Sad News

A tribute to Mike Morin-My father-in-law, a member of the Longhouse Treasure Hunters and one of my best friends. I'll miss you, Mike.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome to One More Dig. We aren't doing any fancy intros today or anything, no detecting topics. I did want to, and that's this is the reason that I'm making this podcast, is to let you all know that Mike Moran, my father-in-law, and member of the Longhouse Treasure Hunters passed away last week. He was playing pickleball, which he loved, so I guess that might be a silver lining. I don't know. That's not the right word for that. But he did love pickleball as he did metal detecting. My relationship with Mike goes back 18 years when I married his daughter Tracy. I think in the beginning we might not have been best friends. Tracy and I eloped, and both he and Tracy's mom were not real pleased that we didn't have a traditional wedding and or even let them know that we were getting married. But we got along over the years really well, and we golfed occasionally and uh, you know, caught up and had dinner and watched football games and things. Um he's just uh he was a gentle person and a kind person and the most generous um person I've ever met. And we really got close in 2000 when Tracy's mom got sick, and um they were in Florida, and I took care of his house up here in New Hampshire, and our friendship really grew um during that time and after he had moved back full-time to New Hampshire, and I smartly um gave him a metal detector, and actually I gave him two. I gave him two simplexes, one um he kept in Florida and one he kept up here, and he really um especially after Tracy's mother passed, spent a lot of time on the beaches in Florida um detecting good exercise and fresh air, and and uh he really enjoyed it. I think actually um I gave him a GoFind 61st um as the first machine, but that doesn't work in anything related to salt, sand, salt water, whatever. So we came up with the simplex. Um, and then when he was north, he and I detected quite often um he had a couple of great spots, and and we'd go out and uh he became an old pro at it. He went he went quite often. Um, and I like to think that it was something that gave him joy after a really hard, hard time in his life. And as a result, he and I um spent quite a lot of time together. Every Wednesday um we'd get together and we'd have our tuna subs at his house and rehash the week and just catch up on how the kids were and how he was doing at work and and uh yeah, every every Wednesday, pretty much every Wednesday for for years, and uh, you know, except for when he was in Florida or um, you know, my work schedule, but I would I'm a business consultant and I'm able to luckily make my own hours. Um so yeah, we used to do that all the time. We'd go metal detecting. I never played pickleball with him. He had people all over the place, all different courts and cities and that he uh that he played his pickleball at. And in the last uh episode, I mentioned that he won he and his partner won a game at the uh US Pickleball Open, which was very exciting. Um I think he finished one and three this year, but to win a game um against international and national athletes was pretty cool. Um we were really proud of him, and he was very proud of himself. Uh 74 years old, he had had a minor stroke four years ago, and he was out playing pickleball every day, whether he was in New Hampshire or Florida. So he was an extraordinary person. He was kind, he was kind to our children, he was kind to just a just a nice man. He um he started a football program in Derry, New Hampshire, and was the uh coach for 10 years, and uh it's interesting to see all these folks reaching out to my wife um who are 65 years old, and he was their coach and and say that he was the most influential man in their lives, and um everybody still you know thinks about him and uh he worked as a sales a salesman for his whole career and he has clients um who adore him and um are ta terribly saddened as well about about this. It was actually really um quite unexpected considering all his uh athletic activity and he cooked um for himself and he cooked very healthy. Um you just you never know. It um turns out it was likely in arrhythm an arrhythmia that um can happen at any time. I had three cardiac ablations back in the late 2000s for atrial fibrillation and um supraventricular tachycardia. Um so they aren't inherited from what I understand. It's just luck of the draw, and uh I was lucky I was real young and able to go through the procedures, um, but it's just a sudden arrhythmia, extra heartbeats are you know um racing heart. I think his was um ventricular fibrillate fibrillation, I think is what his was called. Um, but you just have an extra heartbeat or two, and then it can throw your heart out of whack. Um so I think you may or may not um remember this, but he was also mentioned in in many of the past podcasts, and he was featured in the podcast Umimals, COVID, and a barber half dollar, in which he found the half dollar um in a field in his out behind his house, an old farm field. Um, I found some large cents in there and um found a large cent in there last week, actually. A 1834. But he found this half dollar that turned out to the be the find of the year for the Longhouse Treasure Hunters, and uh that was real exciting for him to receive that. It was really amazing for me to be able to give that to him because he was a relatively new metal detectorist, and it just boosts your confidence and you know makes you even enjoy the hobby more when you um occasionally find something like that. I've never even found a barber half, to be honest with you, and I've been doing this 43 years, so that was uh that was a great find. Um, you know, so many people loved him, and he did so many things to touch so many lives, it's hard to it's hard to uh even you know come up with all of them. Um I would take pages and pages and pages and pages um to do that. But he was a he was a great guy and he was really, really, really nice to me and one of my best friends um for the last several years. So I just wanted to do a little tribute to Mike here. Um if any of you are interested in seeing his obituary, just Google Michael Morin, um Peabody Funeral Home, Concord, New Hampshire. Um I think that would that would be obituary. I think that would get you to it. I don't know the URL offhand um right now, but all you have to do is Google Michael Moore and and uh and you'll see him. He's wearing a a red shirt, a pinkish red shirt standing in on a cruise ship in Alaska Um with a big smile on his face. So anyway, thanks for uh thanks for tuning in this week. Um next week we'll have some some metal detecting topics, but this week I just wanted to pay tribute to a great man and a great influence on me, and he was wonderful to my children. We're all gonna miss you very much, Mike. Um stay out of the kitchen.