Edward Somers Oberlander

My dad made me laugh every day and for all those who knew him from his childhood to his college days to Vietnam to his years as a salesman to his 47 years as a husband, dad, father-in-law and granpies, he was truly one of a kind. He was a standup comedian, a decorated soldier, an artist and a true intellectual who loved classical music, movies and art. He loved jogging, bike riding, skiing, swimming and horseback riding. He was an adventurer who went scuba diving, took flying lessons and traveled to many countries. But out of all of those things, I knew him best for being a very present, affectionate and loving father who loved his family very much.

It is with a broken heart to share his passing on December 20, 2022 from heart failure. My dad had more than his fair share of health problems during the last 5 years of his life. He got into a bad car accident in 2017 that started his decline. An MRI in 2018 showed that he had had a stroke at some point. Around that time, he was also diagnosed with Peripheral Neuropathy, COPD and Alzheimer’s. His neuropathy caused him to begin falling on a regular basis. Fearing we couldn’t properly care for him, we moved him into a nursing home in April 2021. The guilt of that decision was eating me alive and I wanted desperately to bring him home to care for him at my house. We were blessed to have his VA benefits that allowed us to get professional caregivers to help us care for him. We are so grateful that we made that decision to bring him home because we all got to be with him every day until he passed away. Being a fall risk and losing a lot of strength, he was in a wheelchair for the last year and a half and going places became increasingly difficult and unsafe. Then in October, his long list of diagnoses grew when he had a severe heart attack. But being the incredibly strong man he was, he survived the heart attack and lived for another 2 months. My mom and my husband, Martin, and I were always terrified about what dying from Alzheimer’s could look like so his heart attack actually saved us from that fear becoming a reality. We were truly blessed that my dad’s Alzheimer’s never got to the point of him forgetting any of us. I am so incredibly grateful for that because I don’t think I could have ever lived in a world where my dad didn’t know me. His disease affected his short-term memory and coordination and caused him confusion. It also took away the little bit of a filter he had left which was actually great for us. He had all of us in stitches every day during the 14 months we took care of him. His Alzheimer’s also made him more mellow and he was truly sweet and easy going during the last couple years of his life.

My dad was born in Chicago on April 7, 1945 to Arthur and Birdie Oberlander. He joined his 7-year-old sister, Helaine. He had a pretty typical childhood for a kid growing up in the 50’s which he often recollected as better times than today. He was very fortunate to have grown up with a wonderful and loving father who he truly loved and who he learned so much from. He went to Highland Park High School where he found a lifelong love of photography. He would frequently take photos for the school newspaper. He then went on to college at Park College in Parkville, MO where his love of art lead him to a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History. It was in college where he also learned about all of the modern-day religions. Between that, reading the encyclopedia for pleasure, constantly reading and watching the news and being a history buff, he was truly a wealth of knowledge and could give you a dissertation on pretty much any topic. It was incredible!

In 1967 he joined the Army and quickly went to serve in Vietnam as a tank gunner where he was wounded in action and received a Purple Heart. An RPG exploded right next to his arm which then got hit with shrapnel. He could have lost his arm but in Ed fashion, he got fixed up and returned to duty. He was also awarded a Bronze Star and a Commendation for Heroism. It seems like some Vietnam vets either don’t like talking about their experience or they love sharing stories of their time there. Fortunately for us, my dad was the latter. Through the years, he told us countless scary and entertaining stories about his time in Vietnam. He met some wonderful friends there that he loved the rest of his life. He truly enjoyed the comradery that came from being over there and he always loved the music from that period and would joke that the Vietnam War had the best soundtrack.

Once he returned to Chicago, he began his career in sales working for the Scott Paper Company. He then moved to Speidel where he spent the majority of his working life until he retired in 2018. That job moved him to Champaign where he met my mom, Peggy and her daughter, Tara. They were married in May 1975 and thanks to a fun honeymoon, I came along in February 1976. A job transfer relocated us to a suburb of Denver in 1987. My dad loved Colorado! Too busy with work, he didn’t get to ski like he’d wanted but the times he did made him truly happy. Other than a short stint with another job relocation to San Antonio for a couple of years in 1997, he lived in Denver until his passing.

It was his injury in Vietnam that gave him an epiphany that he said made him think he hadn’t done anything with his life yet and he wanted to really start living and making the most out of his life. He started a lifelong love of traveling. He took up skiing, took some flying lessons, he got into scuba diving and he fell in love with horses and horseback riding. He was an avid jogger, bike rider and swimmer. In fact, my dad was the consummate badass! He was such a strong and truly capable man. In his prime, he was able to swim 2 miles. He could have probably still swum a mile even up until 10 years ago. All of that of course made his decline that much more difficult for him and very hard for us to witness.

Fortunately, even though my dad had lost the ability to do most of the things he had so truly enjoyed, he found great joy in the rewards of being a grandfather. My dad was a grandfather to my sister’s five children (Alex, William, Brad, Michael & Olivia) and my two children (Romie & Ryan). My husband and I were very lucky to live within 10 minutes of my parents since we were married in 2000. Martin, and my dad had a very close and loving relationship. He taught Martin how to swim. They went for long bike rides and spent a lot of time just being together, especially in the last 14 months that we took care of my him. Martin did more for my dad than any other son in law I’ve ever heard about. My dad truly loved him and was so grateful for him. Martin was just as much of a son to my dad as I was his daughter.

My dad still traveled for work but would always come see us before his trips and within a day or two of returning home. Living so close was a great benefit to the relationship that my dad shared with my 10-year-old daughter, Romie and my 8-year-old son, Ryan. They have always gotten a kick out of me telling them that my dad loved them even more than he loved me. But it was true. They were truly the light of his life and brought him more joy than anything ever had. I don’t think one day passed in the last 10 years of seeing him or then when living with him where he didn’t ask me “Did you ever think you’d have such beautiful children?” or he would thank me for having those “beautiful children”. Their love was very mutual as Romie and Ryan aka “Bizzers” and “Bugs” truly loved their “Granpies”. When we brought him home from the nursing home, they would fight over who got to sit next to him at dinner and even up until he died, they would fight over who got the better side of his recliner to snuggle with him. He had countless stories and jokes for them which I hope they will remember forever the same way I remember him raising me with humor ever present. I’ve been telling Romie and Ryan that I can’t wait for them to become teenagers so that I can share the countless inappropriate jokes and stories with them that my dad shared with me and Martin over the years, especially over the last 14 months. There was a lot of potty talk with a lot of penis and sex jokes. I don’t think we could have cared for him had he not made us laugh every day. He still had a couple of zingers every day for us up until the week before he passed.

My parents were married for 47 years and were best friends. They shared a love of travel and old movies. He loved all old movies but his favorites were “The Seventh Seal”, “The Red Shoes” and “Asphalt Jungle”. Martin and I would make fun of him because his TV was always set to Turner Classic Movies, the History Channel or CNN. But over the last couple of years, he really enjoyed the Smithsonian Channel and he was obsessed with watching a show called “Air Disasters”. My poor mom had to watch all of them over and over. He also loved documentaries and he was obsessed with anything World War II. I always teased him by asking him what more did he think he could possibly learn from watching so many documentaries about that war so many times. He had to have already learned everything there was to know. He would have been an amazing history professor.

My mom is very grateful to have had the last year being so close to my dad. She is really missing her best friend. She is also grateful that he was a good husband and she loved the travels they did together. She wants people to know that my dad had a very full life and that he accomplished most of what he’d wanted to do in life. I know my dad loved my mom very much and he appreciated how she cared for him, their family and their home during their 47 years together.

It was hard having my sister live so far away. I know my dad regretted not seeing her and her family but he loved them very much and was proud of them. He truly enjoyed the time he did get with them and he was very proud of the hard worker my sister has always been and he was very proud of his grandsons for their service.

Outside of my dad’s immediate family, his nephew/my cousin, Scott, was his very favorite relative and really one of his very favorite people. Scott was only 14 years younger than my dad and they had a very strong bond while he was growing up. My dad was so completely proud of the man Scott became and the family that he raised. We have been fortunate to get time with his daughters since they moved to Denver. That was such a joy for my dad to see these delightful young ladies that my cousin had raised along with his amazing wife.

My dad also had wonderful friends that he truly loved talking to and spending time with. These friends that he met over the last 60 plus years were always in his heart even if he wasn’t good about calling them. He shared countess stories with us about his friends and to any of you reading this, I want to thank you for the joy you brought to my dad’s life.

All the people that we’ve reached out to about my dad’s passing have shared the same description about him that my mom and family and I were so lucky to see every day. They say he was a true intellectual, extremely intelligent and truly hilarious. He really was incredibly smart. He seemed to know at least a little bit about everything and there were so many things he knew everything about. Until he got Alzheimer’s he had an amazing memory. He could recall all the names of my friends and classmates from elementary school into his seventies. This also meant he remembered everything I ever did wrong which gave him plenty of material to tease me about my entire life. I always marveled at how his incredible memory allowed him to recount stories and information down to the minute of how events happened. When he was writing my itinerary for my best friend and I to travel through Europe with our Eurail Passes, he shared so many specifics about his trips with my mom from decades earlier about all the sights they saw and what times they arrived at each place and the hotels they stayed in. It was truly mind blowing what that man could remember. But what was so special about him writing my itinerary for my college Europe trip was how excited he was for me to get that opportunity. I know it brought him great joy that I got to partake in such a wonderful adventure. I am so grateful that he passed his love of travel on to me. He loved that we could share memories of our trips. He was just such a good dad- truly wonderful, supportive and encouraging of everything I did.

With my dad’s love of travel, he visited nearly 20 countries, his very favorite being the Netherlands. If he could have, he would have absolutely retired there. He worked very hard to be able to take the trips he took with my mom and he never took them for granted. He was always so excited for them and he would even learn some of their language. He loved trying out his Spanish, French, Dutch and German on us but especially with anyone who was fluent in those languages. As an art lover, some of his favorite days of his life were spent in many of Europe’s finest museums. He knew so much about art. He especially loved Dutch painters and he himself was a very talented artist. He drew many amazing pictures and sculpted in college.

He loved Classical music his whole life but especially in his later years, so much so that we made fun of him for not listening to anything else anymore. We never understood how that type of music didn’t put him to sleep while he was on the road all those years, driving all hours of the night. I guess it was the great joy that music gave him that kept him going and able to drive for such long stretches. His favorite piece of classical music was Anton Bruckner’s Symphony #7. He was truly moved by so many composers. And like I mentioned earlier, he also loved Classic Rock and introduced me to both genres of music at a young age which I am so grateful for.

My dad loved trying to copy recipes of food he’d eaten at restaurants. He was actually pretty good at it. Some of his specialties were split pea soup, moussaka, olive and anchovy tapenade, Thanksgiving gravy and his “Dad’s Old-Fashioned Pizza”. Thank goodness he had my mom overseeing his work because he didn’t have the patience to cut all the fat off of meat nor did he believe in cutting vegetables into bite-sized pieces. His salad cuts were so big, it looked like he had prepared them for zoo animals. Cleanup was also not his forte. We didn’t love having to clean up after him but we all benefited from his amazing dishes.

My dad was also a true animal lover. He especially loved dogs. He would let any dog he met lick his entire face and bald head. Through his life, he was a dog dad to Ralph the 1st (his dog in Vietnam) and then Pepper, Ralph the 2nd and Jenni. He then became a dog granpies to Rick, Andy, Molly and Bode. He had a very special bond with all of these dogs but especially with Bode since they spent a significant amount of time together until his passing. Bode brought him great joy and we always joked that he was more excited to come home from the nursing home so he could reunite with Bode more so than with any of us. Our stomachs would all turn a little bit watching the sight of Bode licking my dad’s face and head for 10 straight minutes. It was both adorable and disgusting to see.

I am so incredibly grateful to have grown up with a comedian for a dad. During the eighties, he did some standup comedy. As one of his opening lines, he would apologize to the audience for being late, blaming it on getting stuck in the night deposit box at the sperm bank. He played practical jokes on me and made me laugh all the time. My friends all adored him. There were times in high school where my guy friends would spend time hanging out with him before me. He was always the “cool dad”. He had such a big personality and was so outgoing. He entertained every crowd and party he was ever part of. I am so thankful that I got so much of my personality from him and I definitely got my sense of humor from him and I am now raising my kids with that same humor. And despite being on the road for a lot of my childhood and adulthood, he was always very present in my life and was always there for me. He was also very loving and affectionate and hugged me a lot. In a funny voice, he would always say to me “You SURE are a pretty girl”. He had lots of nicknames for me growing up but the one that stuck my whole life was “Johnny Wee Wee” with lots of variations. He gave me so much. I am so proud to be able to call him my dad. I would choke up when describing him to the caregiver agencies because I was so proud and I always knew how lucky I was to have had him as my dad. I pretty much bragged about him and told them they would be lucky to get to take care of him.

A side note- finding reliable and caring caregivers proved to be extremely difficult during our 14-month journey but we ended up finding two ladies who were truly wonderful. Laura and Heidi were with us through thick and thin and we will never be able to express our gratitude to them. We know these ladies really cared about my dad. In fact, all of the caregivers that took care of him always loved him and all of his funny jokes and stories. The nursing home staff was very sad when we moved him home.

My dad didn’t deserve the crappy ending or really the last 5 years of his life. He deserved so much better. I will forever be sad that he didn’t get to really enjoy his retirement years being active the way he should have been able to. I am also struggling with all the things he is going to miss out on. And I am heartbroken that we will all have to do life without him. But I am so thankful that we got so much time with him.

It’s not realistic to sum up someone’s 77 years of love and life into a 6-page Word document but I hope I have been able to convey just how awesome my dad was and how much he was loved and how much he will forever be missed. We are all so sad that we will never hear any more Ed jokes or stories but we are taking comfort in sharing the countless ones that he left us with. I am so grateful to say my dad had a life well lived. He was greatly loved by his family and he loved us very much.

We will forever miss you, Dad but we are taking comfort in knowing that you’re free from pain now and are riding horses with Sally, hanging out with Papa and our doggies. I hope you left this world knowing how truly loved you were and I hope I made it clear how grateful I was to you that so much of who I am and so much of what I have is because of you. We will be together again someday. Till then, keep everyone up there laughing just like you did here every day of your life.

A cemetery committal service for Edward will be held Monday, January 9, 2023 from 10:30 AM to 11:00 AM at Ft. Logan National Cemetery, 4400 W. Kenyon Ave., Denver, CO 80236. Following the cemetery committal service will be a memorial service at 12:00 PM at Olinger Andrews Caldwell Gibson Chapel, 407 Jerry Street, Castle Rock, CO 80104.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.OlingerAndrews.com for the Oberlander family.

When I’m Gone

When I am gone, release me, let me go.

I have so many things to see and do.

You must not tie yourself to me with too many tears,

But be thankful we had so many good years.

I gave you my love, and you can only guess

How much you've given me in happiness.

I thank you for the love that you have shown,

But now it is time I traveled on alone.

So grieve for me a while, if grieve you must

Then let your grief be comforted by trust

That it is only for a while that we must part,

So treasure the memories within your heart.

I won't be far away for life goes on.

And if you need me, call and I will come.

Though you can't see or touch me, I will be near

And if you listen with your heart, you will hear

All my love around you soft and clear

And then, when you come this way alone,

I will greet you with a smile and a "Welcome Home".

Author Unknown

Eulogy for Ed Oberlander

I want to first off thank you all so much for coming to remember and celebrate my dad. I know he would be honored by your attendance.

Gotta say I’m kind of regretting making my dad’s obituary more of a eulogy. I already used up all of my good material. So unfortunately, for any of you that might have read his story on the funeral home’s website, I apologize for some of the copying and pasting I will be doing to write this.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to get through reading anything out loud about my dad but I know I would regret not taking this opportunity to share more about him. Though I am grateful that those of you in this room really knew my dad too. I think we can all agree that the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about him was how truly funny he was. I have loved being able to tell people for the last 30 plus years that my dad did amateur standup comedy back in the 80’s. I mean lots of dads are funny but my dad was a true comedian. He made me laugh every day and I am so thankful he passed his sense of humor and love of comedy on to me. Sarcasm, jokes, comedy and laughter between us were always present during my childhood (often leaving my mom mortified) all the way until he left us. To say he was inappropriate with his jokes with me would be a huge understatement but that is what I loved most about him. He never had much of a filter while I was growing up but then his Alzheimer’s took away any bit of one that he had ever had. While it was a great privilege to care for him during the last 14 months of his life, it was very challenging. He did not love having his daughter clean and dress him but he did both of us a colossal favor by making jokes and telling stories that brought levity to what was a very difficult situation. Most of these jokes and stories aren’t appropriate to share in a large setting like this but hopefully after lunch I’ll be able to share some of them with those who are more uninhibited. One of the funny things that I can safely share now is one night we were up in the middle of the night in the bathroom and in a serious and loving way, he thanked me for helping him and told me he loved me and then about 30 seconds later, he asked me “So do you ever get embarrassed when all of your friends talk about how sexy I am?” I laughed so hard. We all laughed every day really. I really wish I could share all of his stories. They were fantastic!

I’m fairly certain anyone who talked to my dad could tell he was extremely intelligent. Like I mentioned in his obituary, he seemed to know at least a little bit about everything and there were so many things he knew everything about. His mind and memory always blew me away. Sometimes it drove me nuts because I would ask him a question expecting a quick answer that he would often turn into a 20-minute educational lesson. I once asked him about the conflict in the middle east and the answer he gave me felt like he was reading a dissertation he wrote. He was just so incredibly smart. His Vietnam buddies called him the Professor. I hope if reincarnation is actually a thing that he will get to come back and become one. With his great intellect, humor and entertaining, bigger than life personality, he would have made a wonderful history professor and I know he would have absolutely taught about World War II. I bet he knew as much about that war as any scholar.

With his diverse interests, passions and great sense of humor, he was truly one of a kind. But after how funny he was, it was his loving nature that I will miss the most. He raised me with so much love and affection. He gave that same love and affection to my kids. Having him in our home gave them so much quality time with their beloved Granpies. He truly worshipped Romie and Ryan and they him. I will miss going into his bedroom to find one or both of them sitting on him, snuggled up, with Romie usually rubbing his head. I don’t think one day went by without him telling me how much he loved them. As hard as it is to be an adult living with your parents, it does have its perks and getting to hear those kinds of things every day was definitely one of those perks.

From here on out, hearing any classic rock and classical music will make me think of him. Unfortunately, he and my mom watched a crazy amount of Perry Mason toward the end and that show’s theme music will probably be stuck in my head for the rest of my life. And any of the old comedians like Rodney Dangerfield and Johnny Carson will make me think of him. It was crazy how many comedian’s jokes and movie lines my dad could recite.

One of my favorite memories of my dad was when we went to Chicago just the two of us. I was around 20 years old. We had the best time together and we jokingly wanted to make my mom jealous of all the things she had missed out on. So, my dad decided we should tell her we gotten taken out to dinner to a really fancy and expensive made-up restaurant called Chez Trop Cher which translates to At the House of Too Expensive and for good measure he came up with another restaurant that we had gotten to go to. The other one was a Mexican restaurant called Raton Sucio which means Dirty Mouse. She believed us and we went on to talk about it for years in front of her. We eventually told her we’d been messing with her and we laughed about that story and made jokes about Chez Trop Cher for the rest of his life. During that same weekend we did get to go to a very fancy event at the Drake Hotel. And to make me laugh, while we were waiting for the valet to get our car and having the least expensive car the valet would be getting that day, my dad did an imitation of him. In a fancy voice he said “Your Range Rover, Sir”, “Your BMW, Sir”, “Your Mercedes, Sir”, “Your Piece of Shit, Sir”. I was dying laughing. I’m sure everyone thought we were crazy. Another special memory from that weekend was when he took me to a Godiva Chocolate store and bought me my first truffle. It was a raspberry filled truffle and for some reason introducing me to that truffle brought him so much joy and he was just so excited about it. There were a lot of other really fun and special moments that weekend that I will continue to cherish for the rest of my life.

A more recent story about him was there was a morning where he wasn’t doing well as his caregivers were about to give him a bed bath and I felt compelled to say goodbye to him. I was holding his hand and telling him he could let go, that he had been a wonderful dad and that he had done a really good job on earth. And he interrupted me by saying “Bullshit”. We all started cracking up. Here I was crying, practically sobbing and telling him goodbye and he cracked a joke. That was obviously him, always making people laugh.

The world definitely won’t be as funny without him. I am really struggling with all of the things that he will miss. I am so grateful that I got to have him in my home until the very end. That allowed me to hug and kiss him and say all the things anyone could ever want to say to a loved one before losing them. But I’m stuck here wishing I could go back in time and hug and kiss him more. I am so grateful my mom and I were sitting with him when he passed. I had always wanted that since we brought him home from the nursing home. I am trying to take comfort in the fact I got to tell him many times that it was okay to let go and that I wanted him to leave this world knowing he did good here, that he was truly loved and that he will forever be missed. I told him how I will forever be grateful that so much of who I am and so much of what I have is because of him. I just hope he really got it and even though I don’t really know what I believe, I hope he is free from pain now and yet not getting a moment of peace, as I hope he is getting paraded around heaven by my Papa being introduced to every jewelry customer and friend he ever had and I hope he is busy riding horses with his dear friend Sally, all while being licked incessantly by our doggies.

Thank you, dad for entertaining me with your jokes, funny songs and stories. Thank you for loving me and supporting me and encouraging me my whole life. I couldn’t have asked for a better dad.