Funeral of Gary Wetlaufer

Losing Gary Wetlaufer was definitely one of the most difficult things that I've had to face at work so far. It was very difficult to tell the management team and then to later tell the Lion team, his team. It made for a very rough and hard week. But the funeral was really an incredible experience. On Monday, I called the funeral home to find out some information about the location for the funeral. They were planning to have it at the funeral home and the seating capacity would have only been about 70 people. I asked the funeral director to work with the family to get a bigger place - we actually had over 150 people from just Avago!

After several rounds of calls, the funeral director and I worked with the family to move the funeral to the Greeley Stake Center. After their original minister refused to step foot into a Mormon chapel, the family also asked us to provide a minister for the funeral. After several calls, I was able to get Bishop Bodine from the University branch to handle the funeral. He did such a great job. However, I was asked to speak at the funeral - huge surprise, but it turned out really great. I got to work at 5am to work on the talk and it all came together right before I had to meet the Enbrel nurse at my home to get my first shot - which appears to have worked pretty well.

Amy and I arrived at the Stake Center about 20min early and Bishop Bodine had everything ready. We quickly met with the family for a few minutes, then took our seats on the pulpit. It was very cool to watch all of my coworkers file into the building and take their seats. We easily had over 200 people their as we filled the chapel and all of the chairs that had been set up in the back. My talk went really well - I was amazed at the spirit I felt and at the opportunity to bear my testimony to 150+ of my coworkers. It was definitely intimidating, but so rewarding as well.

The best part was learning more about Gary. I met his neighbor Todd and his family. They had basically taken him in over the past 10 years and they brought him a level of happiness that he had probably never had in his life until he met them. They were basically family and the kids referred to him as "Uncle Gary". It warmed my heart to learn how Gary, who was a private person by nature, was truly loved by this family. I wish I had known about this before my talk, as I would definitely have included some thoughts about this in my talk.

Here's some photos of the flowers and some of the scenery from the funeral:

 

The flowers above were sent by Avago on behalf of our team. The two photos above are actually flowers sent from the team in Singapore. Gary worked a ton with that team over the years.

These are the flowers that were sent on behalf of the management team.

A great photo of Gary from his days in high school. What a great guy! We are truly going to miss him, in many more ways than one!!