Lafayette pilot's self-written obit released after this week's crash full of heart, personality

LAFAYETTE, IN — Former Lafayette businessman Gary Wolfelt's death in a plane crash in Ohio earlier this week was tragic. But his self-written obituary — with an addition — is fun and uplifting, in its way. Here are excerpts:

Hello. I am Gary. I am completely dead now.

I am surprised that it took this long to happen. I had several close calls throughout my lifetime. I guess that I was just lucky that something didn’t get me long before now. I had a long series of events and mishaps that looking back should have killed me long ago.

Sometime during my grade school years while I was the second baseman on the most losing team in Little League Baseball history (0 for 20), I lost sight of a fly ball in the sun and got beaned right on the forehead. I guess that explains a lot later in life now that I think about it.

In my twenties my sister’s horse kicked me real hard right in the gut. Any higher and my heart probably would have stopped. Any lower and I probably would have been singing soprano for the rest of my life.

In my thirties, I got hit by a car when I was crossing the street. It was my fault as I was crossing against the light. It really knocked me hell bent for election. But I got up and brushed it off and went home with a torn up coat and kind of sore. Lucky me! In my forties, I was in the process of tearing down an old dilapidated building and was inside tying off a cable when the building came crashing down around me and a large brick chimney just missed falling on me by about 10 feet.

By now I am beginning to think that there must not be any more room in heaven or hell for me and so I was just stuck in purgatory for a while longer. In my fifties, I got knocked down nineteen stairs at my office by a couple of hundred-pound concrete lined safe which landed on top of me and pinned me to the floor. That one was the worst! I didn’t get any body parts broken and no internal injuries. But I couldn’t even pick up my own feet to get into bed for about a week. Thank goodness for pain killing drugs!

And then in my sixties, I fell backwards off of a scaffold from ten feet up and cracked my head on the concrete floor. But that one turned out to be a fortunate fall. Because it forced me to go visit my doctor, who I hadn’t seen in three years and while I was there, he determined that I had prostate cancer (early enough to be treated). I had just dodged another bullet.

But then in my early seventies that treatment failed and I had to have my prostate surgically removed. The surgery went well. But then I developed an internal leak that nearly killed me. One more close call late in life! I cannot tell you here what sort of event actually killed me as I wrote this obituary before I was completely dead. Someone else will have to fill in the details later on, I guess.

I really hate paying the Journal and Courier a lot of money just to let people who might be looking for me know that they can give up now. The chances are pretty good that you are not in my will anyway. So I will try to keep the rest of this obituary as short as possible.

First off, I would like to apologize to anyone who I might have offended or mistreated, especially Anoma Hargis in the sixth grade. The truth is that that I was far from a perfect human, although I did try to learn from my mistakes and short-comings as I grew older. I barely made it out of high school. And I couldn’t pass the math classes at Purdue University (maybe due to the baseball accident). So I have been wandering around for a long time without much of a formal education. ...

I was born on May 19th, 1952, to Don and Virgene Wolfelt. They were pretty good to me most of the time, even when I didn’t deserve it. My brother Dr. Alan Wolfelt (Fort Collins, CO) only tried to kill me one time by attempting to beat me with a little maple rocking chair when he was nine years old. Other than that one time, he was also pretty nice to me.

My sister Kay Montes (Riverside, IN) never tried to kill me as far as I know. But it was her horse, Cricket that kicked me real hard in my twenties and almost took me out. I don’t know if she had anything to do with that or not. ...

I got married to Esther Chosnek sometime in January of 1982 in Las Vegas, Nevada. I can never remember the exact date. It is all such a blur now since it was such a long time ago. We never even met our witness. But we got a cheap certificate in the mail a few weeks later that said we were really married. Esther was very nice to me most all of the time, even when I spent the grocery money on tools and airplane parts.

It is not likely that many men have had it as good as I have had it at home. I was well fed and well loved from the start to finish. I never wanted a bunch of noisy little kids running around the house. So we had dogs instead. They hardly ever tried to bite me. So I guess that they must have liked me too. As a matter of fact, I liked our dogs better than I liked most people that I came into contact with throughout my lifetime. ... This is not the case with many people. Hopefully if there is a life after death, I will end up with Esther and all of our dogs in a sunny field of tall grass with music playing all around me. It was music that made me the happiest most of my life.

Here is a list of my life’s most important accomplishments. I stayed lovingly married to the same woman for a long time. I cut about 100 cords of firewood. I fixed a lot of problems for a lot of people over the last fifty years. I paid all of my bills with my own earnings. I only took welfare (Social Security) after I retired.

I would like to thank those of you who loved me while I was here on Earth. It really meant a lot to me. And I appreciate your letting me love you right back. Lots of people start to become withdrawn, lonely and depressed as they age. So the older I got, the more important it became to me to share my time and my love with my friends. Thanks for being there for me when I needed it the most.

Good bye and Peace. I am hanging up now. GHW

PS: I also want you to know that I didn’t intentionally vote for any socialists during my lifetime. So I am not the least bit responsible for the mess that America is in at the moment. Work hard like I did. And pay your own bills!

PPS: In accordance with my wishes, there will be no funeral. I don’t want people coming by to look at me all dressed up and stretched out in an expensive box looking as bad as I will probably look in a completely dead condition. In lieu of flowers, please keep the money and take yourself out for a nice dinner or do something nice for someone else. Maybe after a while some of my friends might get together and have a party on my behalf. I will try to remember to have a nice full size stand up cardboard cutout of me available for the event. I am pretty sure someone will want to claim it for a dart board afterwords.

Esther’s additions: Gary was a 1970 graduate of Jefferson High School. He was owner and president of Wolfelt Electronic Security for 27 years. His interest in aviation prompted him to attend Purdue school of Aviation Technology. Gary couldn’t stay retired and went into partnership to form All Star Security.

His continuing passion for aviation lead him to build and fly a helicopter. He moved on to build a fixed wing airplane; it took him 17 years to build his beloved Express Aircraft.  Gary could fix anything and he had a barn full of miscellaneous material to do just that!

Besides me, Gary is survived by his brother Alan (Susan) Wolfelt, sister Kay (Brad) Montes, brother-in-law Edward (Becky) Chosnek, brother-in-law Ivan (Betsy) Chosnek, and several nieces and nephews.The family requests no flowers. Donations to area animal rescues will honor Gary’s memory.

Celebration of Life will be Monday, May 19, at Duncan Hall, 619 Ferry St., Lafayette, the family will receive visitors at 4 p.m., service will be at 5 p.m., reception following.