Donald made sure his aunts Sister (at left) and Puggy (behind the camera) enjoyed a fabulous vacation the last time they visited Southern California. Here, they're on their way seaward from the harbor at Oxnard. Later in the week, they all rode the helicopter to Santa Catalina Island for a day.

During some of the long nights in my young twenties, when I used to fly back and forth across North America in the cockpit of an Air Force C-133 cargo plane, I would watch towns as they became visible up ahead, and as they slowly passed beneath the aircraft. Each appeared as a mostly familiar pattern of lighted roadways, homes, and buildings. Some would be off to port, some to starboard, and once in a while there would be a large one five miles directly below. The C-133 had marvelous cockpit windows. One pane on each side extended all the way down to the floor, and almost as far forward as the rudder pedals. I could watch a whole town blink out behind the toe of my boot resting on the glass below the left seat.

At times I'd let my mind wander, while my eyes fell on so many homes and roads, in between glances at the cockpit instruments (four turbines humming away, attitude & course on autopilot, cruising through friendly, controlled airspace). I'd get to wondering, despite its seeming so unlikely, whether there might somewhere, down there, be one very special person with whom to make a lifetime. To my extraordinary good fortune, there was! He was back at home base: Travis AFB, where I was also stationed, about halfway between Sacramento and San Francisco.

I'm writing this paragraph on Sunday, March 23, 2003. This day marks 34 years since the Sunday Donald took me for a drive along the hilly, springtime country roads of beautiful Solano County. It was on that drive that our twenty-four year relationship began.

Donald must have been pure terror as a kid. I imagine it must have taken saints to raise a young man who had a will strong as titanium, an intelect and curiosity that wanted nothing of bounds, and who loved to always be striving towards one or another distant, but very reachable goal. Click the image above to see the little devil inside.

We had met a few days earlier. Donald had been in the hospital there on base, because of a case of pericarditis that had taken a few days for the medical staff to diagnose. He had recovered completely by the time we met. Donald and I were both 23 years old then.

Soon after his birth in December of 1946, Donald was adopted by a loving couple. They also adopted Nancy. Their adoptive mother died while they were still very young. Pop (Edwin Whiting) and Donald's two aunts, Puggy (Mary Dorman) and Sister (Lilian Whiting) raised the kids.

I only knew Donald for half his life. It must have been the better half, and it was certainly better for me as well. I know a few of the major stories he'd love to recount, and you'll find some of them, such as the one about Natalie, among this website's pages. I'm hoping Nancy might contribute some paragraphs, too.

I think Donald was born for yachting life. He shone as the skipper who had equal skill in handling our own modest sailboat, as he did with the huge motor yachts belonging to friends and clients. He was responsible, and, while cautious to keep things out of danger whenever possible, he was adventurous. He was outgoing. He knew when it was necessary to help someone, either out on the waves or in town, and he could be counted on to respond with appropriate numbers of hands. He accomplished things that others only sit around and talk about doing some day. Donald demonstrated this in the homes we made, and in our sailing "retirement". He supplied a lot of the energy for instigating the general partnership Space Craft International, and always liked to call it "SCI Company" which hinted at our collective experience working with Bombard Enterprises, an agency of the Santa Catalina Island (SCI) Company. He worked SCI into close association with The Planetary Society, the founders of which he had long admired. They, in turn, learned to tap Donald's energy and expertise to help with some of their projects. Donald also kept his yacht skippering service going strong, even while living in Altadena, which was forty minutes' drive to Marina Del Rey, and ninety minutes at best to Ventura.

Donald chats with our friend Tom in the Vallejo Marina, while waiting for the ducks hop onto the dock. Our dog Pepper hopped out long before, and eagerly awaits her master for a walk ashore. The guy in the plad shirt kneeling aboard his sloop is Don's friend on local active duty in the Coast Guard.

Donald took me home to Lumberton, North Carolina, to visit soon after we began our life together. We loved speculating about some possible future when we might retire and come back, perhaps to live in one of the homes of his family members. His Pop, Nancy, Sister, and Puggy visited us in California a few times, and Donald became a familiar face to my parents, my sister, and other relatives of mine who visited us.

I never did have the pleasure of meeting his Uncle George, the retired Navy captain whom Donald obviously admired and strived to emulate. I did have the enormous honor of meeting George's wife, "Aunt Jan," whom Donald always wanted me to meet. This was in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, in June 2007, at the wedding of Donald's beloved niece, now Molly McLarty.

But Donald had a ball getting to know my cousin, retired Navy captain Leo Stock, who was an MD. A cardiologist, by the way, Leo he died of a sudden myocardial infarction not too long after the summer when Leo and family had sailed Sea Stock to Catalina Harbor for a summer. George's daughter Galen, Don's cousin, spent several weeks with us in 1969. They kept in touch over the years, but I've only traded a postcard or two with her since Don's death. He died at our home in Altadena, after a long illness, on July 11, 1993.

Here are a few of the little brass treasures Donald brought from Lumberton, and which have accompanied us ever since. The turtle with a Don Quixote scene inlaid on its shell is a wind-up bell that rings, presumably to call a servant, when you push down on its head and/or tail. It now belongs to Molly McLarty. There's a little deer, and a rabbit from an ashtray. The brass bowl with cover has always held matches or something, and the oil lamp must surely have a genie inside.

One story to recount before I wrap up this page: While Almitra was at anchor out in Catalina Harbor on the seaward side of the island, we were below eating dinner when we heard a loud, awful, not-quite human cry: "OHOWWW!" repeating outside in the otherwise peaceful twilight.

We scrambled out on deck.

Here was a sea lion, breaking the surface and yelling, then going back under for a few seconds. The animal kept doing this as it made a wide circle about Almitra. Binoculars showed a large fish hook embedded in its lower lip, with a short length of nylon leader line attached. We launched the dinghy. I rowed, while Donald looked out for the sea lion. All of a sudden it leapt out of the water, came over the gunwales, and the large animal landed completely inside the boat!

It was obviously very nervous, having ventured aboard the humans' craft. We could tell it was also in pain from the injury.

Donald managed to calm the animal enough to get his diagonal cutters around the fish hook, and quickly cut the steel, just below the sea lion's lip, too close for comfort to some pretty dangerous looking teeth. He finished the surgery by pulling the remainder of the hook up and out of the animal's flesh.

It paused. Then after sitting with us for another five seconds or so, the animal jumped overboard and dissappeared quietly.

- - Dave