you'd think he was a pensioner on his last few bucks. He retired as General Counsel for Sears and now lives like a pauper even though he makes more annually now than he ever did as the top attorney for Sears. Other than a new Lexus every few years, you'd never know how successful he's been in the corporate world. Unfortunately, he and my mom have been divorced for nearly 30 years.

This is my favorite story, he and a classmate decided to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro on spring break from Oxford. They pooled some of their tuition money and bought a little plane in England and hopscotched down to Africa.  Dad bought insurance on the airplane so if anything happened to it they could still pay their tuition, otherwise they would just sell it upon their return.  After climbing Kilimanjaro on a 5 day big game hunt, they shot a buffalo and stuffed the prized head of the buffalo into the back of the airplane for the trip home. Imagine how cool that would be in your dorm room. As they took off, dad realized that they were way overweight with the buffalo head on board and he couldn't gain enough altitude to get over the hills. He decided to put the plane down in a freshly plowed field he could see, so he lined up on the the field in line with the farmer's plowed furrows. Just before he touched down, the farmer had switched directions on his furrows, now he was going to land perpendicular to the the ruts. With no power to pull out, they touched down and flipped the plane. Both crawled out unhurt, and a photographer happened to come across them and take a picture. The picture ended up in Life magazine with the caption "two boys on spring break".

His classmate was none other than Frank Wells, who went on to become President of Disney. Dad said there was always a dark cloud over Frank, and you might remember that he died in a helicopter crash in Nevada while heli-skiing back in 1994. When you're on the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland, on the way down you'll pass a prop box that is stenciled with "Wells Expedition" in honor of Frank and his effort to reach the seven summits of each continent. If you have the book Seven Summits, I'm pretty sure there's a picture of Frank Wells and dad in there with their plane flipped over in Africa, the one that was in Life Magazine (I don't know how to attach it here without a URL) Frank got his start climbing mountains and setting his sights on the seven summits after that trip up Kilimanjaro to nearly 20,000 feet with my dad.

My dad also raced stock cars while at Oxford, he worked at a local petrol station to help with tuition. In the meantime he built and raced cars, becoming very successful at it and making some extra money in winnings. He also was a chick magnet, so when he decided to sell his car, Frank BEGGED dad to sell it to him. My dad knew about this cloud over Frank, and was worried he'd kill himself. Frank prevailed and dad sold him the car. Not long after that Frank piled up the car and totalled it beyond repair.