Conference misery::feline

911.0. "Dan Willis" by PADC::KOLLING (Karen) Fri Jul 07 1995 10:51

    Column: Loving father loses life trying to save a kitten
    
    HAPPY MOMENT: Dan Willis enjoys a recent laugh with his daughters
    Erica, Jessica and Andrea. Willis, a 38-year-old San Jose, Calif.,
    roofer, was electrocuted on Sunday while trying to rescue the family
    kitten from a power pole.
    
    Published: July 7, 1995
    
    BY JIM TROTTER
    Mercury News Columnist
    
       Dan Willis had gone out to the picnic table in the back yard for a
    cigarette Sunday afternoon when he finally figured out where the sound
    was coming from. The 5-month-old kitten belonging to his youngest
    daughter had been missing for two days. They had heard her cry. They
    had searched for her.
    
       But it was only now, as he looked straight up at a high-voltage
    power pole a couple of houses over, that he saw her, terrified,
    clinging by all four legs, being buzzed and pecked by birds.
    
       Willis, a 38-year-old roofer, was disturbed by what he saw.
    
       ''Dan loved animals,'' said his wife, Norma, who had married Dan
    when she was 19 and he was 21. ''He would come across a stray dog that
    had been hit in the street and he'd load it up and take it to the
    vet.''
    
       Willis also was devoted to his daughters, Erica, 10; Jessica, 11;
    and Andrea, 15. Erica would be coming home soon from a friend's house,
    and he didn't want her to see the trouble the cat was in.
    
       ''He said the cat was freaking out and he wanted to get her down,''
    Norma Willis said. ''I asked him if we could call PG&E or the fire
    department, but he thought PG&E wouldn't come on Sunday. He said the
    fire department wouldn't come at all. It isn't like the old days.''
    
      So Dan Willis put on rubber-sole shoes, took his watch off, took out
    the change from his pockets and got his roofing ladder from the top of
    his truck. As a safety measure, he looped a length of rope around the
    pole and his waist.
    
       Norma Willis and her friend Patty Imperato held the ladder. Jessica
    stood in the yard and watched her father climb. When he got up there,
    he looked out over the sturdy working-class neighborhood, just south
    of Story Road, where he and his family had lived for nine years that
    very day. He reached for the cat.
    
    ''I got zapped holding the ladder, and I screamed,'' Norma Willis
    said. ''Jessica began screaming, "Daddy, Daddy!' I looked up, and he
    was holding on with the ladder and the rope.  And then his hands
    opened up, and he just fell.''
    
        Somehow, he touched the 12,000-volt line and was electrocuted.
    ''We presume he hit the wire with his arm or head,'' PG&E spokesman
    Scott Blakey said. ''When that happened, the aluminum ladder became
    the perfect conductor.
    
       ''It's a tragic situation. We feel very bad about it. Our general
    policy on such calls is to wait 24 hours because most animals come
    down by themselves. But the rule of thumb is to always call us.''
    
       Wednesday, Norma Willis and her daughters sat in their living room,
    their eyes dark with grief. Erica wore her father's baseball cap, and
    she stroked the kitten that somehow had survived, a black and tan
    tabby named Ieshea.
    
        ''Dan had been up and down ladders for 18 years in his work,''
    Norma said. ''He knew about the lines. We think maybe this was his
    calling.
    
       ''He had talked before about what he wanted if he died. Being a
    roofer, he didn't want to be buried in the sun. He'd talked about
    cremation for a long time, but lately he said he wanted to go all-out.
    So we're going to have a service Friday, and then the cremation. He
    also loved history. They found a wonderful spot at Oak Hill Cemetery,
    across from the Spanish-American War monument and beneath a
    200-year-old elm tree.
    
       '' . . . The firemen and the paramedics were wonderful. They worked
    on him for an hour. Our neighbors have been so supportive, so
    wonderful.''
    
       Her voice trailed away. ''He was our hero,'' she said.
    
       Dan Willis grew up in Sunnyvale and went to Fremont High School
    there. He worked for Taylor Roofing Co. in San Jose.
    
       The living room seemed filled with the enormity of the family's
    loss.
    
     Andrea broke the silence: ''I just know he'd do anything for us. He
    would.''
    
       ''He liked to tell us stories,'' Erica said. ''He always told us
    stories about dogs he had when he was a kid.''
    
         Jessica, who had seen everything, sat close by her mother. She
    did not speak.
    
    

    
    Thank you for the story. It is very sad. :-( boo-hoo.
    
    

    
    
    	Sniff......  =(