I’d like to tell you a story about true determination and passion.

My dad was born on August 12, 1945 in Buffalo, New York. His parents, Sadao and Midori, and sister, Yuki, later moved to Batavia, New York in 1954 and then to Santa Cruz in 1959.

My dad received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering with honors in 1967 from Cal Poly. He started working at PG&E corporate in San Francisco immediately after and was chosen to part of a four person joint beta program between PG&E and Stanford University where he later received his Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1972. The beta program was designed for virtual classes. Keep in mind this was in the 1960’s, decades before the internet and today’s “virtual” everything that is available.

At that time they had setup a closed circuit TV system from Stanford to PG&E where a camera guy would shoot the lectures and zoom in on the blackboards. My dad used to tell me stories about how the camera guy would fall asleep and not keep up and the professor would flip the board over before he could see everything. Somehow he made it through and was one of three that received their Masters degree virtually.

At PG&E my dad helped design numerous items including the ground grid at Diablo Nuclear Power Plant and the 500kV transmission lines as well as headed the Technical Systems Analysis Group which was a task group formed to solve problems that other engineers got stumped on.

He retired from PG&E in 1990 and became the EVP and Director of Research and Development of Satake Research Institute, which was a think tank setup to hire the best and the brightest to develop (and he later patented) a broken rice analyzer based on unique computational algorithm and artificial intelligence.

Dr. Charlie Della Santina (currently a Director of the Johns Hopkins Vestibular NeuroEngineering Laboratory) worked for my dad at SRI when he was younger and considers my dad his most influential mentor. Unfortunately, Charlie could not be here today. Charlie calls my dad the Elon Musk before Elon Musk. Dad had the ability to figure things out and had no bounds. When confronted with a problem, he would solve it. No matter how hard it was or long it took. That was my dad.

Charlie says my dad was on a lifelong quest to find the best clam chowder in the world. Charlie says it didn’t matter where they were or which restaurant they were going to so long as they began the meal with clam chowder.

As I got older and began to travel, my dad would give me suggestions on great places to eat like Ruth’s Chris and their 1,800 degree broiled steaks or Felix’s Oyster Bar and beignets from Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans. He certainly loved great food.

Concurrent with his work at SRI, he headed a Electrical Engineer Consulting business. My dad authored and had been cited in dozens of publications in the electrical engineering field and was the recipient of 8 awards from the IEEE Power Engineering Society, the International Conference on High Voltage Electric Systems, and PG&E for work on the measurement of electric and magnetic fields, technical expertise of complex grounding analysis studies and outstanding work as a technical investigator. My dad’s determination and incredible analytical skills clearly shaped his career.

One passion of my dad’s was the art of Japanese gardens, landscaping and architecture. After each work trip to Japan, he would come back with hundreds of slides that we would look through to study how the shape and size of manicured trees balanced the combination of rock and water to form a perfectly serene environment. He would analyze how wood could be joined without the unsightly display of hardware, screws, nuts or bolts.

My dad designed and built his Japanese garden at home and founded Baishiki Landscaping where he designed and built them for others to enjoy. His work can be viewed on a website I created for him at www.rodbaishiki.com

Somehow my dad did all of this and was also an incredible husband and father. My mom and dad were married on June 21, 1969 and recently celebrated their 49th year anniversary. I don’t think there was a day that went by since his heart attack nearly 22 years ago where my mom wasn’t by his side, day in and day out. Together, they did his passions.

We learned Tae Kwon Do together. There were times when I wanted to quit but dad taught me another valuable lesson and to see it through to the end. We received our blackbelts together. Dad was 46, Sei was 14 and I was 12 years old.

Dad made time to take us on family vacations to Hawaii, Disneyland, Lake Tahoe and to Lake Berryessa. He taught us how to water ski, back up the truck and trailer and how to drive a jet boat. I was barely 15 years old and going flat out across the lake with a 427 big block in his 69 Sidewinder.

I had just turned 17 years old when my dad had his heart attack in 1996. It was a massive heart attack on the left side commonly known as the “widowmaker” and is almost always fatal. My dad survived and was fortunate enough to receive a heart transplant on December 7, 1997 which later became known as my dad’s second birthday.

There were a lot of rough times and lots of hospital stays. One year my dad spent a total of 180 days in the hospital alone and through the 20½ years with the heart transplant faced three major heart rejections which he beat each time. He was so strong, so determined and constantly shocked doctors at his ability to overcome and survive.

When considering his passions, there was one that stands out above everything else. To know my dad, was to know his passion for cars. It was in Santa Cruz where my dad’s passion for cars began. He worked with a nearby neighbor on his car and then later bought a 38 Chevy when he was 15 for $75.

My dad taught me everything I know about cars. From an early age, he taught me about tools and how to work on them. Dad took us to car shows to local events in the middle of the week like Paul Joe’s and we never missed a Goodguys Pleasanton event. We’d walk through through the 3,500+ cars and he would explain the subtle differences between years, makes and models. And then he would describe and show me how people customized their cars, reshaping body panels, chopping tops, filling roofs, sectioning of panels and frenching in of lights.

We traveled to car shows to Monterey, Avila Beach, Morro Bay, Pomona, Bakersfield, Redding and so many others. He was a true die hard of die hards when it came to cars.

One of my dad’s life long dreams was to drive his streetrod to the Nationals in Louisville, Kentucky. So he worked on the their 33 Tudor Sedan, shook it down, got it really roadworthy, packed up the matching trailer with tools and extra parts and my mom and dad drove it all of the way to Louisville. I wasn’t able to take time off of work for the entire trip but I flew out and met them there.

We went out to see the Riddler award at the Detroit Autorama together and saw the Great 8.

We went to the SEMA show in Las Vegas together. He was like a big kid in the largest toy store ever, smiling ear to ear as we went up and down the aisles. He had a suitcase he wheeled behind him to carry all of the literature he would get from the vendors.

My dad loved working with his hands. He loved wrenching on cars but his passion was in building cars. He learned to work with metal, cutting grinding, welding, got a mill and a lathe and became a fabricator. He would custom design, engineer and build brackets, stands and anything he needed.

My dad never cut corners. Everything was always done to perfection. He would often say “Anything worth doing is worth doing right” and “There is only one way to do it… the right way.”

He learned how to shape metal with an English wheel, repair rusted panels, work with body filler and became a painter. He painted his truck twice because he wasn’t happy with the first job. He painted the Impala right before selling it just to practice and get ready for painting the 34 Four Door Sedan.

I remember the day my dad bought the 34 Four Door Sedan. I thought it was the coolest car and it sounded so awesome with that distinctive whine from the 4-71 blower. During the summers, my dad drove it daily to work. I used to help out anytime I could and at the time I was small enough to slide under the car to clean all of the polished stainless parts. We used to run errands in and he used to drop me off to baseball practice in it.

Shortly before his heart attack we were on Highway 92 coming up the hill and he floored it and the motor blew while we were probably doing close to 100 mph. Due to his health the car sat for 15 years. We started working together on the restoration a few years ago and with the help of some of his friends we got the car back on the road and I was able to take him for a ride around the block just a month ago.

My dad always said he had two speeds… fast and faster. And it was true. He never could just sit and do nothing. He always had to be doing things, working with his hands. He beat the odds countless times overcoming medical complication after another. There was always another project to be completed and another project to be started. He never complained and he never gave up.

I miss my dad more than words can say. He may be gone but his memory will live on in our hearts forever.

I love you, Dad.

-Tei