Joe Dircks

Re “Retired Officer, 96, Kills Ill Wife and Then Himself,” Jan. 13:

I knew Joe Dircks and his wife Lillie. I wasn’t a friend, but they treated me as if I was. From the middle of 1989, for about a year and a half, we had a routine: Every two weeks, he would welcome me into his home for a few minutes and he and his wife and I would exchange a few pleasantries. He would tell me not to be afraid of his huge dog. After that I’d head out to the back porch, drop a fresh five-gallon bottle of water on their cooler, come back through the house, tell them I’d see them in two weeks, scratch the dog behind the ears once more and be gone.

Occasionally, Joe and I would take a paper bag and a few extra minutes and he’d let me load up on fruit from the trees in his backyard, or from the vast amount of huge tomatoes that seemed to surround his entire house one season. “Take as many as you want,” he would say--and I would.

I knew little of his life. But in those few minutes we spent together twice each month, Dircks showed himself to me to be a robust, considerate and generous man who stood tall and strong with quiet pride in himself and a deep, undivided love for his ailing wife.

WILLIAM CAMPBELL

Encino

* No one will ever know what was going through Joe’s mind, or how he assessed the situation. It is, though, abundantly clear, that he did not want his wife to suffer anymore and helped her in the only way he knew. He didn’t have to shoot himself, though--according to the reports he was still a capable man. He did so because he didn’t want Lillie to be alone and he had no desire to live without her.

One wonders how the justice system would have reacted, had he survived. May they forever rest in peace together.

WILLIAM H. BRADY