Mark William Deike

Dad was born in Detroit Lakes, MN to Charles and Velda (Sivertson) of rural Detroit Lakes. He was raised on the farm out on Hwy 37 for his entire childhood and lived only a handful of years outside of Minnesota.

Dad's work involved so many things, from truck driving, to chimney repair, and finally settling on industrial machining. He had also come to work with lumber after his early retirement from machine shops.

Besides work and his family, Dads passion was the past. Growing up on our small hobby farm and being the homeschool family we were, he took every opportunity to teach my brother and I some life skill that "the new day and age has forgotten"; I could hitch a team of horses and plow a field with no more then a nod from Dad, but he'd always laugh because if it required a tractor he'd need my brother's help because I was hopelessly lost. Even our family vacations revolved around the past with all of them taking place at tractor shows and work horse events and being the constant teacher he was, he always found a way for my brother and I to be involved. The past was important to Dad. 

Dad was a stubborn and hard person to love, who not only ran short in height but patience as well, (don't worry he would appreciate the short joke) but if you were lucky enough to have the fortitude it took to love and learn from him, you would find a wealth of the most eclectic knowledge stored in his gray matter. You could simply start the conversation with "Hmm, I wonder how a carburetor works?", and hours later you would find yourself sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and discussing Einstein's theory of relativity. 

There is this eulogy written by Aaron Freeman, Dad and I had countless discussions of what Aaron speaks about and I am hoping I am able to include it with this obituary. If not, please look it up, I know Dad would be tickled pink to know he may have taught someone something one last time. 

In the later years of his life Dad suffered from several strokes that ultimately lead to dementia, if you have seen him in the last 5 years, you'll know how much that disease stole from him. It ultimately was what took Dad from this life.

He did have one request of me, this summer he and I spoke a lot about the end of this life and what lays beyond, and in those fragmented conversations he asked me to let people know how sorry he was for his mistakes, although I don't believe he understood the mistakes he made, in the end I do believe he understood he had made them. Like I said, Dad was a hard person to love, but in the end all he ever wanted was to love, even if he didn't know how too anymore. 

Roy and I plan on having a legacy gathering on Labor Day weekend of 2025, this will allow all who wish to share stories to attend, after we have a private family gathering at WMSTR. 

Details will be announced as that date draws near. 

Dad leaves behind a daughter Emily (DJ) Kueber, a son Roy (Lisa) Deike and one grandchild, Mylei Kueber. 

 In honor of Dad's life, we present to you the following:

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral...

You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died.  You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the 1st Law of Thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe and none is destroyed.

You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world.  You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you.  And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellation of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

You will hope that your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy is still around.  According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone;  you're just less orderly.

- Aaron Freeman