A Cherished Bungalow

It started the year I was born—my dad’s first road trip to the Oregon Coast. He fell hard for that wild, green edge of the world. In the years that followed, we made the long haul from the high Utah desert to Seal Rock more times than I can count, usually with my dad, his brother, my grandmother, and a young scrawny Rachel crammed into the car. My clearest memories are of misty mornings, slipping out with my dad before dawn to marvel at the tide pools—alien worlds cradled in wet rock, teeming with life, always returning with pockets overfilled with wet, fragrant seashells, rocks and driftwood.

My dad, Gary, was born on the southern edge of Ohio. His father died young, and his older brother Bill—16 years his senior—stepped in as much a father figure as a brother. After serving in Thailand during Vietnam, my dad moved to Utah. As time thinned the family back south, and the reasons to stay faded, his mother and brother headed west to join him.

In Northern Utah, Bill— an air traffic controller and a man of deep faith, found solace at a nearby abbey. Eventually, he left behind the chaos of his old job for the quieter certainty of a life devoted to god, becoming a Catholic priest. By the time I hit middle school, he was known to all as Uncle Father Bill.

When I was 16, my dad remarried, and plans for relocation in Oregon grew roots. Bill, having recently battled cancer, decided it was time to settle too. He bought The House on the Coast, knowing Oregon was to be my dad’s future forever home. Two years later, when I graduated high school, my dad and his wife settled in 4 acres in the Willamette Valley.

Bill and I didn’t always see eye to eye. He was wise but stubborn, shaped by the South and the Great Depression. I was a reserved child who grew into a rebellious teen, and our differences sometimes sparked. Still, I never doubted his love. Having never had children of his own, I served as a close stand-in, he was—part uncle, part grandfather, part second dad.

When Bill’s health declined in 2015, he moved from the coast to the Willamette Valley, where my dad and his wife could look after him. Our conversations deepened during those years—long calls filled with stories and advice delivered with quick precision, but with more human tenderness than I felt from him I as a child-- age had softened him. He passed away in January 2021, leaving behind his stories, artifacts, and old Jaguar he didn’t get to enjoy nearly enough— and the house on the coast.

The House on the Coast idle and untouched for years, waiting. It felt like a time capsule—nothing moved, nothing changed—held in place by the hope that Bill might one day return. With his passing and that hope retired. My dad and I started making plans to revive the home—a place for friends and family to gather, a retreat shaped by both memory and new life. Gardens, hot tubs, Thanksgiving feasts—we were ready for the experience together.

Then, in the fall of 2022, my dad was diagnosed with metastatic esophageal cancer. He died suddenly, it hit me so hard, it hardly made sense. I’m still unraveling the loss, the ache.

My ownership of this home came from great love and great sadness. It was a gift inconceivable, beautiful, and tragic. It is a gift I look to share from a place of honor and gratitude.