Appreciations on Joe’s 50th Birthday

As a way to commemorate this milestone birthday of 50 years my love, I asked your family and a few of your close friends to write messages of appreciation for you.  They wrote some pretty great, thoughtful messages which are included here:

From your nephew Miles Gastil:

Happy Birthday Uncle Joe!

I hope you have an amazing birthday. You deserve it! I am so happy you now have a family to call your own. I know you will be as good as a father as you are an uncle. You have been a wonderful influence in my life and I look forward to becoming closer with your growing immediate family. You’re an amazing artist who constantly inspires me to draw. I look at your sketches and paintings and see them as a goal for me to someday achieve that kind of beauty in my drawings. I also enjoy playing chess with you and look forward to more games, and helping you teaching your kid how to play someday. Happy Birthday Uncle Joe.

Love you guys! Miles

From your nephew Garrett Gastil:

Happy 50th Birthday Uncle Joe!

You have always been one of the most fun people to be around. When I was a kid, I remember that I would always be excited to see you because you would pick me up and throw me around your body.

Elizabeth Gastil’s Remembrance of our Mother

Margaret Gerhardt Linton and Elizabeth Gastil Linton, at my brother Matt's wedding

In our ongoing series of posting our family’s reflections on our mother who passed away on Sunday July 31st 2011, below is my sister Liz’s piece. Earlier I posted a bio/obit piece we all worked on, initiated by Laura Archer Linton, and talks that Matt and Garrett gave at the memorial service. 

Here’s the reflection talk that Elizabeth Gastil Linton gave at mom’s memorial service. It took place on Saturday August 6th 2011 at Tustin Presbyterian Church.

Margaret Linton

You have heard the term “broken home”…my mother always told us that we came from a carefully broken home.  She broke it, and for good reason.  After my alcoholic father suffered from manic depression and paranoid schizophrenia.

After many years of trying to juggle his illnesses and a family of small children, she made the impossible choice to choose raising her four children over remaining in her marriage.  This was a decision she did not make lightly….. and while I was growing up, I never heard her utter a bad word about him, despite the many opportunities he gave her to do so. 

When she left my father, she had four kids under eight. We had times without a car where we rode our bikes to the store, and other times where we had no food in the house and my mom would bring just enough after work for dinner.

But, my mother made sure that we had her.