Daniel Michael Chupa

"I love you!"

"Be safe, I love you!"

"Have a great day, I love you!"

OK, OK, I would think to myself, I heard you, Dad, enough already! No matter what the circumstances were – if things were great, if there was a conflict, if nothing was going on at all – these were always the words my Dad would end any exchange or conversation I had with him, my whole life. In the last months of his life, I knew enough not to take these words for granted, but, like having gourmet, homemade chicken soup every day, after a while you'd sometimes gloss over them. He never did, though.

Daniel Michael Chupa was born in Detroit, Michigan, on Wednesday, October 12, 1938, to Michael and Anna Chupa, the fourth of five children. Dan grew up in Hamtramck, Michigan, where his family was very active in the Ukrainian Catholic community; his father, in fact, was one of the founders of Immaculate Conception Ukrainian Catholic Church and Elementary School, where Dan would eventually attend.

Dan loved cars (particularly American muscle), baseball, the Church and his family, and demonstrated great aptitude in engineering and mathematics, wherein he built a career working in the auto industry. Prior to going to work as an industrial engineer for General Motors (Generous Mother, as he and his colleagues would call it), Dan worked with his brothers in their car repair shop, better known as "The Garage."

"Let me tell you how I met your mother," my dad began.

"Um, I'm not so sure I need to hear this," I said.

"I was working in the Garage one day," he continued, undaunted, "laying on a creeper underneath this cherry 55 Bel Air Hard Top: red and white body, white hard top, chrome bumpers with white wall tires – just as nice a Chevy as you'd ever want to see, it was beautiful! I was telling Jerry [his brother] how sweet this car was when I looked to the driver's side and saw these gorgeous legs walk by and I just knew I needed to meet . . ."

"Alright, alright, that's more than I need to know," I protested.

Dan met Maria Kowalyk at the Garage and, with Cupid's arrows launched, they were married on Saturday, August 31, 1963 at Immaculate Conception Church by Father Joe, with whom they became good friends. Dan worked for an engineering firm for a time before going to work for General Motors full time.
Dan and Maria loved to travel and take road trips to North Dakota, California and Mexico, among other places. They'd frequently travel with Father Joe down to Florida as well for a respite from Michigan winters.

"Father Joe loved to lay out in the sand on the beach and just soak up the sun," my dad said. "One morning, he covered himself in towels and fell asleep by the water. When your mother and I found him a couple hours later, he was crying out in pain – he had third degree burns on his feet, the only part he didn't cover. We spent the whole day at the hospital!"

Dan and Maria moved to Warren, Michigan, where Dan and his brothers built a home just down the street from his parent's place. With the nest thusly feathered, Dan and Maria had two children, Michael and Danielle, born one year apart.

While Dan pursued his career at GM, he and Maria were very family-oriented. He coached Mike's little league baseball teams, they'd spend Summer Sundays with the kids out at the lake in Pontiac, they'd drive out to California for family vacations and they'd spend lots of time with his brothers' families.

"We'd take three big trucks out to this tree ranch out in the forest early every December. You kids and your cousins would be running around, playing in the snow, while my brothers and I would find a huge 50 or 60 foot pine tree to cut down. We'd cut it up into three segments and, voila, everybody had Christmas trees," my dad remembered, "floor to ceiling, 15 feet wide by 10 feet high."

"I remember," I said, "it took Danielle and me three weeks and 3,000 lights to decorate."

Daring to venture beyond the close-knit community that Dan had known his whole life, and wanting to be closer to Maria's parents, the pair decided to pack up their big yellow and white van, sell their home and move out to Southern California in the summer of 1978.

Dan took a job with GM at their Van Nuys plant, building Camaros, while Maria eventually began working as a Real Estate agent. They first moved the family to Maria's brother's apartment complex in Alhambra, then moved to Pasadena until eventually buying a home in San Gabriel, California.

Dan was the office comedian and was an early adopter of e-mail – so that he could send jokes to his friends and family. He loved nothing more than fooling and surprising people.

"No one knew I was coming," my dad explained of his unannounced trip back to Detroit to attend a funeral. "I showed up at this restaurant where Mickey [his brother] and Maggie were at with his kids and pretended to be this homeless guy asking for change. I had on dark glasses and a hat, and I was mumbling loudly when I intentionally ran into Mickey. He whipped around like he was ready to fight when I took off my hat and glasses; he looked at me for a minute, stunned, until he recognized me and broke down laughing."

Definitely my dad.

Dan retired in the early 1990's when GM closed down the Van Nuys plant. He worked for a while as a crossing guard for local elementary schools, quickly becoming a student favorite as he strummed his stop sign like a guitar and protected kids from impatient drivers, himself being hit (not hard, thankfully) two or three times!

Dan was a very devout Catholic and found comfort in his faith. He struggled the last years of his life with severe and chronic pain from multiple back and leg surgeries. Still, every morning he would endeavor to get up first in order to greet his wife Maria, who has Alzheimer's, and tell her he loved her. He loved and was extremely proud of his daughter, Danielle, and son, Mike, and loved their critters, Charcoal the bunny rabbit, Max the lab/shepherd mix, and Sunny the whippet.

I sat with my dad a couple of weeks ago, shorty after he had an episode of heart palpitations and respiratory distress – the hospital, in fact, told us they didn't think he'd last the day and that we should make funeral arrangements. Thankfully, though, he made it through that episode and regained some stability.

He had been in hospitals for almost two months and would be sleeping most of the time we would come to visit. However, this day he was alert and knew that I was there. We talked for a long time (well, I did most of the talking, it was hard for him to speak) – about the Dodgers, about Sunny, about all the family and friends that wished him well. I could tell he was starting to tire again, so I told him I'd be leaving.

"I love you," he said, and those were the last words he ever said to me.

A funeral will be held on Friday, April 6 at 10:00 AM with a brief viewing starting at 9:30 AM at St. Therese Church in Alhambra followed by interment at Rose Hills Memorial Park, Whittier, CA.

Arrangements are under the direction of Douglass & Zook Funeral and Cremation Services, Monrovia, California.