Pete "Ski" Bakersky

Obituaries are supposed to be simple: filled with basic information and names of those who are 'survived by' the one who has passed. I've never liked that phrase. It indicates a struggle that one has miraculously made it through. We didn't survive the life of Peter "Ski" Bakersky; it was a gift unlike any other to have been with him. We are not surviving his passing. We are facing it with the knowledge that he gave us everything we needed to walk through it.

Pete walked out of Brooklyn, New York and into the Hell that was the jungles of Vietnam with nothing but the kit of a combat medic and faith. He walked away from helicopter crashes, and kept moving. There is no way of knowing how many wounds he tended; how many soldiers made it home because of his actions; no way of knowing the burden he must have felt for those he could not help. What we can know is revealed through his actions. He saved lives.

After 21 years in the Air Force he decided to walk out of war and into the storm, responding to, according to the perceptions of his family, every natural disaster on American soil for 29 years as an employee of FEMA: Hurricanes Iniki, Andrew, and Katrina; earthquakes all over California, floods, tornadoes: if nature exerted its power over humanity, Pete was there digging through the rubble, once again saving lives. There were other kinds of storms: made of the smoke and twisted metal of what used to be the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, OK; The horrors of the attacks on the World Trade Center. 50 years spent with the American Flag on his shoulder, saving lives, protecting us from the storm, walking into Hell so we didn't have to, and making it back out. Not bad for a Polish kid from Brooklyn.

Pete was far more than the sum of his burdens, saw far more beauty in life than the storms suggest; any one of those burdens could have crushed a man who didn't possess the things at the core of who Pete was: the iron will, the physical stature and gregarious personality that made him the largest thing in any room he walked into. But he never brought them home. He never brought them home to his wife Sherry, whom he loved fiercely. Never brought them home to his four children: Adam, Mandi, Michael, and Sean: Never brought them to the sidelines or dugouts that he stalked as a youth coach to hundreds of kids; Never brought them to the dance recitals, the ballet performances, the concerts, the Boy Scout campouts, the swim lessons, karate lessons,the graduations. Never brought them home to his ten grandchildren: Brett, Easton, Kylie, Victoria, Zach, Jesse, Joey, Beau, Peter, and Walter. Never brought them to the hospital when he took a newborn grandchild in his slab of beef like hands that were so gentle, face beaming with pride and pure joy. Never brought them to the backyard where he taught two generations of Bakersky's how to tend a garden; how to always pick up dog poop BEFORE starting yard work; how to have pride in the home you built, and the family you created in it. Never brought them when he fired up the grill to feed countless wayward, hungover, or bored friends, football teams, baseball teams, dance squads, Rugby teams (sometimes two at a time) or birthday party-goers. Never brought them to Christmas, when it seemed like he would take two months off to bake cookies; put up lights and re-create every misstep from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation; watch every single Christmas movie on the Hallmark Channel numerous times (tearing up at the end of EVERY SINGLE ONE). He never brought them home so his home could be a place of peace, and filled with love.

We didn't 'survive' Pete's life: our lives are better, we are better, for having him. He loved his family, and imbued them with the best parts of him: His pride in a life well lived, his devotion to those he loved, and his unyielding will. It was that will that kept him with us as long as he was. It was that will that kept him fighting until the very end. It was that will that we will draw on as we move forward without him. It is that will that will carry him on, where without doubt Annie Bakersky, a tiny Polish woman with the thickest New York accent you could imagine, is waddling towards him. And it is that will that will keep him with us. There is really only one way to end this: Live long and prosper. Pete certainly did.

In lieu of flowers; family request that donations can be made to Children's Hospital, https://secure.childrenscoloradofoundation.org/site/Donation2?1660.donation=form1&df_id=1660&mfc_pref=T&utm_source=web_fdn&utm_medium=mainbutton&s_subsrc=fdn_button
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Hotel: DoubleTree Hotel Denver-Southeast
Group Name: Pete Bakersky Celebration of Life
Arrival Date: 10-Mar-2020
Departure Date: 12-Mar-2020

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