Warren Andreasen, K7CWA has passed away after battling a rare disease
called IBM. I wanted to post here about him and properly give him a tribute,
but I attended his memorial service and delivered a tribute to the attendees,
and thought it would be appropriate to post it here.
I met Warren in 1995 when I worked for Uni-Copy
fixing copiers and faxes. As we were both 2-way
ham radio operators, I would often talk to him on the radio
while traveling from place to place to do repairs.
Salvation Army DHQ was one business that I would
visit. We talked on the radio often, and one day I
was called to fix a fax problem at DHQ. I was finally
able to meet the man in person during one of those repairs.
He later offered me to come work for him, but God
had other plans for me first. I was asked to join Datacom,
a small company run by the husband of one of Connie’s friends.
I worked deploying computers and network systems. I was in training
for what I would eventually be doing at TSA.
I worked for a year at Datacom while Warren was
working out the details of how he was going to
hire me. The guy who was working for Warren at the time
was someone the upper management wanted instead. He turned
out to be a disaster, so Warren got the green light to
hire me. That was in November of 1996, when my stint at Datacom ended.
Warren’s friendship from there actually deepened. He saw
me screw up many times, but I always came back to him
in humility willing to repent and make things right no
matter how much humble pie I had to eat. My first day on
the job, I was asked to install a network hub in the 100 building.
I told Warren “I know how to do this so it’s by code, while
making it neat and it won’t cause any problems.” He actually
learned from me how better to do build out Ethernet infrastructure correctly.
From there we took many trips to Corps and other
units in the Southwest Division, duplicating what I learned
from my days at DataCom. I discovered that spending that much
time together showed me how much he loved the Lord, and how God had led
him to where he is. I also learned about his nickname in
the Navy, “Greaser” and how he had worked at JPL and the things
he learned while there.
I grew to love his sense of humor although mine at the time
hadn’t grown as refined. He loved pun-wars, and to explain that,
it typically would go something like this:
Me: Hey Warren, how would you introduce an egg to someone who has never seen or eaten one?
Warren: Show him an “egg-sample” of one!
From there it grew into a conversation about having “egg-sperience”
or having to “eggs-terminate” the conversation, or any puns related to the word “shell” or “yolk”. It also started dumb Dad jokes like, “How do we know Jesus served eggs?” “Because his yolk was easy.” I think that’s why I enjoy making up clever Dad Jokes even today. He also liked brain twisting using words. The “Box of breakfast biscuits” was one of his favorites, and he couldn’t wait to see if it would trip someone up with it.
In his later years, he would write about Heaven, as it was his favorite
subject. He clearly knew his Savior and knew that he was known by him.
Jesus clearly said a number of times, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”
and they will be cast out into outer darkness, for redemption (in Heaven
with Jesus for eternity)isn’t earned or dependent on what we do. It’s only
a matter of our acceptance of his free gift of eternity because his blood had already
purchased it. Warren talked a lot about that and couldn’t wait to meet his Lord.
Ham radio has always been a love of his, and that hobby was what brought us together to be very good friends. We enjoyed spending time together working on ham-related projects.
Not everything was smooth sailing though. He and I had our differences, and he would dig in when he felt I was in error. One example was that we had a dispute about the physics of hydro-electric power generation. Well I can now finally say, “See Warren? I was right all-along!”
We will miss you Warren, but the memories will forever be burned in our memories, and we look forward to seeing you again once we’re promoted to Glory.