A very delightful gentleman and person.  He was always willing to offer a helping hand to anyone.  He had a cheerful smile and personality.

Rest in Peace

I am so sorry I will not be able to attend services for Gary. I have a lot of memories of him from back in the day. Coming over to our house for the day, spending time at his house when we were little. I know he will be missed. RIP my cousin   Elizabeth Doerr Talley

OBITUARIO

Gary Francis Doerr

9 febrero, 1953 – 17 septiembre, 2010

Oak Hill Funeral Home & Memorial Park

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