In Memory of Charles Patrick Voith
My dad, Charles Patrick Voith, passed away a few days ago, unexpectedly, while swimming. He was a Naval Academy graduate and served in the Marine Corps — something he was deeply proud of his entire life. In recent years, he stayed active with his local veterans organization, showing up for the community in the way a lot of people talk about but don't actually do.
He genuinely loved helping people. He told me once that making a positive impact in someone else's life was one of the things that made him feel most satisfied — not as an obligation, but as something that actually fulfilled him.
He also spent much of his life working through a hard upbringing and his own mental health. That kind of work doesn't happen quickly, and for a long time it wasn't easy to be around while he did it. But the last several years, he found something like peace — and the last time I spoke with him, I could hear it. He sounded genuinely relieved, present, like a man who had finally made it somewhere he'd been trying to reach for decades.
He didn't care much for convention. He preferred writing to talking on the phone, honesty to small talk, and he had little patience for anything that felt performative. So it feels a little strange to write this on the internet, but I think he'd understand the impulse to say something true rather than nothing at all.
I'm grateful I got to know him in the version of himself he worked so hard to become. And I'm grateful the last thing I told him was that I loved him.
I love you, Dad. So much.
