Edmund G. Ted Van Zandt

I was very lucky to grow up around Daddy, and I wanted to share a few stories with you. One story started when Daddy was a boy. He lit a firecracker, but when he reached back to throw it, it went off early, and he lost an eye. When Barbara and I were growing up, you might think we would be kept far away from fireworks, but he didn’t think that way. He showed us how to light them, and how to throw them without getting them close to our faces. He explained why, and that lesson really sank in. Daddy was always fascinated by things with motors. As far back as I can remember, we always had a boat. The first one was a beautiful 14 foot wooden outboard named Sabrina. It started with a 25 HP motor, but each year or two Evenrude would come out with a bigger one, and Daddy would buy it. Mother and Daddy taught themselves how to ski, then to slalom (with both feet on a single ski), then started teaching anybody else willing to try. Barbara and I each learned to ski at age 7 and slalom at age 9. For the 50 horse motor Daddy entirely rebuilt the aft of the boat so it would be strong enough. I think that was first motor that would get us up to forty miles an hour, which was fast enough that Daddy could teach himself to ski barefoot. He took many spectacular falls in the process. His response? ‘Moooore practice!’ Daddy designed and built a go-kart for Barbara and me. It had a wooden frame and an old gasoline motor with a complicated set of step-down pulleys. He walked me through the design of those pulleys. Each step made sense, but as to the over-all design process, I didn’t have a clue. That go-kart would go about five miles an hour, and we would drive it around our back yard. Much later we got into go-kart racing. Daddy and I both drove. We entered sprint races, and won a few trophies, but we were really more interested in the endurance races. These were an hour or so long, on sports car tracks. Imagine lying flat on your back, an inch off the ground, at ninety miles an hour on the straightaways or in four wheel drifts in the corners. I learned a lot working on those go-karts. Nita and Tracy think it still influences how I drive. Later we got into motorcycles. We were in Seattle at the time, living in apartments at the south end of Lake Washington. He bought an 80 cc Yamaha, and suggested I take it over to a dirt parking lot on the shore of the lake and drive it around to break in the engine. I didn’t have a drivers license yet – maybe a learners permit. But it turned out that parking lot was still considered a public roadway. I got arrested, but Daddy convinced the officials he had given permission, and I wouldn’t do it again. When we got back to Wichita, he got me my first car – a 1963 Corvair convertible. Eventually we had three Corvairs in the family, and we rebuilt all three engines. We never did get Barbara’s car running right, though. After boats, and wheeled vehicles of all sorts, Daddy did take flying lessons. He knew an instructor who wanted to find out whether he could. You see, with only one eye, he did not have normal depth perception. He actually did okay, but he was never allowed to solo, so we did not wind up with an airplane. I take away a few simple lessons: Take sensible precautions. Be willing to try new things. If it doesn’t work out at first, ‘mooore practice’.

I am sorry for your loss.