He was 94, which is a very good age to be when you die. Especially when you are living on your own and there is a drill press in your living room and a jig saw in your kitchen.
He wanted no religious memorial, so the best thing I could do for him is write this tribute in a computer.
Harold Wolverton loved computers. We had coffee every Tuesday morning for almost five years, maybe than that, and he carried his computer with him every time. He carried it in the basket of his walker. He put it on the table between us and looked up the latest news on the splitting of the atom or the origins of the universe.
He had Scientific America with him with pages marked off for us to read. He loved to learn.
He was an atheist who grew up in a family of devout Christian parents who were missionaries. Harold was born in India while his parents served there, and he still spoke with the people of 49th and Main with their native words. They were always shocked; an old white guy talking to them in a language they understood. He also loved curry.
Harold Wolverton was a thread bare penniless hobo in the depression. He jumped on moving steam engines to find work, and the work was the hardest of all, cutting down trees with an axe, no power saw.
He was in the air force in world war II. He worked on radar in Spitfires which was not a good place to be if you hoped to have coffee the next morning.
After the war he and his brother built houses in East Vancouver so that he could get enough money for Harold to go to dental school. Neither Harold nor his brother had ever built a house before. They had a friend, Frank Aicken who had just gotten out of the army and knew how to put up walls and put a roof on top.
Over coffee and sandwiches Frank told Harold how to clear the land and build the frame. That was all there was to it. No school. No plans. Nothing but courage and common sense.
Harold became a dentist.
He also rode a motorcycle. He rode it everywhere in every weather.
When he was 89 he tripped over his walker and broke his hip. His daughter told him he had to give up his motorcycle.
“Why?” He asked. “I tripped over my walker, I should stop using that not my motorcycle.”
We had coffee Tuesday morning. Tuesday night he died. In the morning he had been talking about how the world began. After the night a good part of the world had died.
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