www.thyde.net

My Dad, Clyde Hyde, was a very well known Constitutionalists here in Washington State.  He was born December 19th, 1942 in Fayetteville, North Carolina.  He lived all over the US and even in Germany for a time.  My Grandpa Hyde was a Major in the Air Force.  My father joined the Air Force and went to the Denver Tech School to study Electronics.  When he got out of the Air Force he became a pilot.

I have many fond memories of our flights together.  My Dad and I took many flights together, just him and I.  I remember once we were doing touch and go’s at the Olympia, WA airport.  I had done probably 3 or 4 landings and take offs.  I was about 8-10 years old.  I was pretty short (as most Hydes are!) and I couldn’t see over the dash.  I came in on a landing and my father freaked and pulled up.  I almost took out all the approach lights with my landing gear! EEK!

My Dad met my mom and they got married.  I was sealed to my parents in the Salt Lake City Mormon Temple in 1976, when they were married in the temple.  We lived in Tenino, WA about 20 miles south of the state capital.  My parents bought a shell of a house and put it on our little piece of property and we lived in a small travel trailer until the house was finished enough to be able to move in.

My Dad worked at the Centralia Steam Plant for 21 years before he was forced to retire due to his heart condition.  He also had to give up his pilots license because of his heart.  Dad had a heart attack in 1995 or 1996 right when he and my step-mom were splitting up.  Because Grandma Hyde had died in the recovery of a bypass surgery, he refused to have a heart bypass done.  He was told that he wouldn’t live long if he didn’t have the bypass.

Dad lived in Centralia for a while after the divorce.  He would ride the bus all the way up to Kirkland to spend time with my son Sean.  He would take Sean on trips to Seattle and Sean really enjoyed his time as a toddler with Papa.

Then Dad decided that he was going to find him a russian bride.  He got on a dating website and started looking.  He picked a few ladies across Russia.  He took a trip to meet all of them and toured Russia.  He narrowed it down to 2 ladies (I believe) and took another trip to make the final decision.

In 1999 he married her and he moved to Belarus in the Ukraine and bought an apartment there and started the next chapter in his life.  I think he came home once after that before he passed away on November 20th, 2005.

It was a logistical nightmare to bring him back to the US for burial.  My brother had to fly over there to coordinate everything. It was only supposed to take about 16 hours but it took 3 days.  However, he got to see Paris and several other cities in europe on the way.  We just prayed that his luggage made it to Belarus and luckily it did.

It took a few days for everything to get straightened out and to get Dad’s body crated and sent back to the US.  Dad had made me promise, years before, that I would make sure that when he died that he was buried in his home town of Tenino at the Cemetary behind our old house.

When my aunt Ruthie and I went to the cemetary to pick a plot, the gal that helped us knew everyone in town.  We asked her if there were any plots that were next to anyone that my Dad knew and there was one person that my Dad knew and there happened to be one plot left right next to him.  It was also next to a rhododendron bush, which was one of my dad’s favorite flowers.  So, Dad was buried next to Bill Lovell, my grandparent’s dear friend, whom we always played cards with.

We put together the funeral on a shoe-string budget.  We didn’t have a whole lot of money to use for the funeral, afterall it cost us an enormous amount of money just to fly his body home.  I was here in the US coordinating everything, while Todd was in Belarus working with the Embassy until Dad’s body was on it’s way to the US.

The funeral home was great, they picked Dad up at the airport and did a minimal job to get everything together and the church helped us with the actual funeral.  I made a collage of pictures of my Dad throughout the years, which now hangs in Sean’s room, and I also did the program ( http://www.thyde.net/DadFuneral.htm ).  The funeral was simple and nice.

It’s always difficult to lose a parent.  It was especially difficult when it took us almost a month to get him home and have the funeral.  I hadn’t seen my dad for at least 5 years which was difficult since we were so close.

People still ask for his files on how to fight the “establishment” on tickets and taxes.  If you google him, it’s quite an interesting read.