In Memory of My Father-in-Law

Nintendo Force fans and followers, my apologies if you've been waiting to hear back from me with a response to a question or comment or complaint. I've fallen quite far behind on checking the inbox here, as family life has drawn my attention elsewhere for most of the last month. My father-in-law, David Lundquist, was moved from his nursing home and into hospice care early in May. He passed away less than a week later, and I've spent a lot of time recently in my wife's hometown, supporting her, her brothers and her Mom and helping to put on the funeral, which happened this past weekend.

I do my best to stay timely with things like customer service for our magazine here, but sometimes life just calls me away. If I'm ever taking ages to get back to you, please assume the best of me and don't think I'm being malicious or ignoring you intentionally. I'm juggling a lot, a lot of the time.

We're working on our next NF issue now, which will be called A Tribute to Toriyama, and the connection isn't lost on me – we're again honoring the life and legacy of a creative individual whose work found global recognition, as we did years earlier with the original "Thank You, Mr. Iwata" issue – and while shining the spotlight on this lost luminary, another light, much closer to me personally, has also gone out.

But while David Lundquist may not have ever been a name known around the world, he did make a massive impact in his local community. He was an English teacher at Lincoln High School in Cambridge City, Indiana for 37 years! He taught thousands upon thousands of students, and was loved by each and every one of them. Seriously – no hyperbole there. He genuinely was that teacher that everybody adored, and he taught for such a long stretch of years that some of his earliest students grew up, had families, and then their kids became teenagers who also got to have Mr. Lundquist as their English teacher. He was multi-generational!

Closer to home, he was a wonderful father-in-law to me, a great Dad to my wife Mary and a funny (though sometimes grumpy) grandpa to our five boys. He was a lifelong Cubs fan, loved listening to music and encouraged his kids to learn how to play instruments (though he never did learn himself). He could talk anyone's ear off – honestly, sometimes he'd speak to me for an hour straight, breathlessly moving from one old story into the next without ever giving me any opportunity to interject at all. (Some of that was just his personality; some was the Alzheimer's that got its hold on him in his final years.)

I won't be so long-winded here. I just wanted to let you all know why I've been a bit absent recently, and to let you all get to know Mr. Lundquist just a bit. I hope you all have fathers, fathers-in-law and father figures in your lives who have made just as much of a positive impact on you.

I'll be getting caught up on the inbox soon. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

~ Lucas