Gerold Firl of Poway, CA passed away peacefully in March 2024, on the day of his choosing and surrounded by his loved ones, following his personal decision of being completely done with having cancer. He is survived by ⅔ of his most immediate family, spanning 4 living generations of Firls.

By all outward measures he was a normal guy, but his less-googleable life was filled with strange exploits. After 10+ years at Hewlett Packard developing the automatic feed paper tray for printers, he quit working to build treehouses, smoke weed, and "stack rocks", a hobby that he explained on TV as a contestant on Win Ben Stein's Money. He didn't win Ben Stein's money, but Ben Stein did say he was a "smart guy." And in fact the backyard is dotted with boulders, many of which were gathered up during family road trips in our VW Vanagon, and which incidentally got us introduced to a variety of police officers around the state.

The cliche is to suffer through the dreaded midlife crisis, but not Gerold. Free from employment, he packed up for a week at Burningman before it was cool ("it was okay"), made friends through a pre-usenet email listserv, and inflicted upon himself the ugliest haircuts known to the history of civilization. Other exploits include rear-ending a schoolbus in a VW beetle (the schoolbus didn't notice), and training the backyard fence lizards to worship him by releasing maimed houseflies to them on a daily basis. He also taxidermied one of the family dogs.

A devoted community member, Gerold served as a docent at Blue Sky, offended readers during his stint as a Poway News Chieftain columnist, and was a regular at the North County Soccer Park, playing as a member of the Silverstreaks for many years before aging into the old guys league. He was a staunch defender of our local creek, which remains a haven for frogs, water birds, and even crawdads on a good year. Our street also remembers him for leading the charge to dig a fire break during the 2003 Cedar Fire- the flames reached property lines, but burned no further.

He is greatly missed here, but we like to think he is still enjoying himself, perhaps as a joyful spirit capering about more freely now, having shuffled off this mortal coil.