A sad loss in our family

My first cousin, Chris Coates, 61, passed away recently after boating in the Seattle area with his whole family -- wife Mary, two sons and a daughter, and two three year old grand-daughters. He suffered an aortic aneurism on the lake, was able to get to ER and a very lengthy surgery which they thought was successful. Early the next morning, he suffered a fatal heart attack while in the recovery room.

The services last weekend were solemn, but enabled family (as always) to come together again. Chris was working at Boeing, on the Dreamliner, and the story from his colleagues at the service was that he was always a quiet, reserved engineer who never spoke out unless he was really concerned about something. And then, they said, he could be counted on to raise the question that everyone else would duck.

The big one on the Dreamliner was that he raised the flag about the stresses on fiber strands in the composite material joining the fuselage to the wings -- this was seen as a heresy statement, but it also stopped the forward progress until checked. Upon checking, it turned out to be true, and the plane was delayed for a year -- but hopefully the wings will stay attached for planes they put in service. I'm voting for him and his conscience -- it is pretty tough to fly these big birds without wings. The Lockheed Electra tried that in 1959 and 1960 with disastrous results. Chris' dad, Tom Coates, led the design team that did the latch on the cargo door of the Boeing 747 that blew off over Hawaii; that plane landed safely, unbelievably. Airplanes run 'in the family'; my daughter-in-law, Laura, works in the same building that Chris was in; she is on the Avionics side of the Dreamliner team.

So, those who think my Medal of Defiance was accidental haven't gotten to know the family. Chris's brother Tom, co-founder of Trimble Navigation, also has pedigree in this "emperor has no clothes" perspective. We all got it from ancestors, including William Coat(e)s who made the history books in Stonington, CT in about 1725 as indigent, without food or heat during an awesomely cold winter, but he was too proud and refused help from the community.

Jacques Henno, Alderman from Valenciennes France got the bailiff's daughter, Mme. Pesquier, pregnant in the neighboring town of Mons, Belgium around 1500 A.D. His grandson and namesake Jacques de Hennot (himself Alderman of Valenciennes), sided with Guy de Bres, the fiery Huguenot preacher executed by the French King Louis XIV in 1567. Hennot was captured twice, escaped both times, and under threat of death from both the King of France and the Duke of Alba in Italy, fled to England.

Hennot's 7th generation grandson, Abner Enos, born in New York, was living at age 26 in Indiana when gold was found in California. Off he went, a story told in "Across the Plains in 1950" which is on file in Salt Lake City Mormon archives. He intervened to save two men from hanging in "Hangtown" (now Placerville, CA), a move he wryly notes 'could have cost me my life'. That was but one of many harrowing tales in his saga. We think Chris Coates just was "one of the family"

Facts are, we lost a good man...