Galen Clarke, 1938-2017

by Abigail Carmody, Summer 2017

Galen Clarke, lifetime resident of Exeter, died last night in his sleep of natural causes. He was 79.

He leaves behind his wife Georgette, 77, and 14 year-old grandsons Calvin and Troy. Galen and Georgette's son Samson died in 2005 after a long illness at the age of 32. Galen also had a son and a daughter from previous relationships and had an additional 5 grandchildren from them.

Galen Clarke was born in 1938 to Nelson, a city planner and Gina Clarke, a legal secretary. He grew up in Exeter with his two older sisters, Drusilla and Xanthia. He had a lifelong passion for fitness and developed a love of music after picking up the guitar in high school.



High school was also where he met the girl who was the become his wife, Georgette Lachance.

After graduating from Suffolk University, he and Georgette married in 1967 after dating for 13 years.

Son Samson was born in 1973, shortly after Galen decided to make a career out of his love of music.

Galen retired from music at the top of his game in 2005 and helped raise his young grandsons after the death of his son. From the time of his retirement until his death, Galen remained a family man. At the time of his death, Galen was living with his former daughter-in-law, Kendal and her family in Exeter.

And just because I want to talk about wants and fears for a little bit:

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So Galen was actually quite a devoted husband in the last 10 to 15 years of his life but check out his fears! None of those women are Georgette - they're all random townie skanks he's woohooed or kissed in his life. He just wants to make sure they're still into him, I guess, even if he's not planning on doing anything with them (note the lack of multiple make out and woohoo wants).

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Bloody Romance Sims! Georgette has romance secondary, which I always forget because she's doesn't usually have any wants to cheat on Galen and I've never let her act on them when she does. Occasionally though, she rolls something like "Fall in Love with Lake". Oh Georgette, I admit that Lake is, as some say in Australia, a good sort and the grey hair is quite becoming on him! But it's not going to happen, sweetheart!

No, Lake is only interested in making friends, worrying about being widowed again and um...telling a shitty joke to his daughter. He's become the weirdest Romance Sim ever since he married Kendal, which is sweet. He does have three bolts with Georgette though, higher than he has with Kendal. That's Massive Attraction for you - they both have that benefit.

Aw, bless! The last pic I ever took of Galen and Georgette - they were doing this when I entered the house to um...kill him off. Because I have aging off and do my aging manually, I InSim almost all deaths. I use Inge's Days Left Shrub to figure out how many days they have left. Galen only had one, meaning 2017 was when his number was up. RIP Galen! He certainly led a full life!

Notes:

• Proper Clarke-Draper update should go up directly after this one! If I finish up writing an entry much earlier than expected, I sometimes go and get an obituary ready so I have a few stored up ready to go when it's that Sim's time and that's what I did with Galen's - it's been written for a couple of weeks, with most of the pictures.
• Long time readers will remember that Galen's relationships with Arianna and Collette weren't so much "previous" as they were "simultaneous" - had Samson lived, he would have been 4 years older than Owen and 10 years older than Tatiana. Galen and Georgette had been married for some time when Owen was conceived. But you know, Abigail has to be delicate with these sorts of situations!
• Looking at my pictures (which I have, rather insanely, organised in folders by round and household), I think Galen must have been 8-10 years older than 79. I don't quite know how that happened but looking at the pictures makes it pretty clear. I'm trying not to think about it too much because then my mind goes to thinking about how many other Sims' ages are completely out of whack!
• Just for fun, I went through Galen's memories before he died to see just how active he'd been! He woohooed with a total of 10 women: Georgette, two dormies, Aphrodite Nihill (when she was still a dormie, pre-Charlton), Petra Gottlieb, a techie townie who I don't even remember him meeting, a socialite townie, Collette, Arianna, Mina and a gearhead townie. Now the gearhead townie was interesting to me because this was the woman who Samson accused Galen of sleeping with and he denied it. At the time, I didn't think to check Galen's memories to see if he really did sleep with her but it turns out he did! The sneaky bastard! What's really interesting is that Cathy was the last woman he ever slept with, apart from Georgette. Maybe he felt guilty and was trying to make it up to Samson all these years?