Crucial

Wes Spieker '21

BIRDS, NAOMI DEOKULE '21

Crucial

Wes Spieker '21

In spite of a job that started him off by sending him into old people’s apartments—90 degree hellholes that, while swaddled in his wool suit, would make him sweat bullets— to fix TVs and heaters, in spite of perennial 3:30am wakeups to drive long hours up to LA to design new communities, to come back late at night and take care of four young kids, in spite of having owned two houses simultaneously, which caused so much stress that my father lost dozens of hours of sleep and over twenty pounds, in spite of vacations interrupted by critical, time-sensitive work calls or callbacks that would cut his vacation short and leave the family lacking a crucial piece, my dad kept on working. He couldn’t stop. He took responsibility for hundreds of lives, those of his residents, hundreds more families, those of his coworkers, and left himself little time to take care of himself.