Originally Posted by
Linnie
The granddaughter was the child of the older son of the late Philip, and a former girlfriend--- apparently they split up soon afterward and their daughter was raised by her mother's side of the family. However, I gather that the mother and daughter were still friendly with the much younger son, who died in 2010, just prior to his 25th birthday (no cause given that I could find. The big difference in the brothers' ages indicates they were from different marriages.) At any rate, they both left nice comments on his obituary page.
The daughter, by all accounts a VERY nice child, was also overweight. At age 11, she was developing an interest in physical fitness and exercise, which, ironically, led to her death in a freak landslide, while hiking with some friends. The area where the incident (November 2012) occurred had been subject to a lot of rain, which loosened things up, and unfortunately, the poor girl was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her mother never married and had no other children. The accident was big news in their part of California at the time.
In memory of his daughter (apparently also HIS only child), her father got a tattoo with her name, which he proudly displayed on his Facebook page, along with his, umm, other interests. Aw, shucks.
I do feel bad about the younger son and the grand-daughter. The younger son was just a teen when his father passed, and his niece just a toddler, so she may never even have seen this grandfather. Who knows what happened to the younger son? Maybe drugs/ drinking, maybe an accident, maybe one of those weird untimely things like a brain hemorrhage? His niece and her mom (who seems a decent sort mostly, with a real job, and quite forlorn obviously, judging from her FB) liked him, so he couldn't have been all bad.
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Old Philip did not live long enough to know any possible pain from their losses.