Happy Birthday Dad! A tribute to my father Robert Bergstrom Ingebretsen 1948-2003

I have been missing my Dad a lot this past month. March is always a very hard month for me because it was the month my Dad was born in and died in. Today he would have been 60 years old. He died five years ago.

I started putting together my 100 list about me and my first ten or so were all things about my Dad. That's when I realized I was really missing him and that I should just do a tribute to him on his birthday—get it out of my system so I can move on. So here it is. (I really don't expect anyone to read this, but maybe you'll find it fascinating. Who knows?)

1) My Dad was a computer genius. Really he was.
2) My father was the inventor of the technology that lead to the CD/DVD player
3) He worked with Ed Catmull, and together they made the first ever digital animated movie. It was a moving human hand and was about 20 seconds long.
4) Ed Catmull then asked my father to come to California and help start a digital animation company. My father declined, because he didn't want to move his family out of Utah. That "small" digital animation company is now Pixar Animation Studios.
5) Because of his pioneer efforts in digital recording, his invention of the CD player technology and digital animation he received an academy award in 1998.
6) His name was in TIME magazine
7) If you Google his name several websites pop up including

IMDB
WIKIPEDIA
Things invented by Latter Day Saints

8)Growing up in the 50's he was a member of a prominent family in Salt Lake and would often be photographed for the newspaper
9)He was the great-great grandson of Brigham Young
10)He worked in Los Angels as one of the leading digital sound recorders in the 80's. He even had a platinum record hanging in his office that he had recorded.

Doesn't all this sound really cool. But the truth is, I hardly knew this stuff when he was alive. It's interesting how I never associated these things with my father until after he died. Now, that's how people know him by. When people speak to me about him it's always, "oh you're Robert Ingebretsen's daughter, the brilliant inventor who did this or this....." So the following list is, to me, who my dad really was

1) He always had a computer. I never in my life had a time that there wasn't at least one computer in the house and very often there was two or three.
2) He always had the Internet. The Internet has actually been around since the 50's, and we've had it in our house since the late 70's. (Or maybe it was early 80's. I'm not positive on the date. I could go into more details about the history of the internet because my father taught me all about it)
3)He loved chocolate milk, Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, and Wheaties
4) He loved physics, and often discussed random laws of nature at the dinner table
5) He had a stupid funny sense of humor.
6) He loved watching the news, Seinfeld, Louis and Clark, James Bond movies, and X-files.
7)He had a terrible temper, but he was very quick to apologize and ask for forgiveness
8) He was very quick to forgive others and forget anything bad about a person
9) He always trusted me, so I felt I could tell him anything.
10) He believed in the best of people.
11) He loved trains and built model trains in our basement
12) He loved his children more than anything else in the world
13) He was never famous or rich in his life, although he did many "worldly" great things.
14) One of his greatest fears was dying alone.
15) He died alone.
16) His death was so unexpected, no one discovered it for almost 18 hours.
17) He was only 54 when he died of a heart attack.
18) He and I spoke over the phone the day before he died. We talked about how much he loved my daughter and what he was going to do with her during the summer.
19) He had a strong testimony in Christ, repentance and the Resurrection
20) I was with most of my family when we received news of his death.
21) It took me almost a month accept his death. I kept calling his home phone, just to hear his voice on the answering machine--half expecting him to answer.
22)I archived every email he ever sent me and I love when my brother sends me emails because he has the same name as my father.
23) We told stupid dumb jokes at his funeral
24) I think about him and miss him every day
25) I have never been as close to my mother as I was to him. I hope that changes some day
26) He and I are very alike, and there has never been anyone who understood me as well as he did. That's what I miss most about him.
27) There have been at least three times, since his death, that I knew without a doubt that his spirit was next to me.
28) The Christmas before he died he had no money for gifts, so he made a CD of all his favorite songs to give to his kids. At the time he thought is was a lame gift and almost didn't give it to us. He had no idea how treasured it became after his death and what comfort it brought me every time I listened to it.
29) He made a lot of mistakes and hurt a lot of people in his life, but the last few years of his life were spent repenting and making amends
30) When he died I felt that he had become the best man he could in this life. He taught me that you were never too old to change and become a better person.

If you made it through reading all this, I'm impressed, I know it was both therapeutic and fun for me to remember my dad and put this list together.

Happy birthday Dad. I love you!