Allan Waldsmith

Allan David Waldsmith (Al as he was known by friends and family, "My Pal Al", as he was affectionately called by his wife, Sylvia), 74 currently from Gautier, Mississippi, formerly from Rockton and Rockford, Illinois passed away Sunday, January 26, 2025 in Gautier, Mississippi, living near the salt water that fueled and fulfilled his soul.

Born April 22, 1950 (in 1970, this day would become recognized as Earth Day, Al would say it was to commemorate his birthday) in Rockford, Illinois to Gerald and Dorothy (Klein) Waldsmith. He attended Boylan and Auburn High Schools and spent a year at the University of Wisconsin, Platteville (we still aren't sure what he was studying, or if he was studying). He was employed by Roberts Laboratories, Cole Chemicals, and Briggs Trucking. He owned and operated Town & Country Feed and Garden Center in Roscoe, IL for 23 years. He "retired" to Gautier, Mississippi to be close to the water and help operate Mary Walker Marina.

Al lived an incredible life, as told by his daughters, Julia and Whitney. These are their stories of Al's life. My hope is you read these passages and feel the love that is included in their words...

From Julia... Dad was born the fourth of four children to Gerald “Jerry” Waldsmith and Dorothy Klein Waldsmith on April 22, 1950. Grandma was certain that he would be a girl, but Dad never did what others expected of him. Grandma was 40 when he was born and her other children were quite a bit older, to the point where surely, he was a surprise. By the time he was a kid, his siblings were mostly gone doing their own thing so he grew up much like an only child during his parent’s more leisurely years when they enjoyed taking long road trips to places that Grandpa had discovered in National Geographic, or by just looking at an atlas. Grandpa’s favorite thing was going fishing, and dad became his primary fishing partner. He had built his own boat, named after the most beautiful name he knew, “Dawn Marie”, the name of his first child and only daughter, 18 years Dad’s senior. They would camp out in the back of his car when they would go on an overnight trip and regardless of the setting, whether with a line in the water or working on an engine, Grandpa would be wearing a white collared shirt and tie. This was the childhood that Dad knew - exploring, making adventures, being self-sufficient. His deviant side must have developed as a side effect of his parent’s age and parenting fatigue. Grandma once told Dad to do his chores, including cleaning the gutters, so he stuffed some of his clothes and rolled the dummy off the roof in front of the window where Grandma would see it.

Grandpa owned a printing shop, Waldsmith Illustrators, where dad’s first job would have been sweeping the floors. Except he didn’t much like being told what to do, so he opted to make the decision of his first job himself and he began at a chemical plant, the kind of place that thankfully no longer exists, because Dad as a 14-year-old kid would climb ladders up the sides of giant open-air hoppers and pour chemical components into them as huge blades spun and mixed the contents. Maybe it was just the times, or maybe it was his hard-headed independence, but at other jobs he held he insisted on working hard, late, and often to earn the money to buy his own boat, truck, and later, house on Bergstrom Road. He loaded freight into semis when he got a bit older and started picking up routes driving around Rockford. When they needed people to drive farther, he began doing that and just never offered up the information that he was younger than the required age to do so. This was the kind of stuff that Dad was proud of. He never talked about school. He attended less than a year of some technical college but he wouldn’t care if anyone knew. His parents were Catholic so he attended Boylan in high school but got kicked out for smoking before he ever got to wear his class ring that, probably, his parents bought. Grandma used to tell the story of when she was called into the principal’s office to learn of this offense, only to be faced with the hypocrite smoking like a chimney in front of her - and she told him so.

Dad wanted and needed to be free, barely confined by the lines of the highway offering him a path to somewhere yet to be discovered. He took up Grandpa’s passion for flying and began learning at the Machesney Airport. When he had his first solo flight, intended only to be a touch-and-go, he took it upon himself to actually just leave the airfield and land at a neighboring airport to the shock and dismay of his instructor who watched him fly out of sight. He would take his Saint Bernard, Joe, up to fly with him. The same dog who caused him to move out of his parent’s house because Grandma wasn’t going to tolerate it. Grandma, who grew up in Rockford during the Depression, had a rightly earned distaste for dogs and horses too since they were everywhere, depended upon, and not pets during those times. Her family’s horse (if they really owned it, who knows) bit her once just to be sure she would never trust animals again. But like I was saying, Dad was never going to do what was expected of him so he did what he wanted instead.

Dad earned a good salary driving trucks during the high time of truck driving being something of a fashion and mystique. He drove for Briggs back and forth to Omaha, but probably lots of other places too. During long drives he wrote into his memory an encyclopedic knowledge of songs, artists, and lyrics mile by mile that would become the soundtrack for the rest of his life. For being such a hard-ass, he loved the heartbreak sung by Patsy Cline. He loved the songs that resonated with his own sense of adventure, “In 1814 we took a little trip, down with Colonel Jackson down the Mighty Mississip…We filled his head with cannon balls and powdered his behind, and when we took the powder off the gator lost his mind!”.

I think if Dad could have kept driving trucks, he would have. But times changed and he needed a new career path. With a buddy of his and my mother, he started Town & Country. It allowed him to work for himself, and did he ever. For years Dad worked hard doing whatever was needed to keep the store afloat. From open to close, nights and weekends, Dad worked loading, driving, watering, stocking, managing. My sister and I were born into this world where Town & Country itself was a sort of playground of eclectic people, animals, plants, and room to explore. And while the store itself outlived his marriage with my mother, it is also where he met the woman with whom he would share the rest of his life, Sylvia. They built a paradise of a home together on Yale Bridge Rd outside of Rockton where Dad always had a project - a very early one being the construction of his own Tiki Hut - that served as the social center of their lives, let alone the neighborhood. Under Dad’s care, the scrap of property under the power lines was molded into a landscape of ornamental trees, unique boulders, straight fence lines and golf cart trails, a pond with a beach loaded with well-fed fish and no end of places for the dogs to run.

As a child, my Dad and Town & Country, or “The Store” were synonymous. Nearly all of his plans that involved me, also involved either opening or closing The Store, but there was an exception and that was when Dad took my sister and I to the water. At an age in which the difference between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico was just the flavor of the water, my Dad took us to both. My Dad taught my sister and I how to pass through a lock and dam, pushing the boat off the lock with boat poles. Sylvia taught us how to pee off the swim platform. Dad took us to the most perfect beaches with shells we could collect all afternoon - only to find later that some of them had inhabitants. He treated clam cuts on our feet with Merthiolate, and docked the boat on the banks of curious big and small towns like we were Huck Finn on a downstream adventure. He taught us the words to Jimmy Buffett’s “Songs You Know by Heart” while we sat on his lap and let us steer the boat. During those years, I never knew dad to be happier than on those trips.

Just like Grandpa did for him, Dad took us to the nearest salt water he could find on the map, 1000 miles due south of Rockford, in Gautier, Mississippi. He was hardly even an adult by the time he earned the nickname and radio call sign “Sharkey” fishing massive sharks out of the Gulf of Mexico and stringing them up by the tail at Mary Walker Marina. These trips fostered a deep love for the water, weather, food, and people of the Gulf Coast that he enjoyed for a lifetime and shared with the people he loved. Dad could equally appreciate the fine creole cuisine of a New Orleans’ landmark or a diner ice cream sundae in a boat from Edd’s. So, when he and Sylvia had the opportunity to leave Illinois and manage Mary Walker, they relocated to where he always wanted to be. Finally, Dad was back, for good, in the place that always drew his heart. It wasn’t always easy, but the kindness of the people in this new home embraced him. Though the water had drawn his heart back to Mary Walker, he never went back to it like he had before. No more grand fishing trips far past the islands, but he made thousands of trips up and down the fuel pier of Mary Walker, filling tanks and waving goodbye with a happy smile to the boaters as they went on their way to their own adventure.

I can’t know what it was, for certain, that made Dad who he was. As a child I knew him as tough, strong, adventurous, and stoic. As an adult I knew him as kind, gentle, affectionate, and humorous. There are two of him in my memory, and I’ll never really know when one became the other. I’ll forever be grateful for both. Dad left his beloved wife Sylvia Waldsmith and daughters Whitney Waldsmith and Julia Waldsmith behind all too soon. We wanted him to stay, to make us laugh with his accidental antics, the lyrics he could sing, and the humor he found in the world. But Dad always did things his own way, and he never did what others expected of him. I believe that when he realized he couldn’t live the way he wanted to anymore, he chose to leave. Dad passed away January 26th, 2025.

As Dad wanted, there won’t be a funeral service or memorial, instead we will just go to his favorite bars and share a round. In lieu of flowers or donations, listen to “Jolly Mon Sing” by Jimmy Buffett, think of my father, and treat the people in your life right.

From Whitney... My dad knew what he liked – the ocean, John Wayne movies, Red Sovine music, and dark bars. Learning what you love at an early age is a blessing – you get to live your life in service of those goals. Watching Dad taught me to be genuine and that it’s ok to live your own life according to your rules. It also taught me a lot of Jimmy Buffett lyrics. Dad’s life was not typical, and it wasn’t necessarily the kind of life many people wanted. But he chose it, and lived without apology.

Dad worked hard during his life, and made his work serve his purposes well. His job as an over-the-road trucker gave him the opportunity to chat on a CB radio, haul boats across the country, and look extremely cool in aviator sunglasses. Later, when he ran Town and Country, he got to work with people who seemed like characters in an old Western and collect unexpected taxidermy. At the end of his life, he finally had the opportunity to live near the ocean, fueling up big boats and trading some of the world’s greatest fish stories (including teaching southerners what a Musky is). It’s hard to say if Dad chose these things because of who he was, or if his work shaped him. But he was immensely proud of what he built and the work he participated in.

One part of Dad’s life that he might not have chosen was kids. As children, my sister and I were typical, in that we were stubborn, loud, and fought a lot. Dad was not particularly interested in those things, and we knew it. Because of that, we had experiences that a lot of kids wouldn’t have. We didn’t hang out with our extended family or go to kid-friendly restaurants. But we were on a first-name basis with many bartenders, we listened to talk radio, and we learned to tend lines while floating in a lock and dam. Dad knew he didn’t like kids, so he shaped us into people that liked what he did. Even though we pushed back against a lot of it, it made us the strange and cartographically-inclined adults we are today.

If Dad liked you, you knew it. It was genuine and didn’t feel forced. Dad’s friendships and relationships were long and enduring. If you were picked, your life had the potential to include lobster bakes, tiki parties, golf cart rides, and the occasional trip to paradise. He’d crack you a (terrible) beer and remind you that Rush Limbaugh was the second-smartest man in America (after him). However, he would likely never send you a greeting card. Dad did not like feelings very much – it was preferable to finish that Johnnie Walker and stare at the fire. Don’t take that as an offense – that was how he was. If you wanted to sit and look at that fire and ignore your feelings too, you were more than welcome.

We will miss Dad dearly, but I plan to remember his example as I move forward through life. Knowing who you truly are, at your core, is the key to making choices that make you happy. Choose the path to what you love – stay in the channel and keep it between the buoys.

He was predeceased by his parents; and brothers, Carl and Richard.

He is survived by his wife, Sylvia (Ekedahl) Waldsmith; daughters and their husbands, Whitney Waldsmith and Ryan Larned, Julia Waldsmith and Michael Hall; granddaughter, Caroline; and sister, Dawn (Don) Linstead.

There is no service scheduled at this time. Al's wishes were to be cremated and buried in the place he felt the most joy and comfort, in the Gulf. There will be a Celebration of his life at a later date.

There are so many people to thank that visited Al, sent him cards and gifts to help lift his spirits, that we can't list them all here. You made his last few months on this earth so much more enjoyable and happier. We want to thank his caregivers at All About Best Care, in Gautier, Mississippi for the genuine love, care, and tenderness they gave him every single day. Thank you to Deaconess Hospice for helping him through the last few weeks of an incredible life with dignity. Thank you to Bradford-O’Keefe Funeral Homes for their compassion and guidance. It is our hope that you support the groups you feel strongly about. Keep your loved ones close and tell them, every day, how much they mean to you.

Bradford-O’Keefe Funeral Home is honored to serve the family of Allan David Waldsmith.