From Mandy Ridge Oaks

Margaret and others,

This is such a beautiful tribute to Nels. Thank you for setting this up, and thanks for all who have written. I've been reading all the comments and can't stop weeping/laughing at the same time. Although, I can't help but think how oddly appropriate that reaction is when discussing a person like Nels, who lived his life in exclamation marks.

My first introduction to Nels happened through music. I was only 14 or 15, and Nels and I became stand partners in the youth orchestra that Jack Ashton ran on the side. I remember feeling so young and insecure, wondering if this handsome high school senior would be embarrassed about having to sit with someone as young and insignificant as I was. Quite to the contrary, on that first meeting I remember Nels placing his thick hand on my shoulder in his characteristic way, smiling at me, and telling me how happy he was to meet me, and that I must be someone special to be there. My insides still glow with the memory.

From that point on, any opportunity I had to be with Nels was a sought-after joy. Though I know that our talking in orchestra sometimes drove Jack crazy, it seemed like Nels couldn’t help himself. He was just so eager to better understand people, and to share his delight in living, that expecting silence during such times seemed as futile as asking a happy toddler to remain still. He never meant harm by it. In fact, the Nels I remember never meant harm to anyone. Rather, he sought to uplift and cherish every individual around him, regardless of their appearance, age or circumstances.

Some of my favorite memories involve not only his beloved “love chariot,” but also his old, beat-up boat, which we all affectionately referred to as “The Mastercrap.” I think he bought the old thing, (originally intended to be a fishing boat) for about $1500. He was thrilled about it, and couldn’t use it enough that summer. I still laugh out loud every time I think about when we took the thing to go waterskiing at Rockport one day. By the looks of it, I thought it was darn well near impossible to try to ski behind that piece of junk, but Nels was absolutely indomitable in his determination. Because the old boat lacked the necessary muscle to pull a skier up out of the water, Nels got creative, and somehow talked us into taking turns sitting out on the bow the boat, thereby providing enough counterweight to pull up a skier. Whoever held the honored position at the time had to hold on for dear life because the Mastercrap was clearly not designed for this sort of thing, and the parts we held to were brown with rust. Miraculously, however, it worked—and when Nels would bail out the bottom of the boat in between each skier, he would blissfully exclaim, “Isn’t this the best boat?!” The contentment was contagious, and we all felt a deep sense of satisfaction when, at the end of the summer, Nels sold the Mastercrap for the same amount he bought it for.

It seemed like Nels could get people to break out of their shell and do all sorts of things that they normally wouldn’t. I still recall going to the Utah Symphony with he and a large group of friends. All of us dressed up in our most formal attire, (just because we could, of course), and yakked on our way home while crammed like sardines into the big Woolley suburban. As we halted at the final stoplight on 5^th south, right before entering the freeway, Nels exuberantly shouted out, “Chinese fire drill!” And of course, we all reacted by jumping out in our taffeta and tuxes. People stared at us like we were complete morons, but Nels could not stop guffawing, snorting, and repeating, “That was awesome!” In response, I couldn’t help giggling over and over, either.

Time spent with Nels was just like that for most of us, I think. His affection for those around him, and his zeal with which he lived made life more magical for all of us. He will be sorely missed, but I can’t help but think that this opportunity he has given each of us to remember the goodness, and savor those we love even more, would make him truly happy.

Love to you and yours, Nels. May those on the other side find as much joy and exuberance in being with you as we have.

Mandy (Ridge) Oaks

From Josh Bradley

Nels was my brother. In all reality I spent more time with him through junior high, high school and college than my own family. He and I were part of the Three Amigos, including Bryant. We did everything together. I don’t even know where to start with the memories, but we collected them in spades together. Almost everything with Nels was memorable, one way or another.

Nels was a fantastic musician, and how he played his music was how he lived life. Sure, he knew the rules and techniques of music. But where he really thrived was in his freestyle playing. I remembered him playing the viola to make a living (though he clearly loved it), but I more remember him loving to sit at the piano and close his eyes and let his hands make magic. He would start with a few notes and that would inspire some others, and then he was in the middle of a bold melody that somehow just worked out. That’s how he lived his life as well. He had the joy and creativity, and he let life flow one moment at a time.

Nels loved to be active. He would go to the Sports Mall from the junior high years on and was instrumental in inspiring me to enjoy taking care of my body while having fun at it. We would go and swim or play racquetball or just get on the Stairmaster. It didn’t matter. It was just fun. I think that our pass to the Sports Mall was the only one that required you to jump the fence on the side for entrance. And that was so Nels too.

We loved to hike and bike together. One day we spontaneously decided that we were going to go mountain biking in Neff’s Canyon. I wondered if that were possible, but Nels didn’t. He knew that we could make it happen. So when the trail became so rocky and steep as to be unrideable we just picked up our bikes over our shoulders and hoofed it straight up the mountain. He was sure that we could just find a good trail into Millcreek and ride out. I don’t know if I’ve ever been more dehydrated and bonked as I was when we decided to ultimately turn around and leave the way we came. How ambitious.

We went with my family biking on the White Rim Trail in central Utah and spent three days and two nights together. The days were fantastic, because every trail was an adventure and every bend in the road another race waypoint. At the end of the second day we had some serious chafing going on under the shorts, so we stood at the top of the mountain and let it all hang out. We were all-natural in God’s beautiful nature and we didn’t think twice of it. We just loved the moment and the freedom. While I couldn’t do that any more, that was the beauty of that era and Nels inspired a certain openness and comfort with yourself. Of course, at night I didn’t get much sleep in Nels’ tent because of all the nose blowing and snoring. I swear that I thought I was caught in a tornado when I awoke to find used tissue swirling around the tent by the power of his deep snoring.

When in college Nels started many a business. I always wondered how he knew how to do all the things that he became professional at, but Nels could figure anything out. I was his brief employee for a roofing company and remember spending some hot summer days on a tarpaper roof, receiving instruction from Nels, the professional roofer. He was also a professional water feature artist. He built a handful of homes. If he didn’t know how to do it, he figured it out, because nothing could stop Nels from reaching for his dreams.

The three amigos in junior high all bought road bikes and we got ourselves around town. Other people bought mountain bikes, but not us. We wanted to go fast. We wanted to get from home to Woolley’s before a car could. And we did. We went everywhere racing. Life was fast and exciting in those days. And it was also sometimes slow and satisfying. “Hey Nels, what do you want to do after school today?” “Let’s make banana cream pies. It is so fun!” And that’s what we did. We enjoyed every minute together. I wanted to hang out with Nels often enough that I ended up doing plenty of Paulsen chores. Even doing the dishes was fun when hanging out with Nels. The Paulsens had a dishwasher, but we preferred to do them by hand.

Nels anchored my social circle in high school and college. If we didn’t have anything planned we knew that the Paulsens would have something brewing. We had some great group dates, going up the canyon to do some dutch oven cooking or going for a night hike. We would invite people over to the Paulsen home for a bonfire and barbecue and Nels was always one of the ringleaders.

As I write some of these random memories, I’m sure that these mentioned are not the most important things that we did together, but one memory leads to another and it seems therapeutic to put them down on paper. He impacted my life through all these little things that he did and for who he was.

I can’t remember exactly when it was that we started to grow apart. Nels was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but in those early days he managed it well, and life was still great together. Over time I think that we each got serious in our other relationships. Life became busy and we saw each other less and less. It seems that from there I remember seeing Nels infrequently, and his demeanor was often different from the radiant one I grew up with. He was more sedate or down often. I couldn’t tell if it was the disease or the cure that changed one of my best friends. I think that I slowly mourned the loss of a wonderful friend, long before I got the phone call from Bryant this week letting me know that one of closest friends had passed away.

I look forward to a joyful reunion with Nels in heaven years from now. He will have a perfect body and brain, unrestrained by mental illness or dulling medications. He will love me and those all around him. I can count on him being generous and loving, no different than I remember. He will give me an embrace because that is the Nels that I remember and love. Going forward I will cherish the memories that we made together, and I will look forward to that joyous reunion of kindred spirits.

Tribute to Nels

Even though it’s been nearly twenty years or so, my memory is crowded with time spent with Nels. We hiked together, mountain biked together, skied together, water-skied together, snow-mobiled together, went to lots of high school dances together, roofed together, gardened together, but mostly we just spent a lot of time together. He was the reason that I passed my BC AP Calculus test. We decided that we were going to study every night together, and we about did that. I remember we were in my room studying, trying to figure out the essence of the derivative, and it just wasn’t clicking. My mom kept coming up and saying, “We have a rule—no boys in Margaret’s room.” But we were too engrossed in our calculus problem to give her much heed. After several reminders, we reluctantly made our way downstairs and re-started on the problem, and miraculously, we figured it out! My mom gloated, and we laughed. He was the reason that I now know how to get out juice stains. One time when he was over at my house he, as he was wont to do, grabbed a juice box out of our pantry—a grape juice box in fact. It must have been a Sunday, because he was wearing a nice white dress shirt, and as he went to pop the straw in the grape juice exploded all over him. I still remember his amused and delighted look on his face—but then he called his mom and figured out how to get the stain out (hot water on it, right away—I still remember that laundry tip!). He was the reason that I couldn’t keep a straight face during a performance as “Nellie Forbush” in Olympus’s production of South Pacific. I was on stage and he was in the orchestra pit, playing the viola. During one of the crucial final scenes, my character says, “This is emotional,” which was in fact a pretty silly line, and I remember looking down at Nels in the pit and he was looking up at me and chuckling. I had to try very hard to stay in character.

We spent a lot of time outdoors—for him, being outdoors was exhilarating, and it became exhilarating for everyone with him as well. I remember cruising down Millcreek canyon at high speed on our bikes and riding on a snowmobile so fast that I fell off the back! I remember picking him up one day to go skiing—and he just raised his hands in the air with sheer exuberance at the sunny, crisp day. Perhaps it was the same day that we skied in fresh powder. I wore powder cords, but he was confident he did not need them, and then, lost a ski in the powder. But this incident did not kill his enthusiasm at all—he seemed almost thrilled with the notion that he’d actually lost his ski! And he just skied down to the bottom of the hill on one ski and that was that. I seem to recall that he went back up there in the summer to see if he could retrieve his ski—just for the adventure of it—but I don’t remember if he ever found it.

Sometimes this enthusiasm led to less than perfect planning. I remember a time when he organized a whole group of us to cross-country ski into this cabin of a friend of his. He was so excited about this adventure. We were all carrying huge bags of food (including a big bag of potatoes!) that we were planning on cooking when we arrived. He said it would just be a short ski in…, and when the cabin continued to not materialize, it was somehow always going to be “just around the corner, Mar.” Well, after several hours of skiing in and with darkness engulfing us, we finally saw a faint light ahead so all of us, exhausted, but now hopeful, endured a few more minutes of skiing, and then, the faint light wasn’t even the right cabin! We finally turned around and headed home. Another time like this was driving one night in the Paulsen “love chariot.” Now this old clunker was unique for two reasons: 1) the ignition was so worn down that one did not need a key to start the car; 2) the gas gauge was broken, and one could never be sure how low the gas was, and so to avert any disaster, the love chariot always carried an extra can of gas in its trunk. But the plan was not foolproof: on one occasion Nels and I were driving my little sister Rachel somewhere and we were driving uphill. Well, the gas ran out. But Nels calmly pulled over and matter-of-factly went to the trunk to retrieve the gas. At this point, he realized he did not have the key to open the trunk, because he had not used a key to start the engine! I think the rest of that night involved a lot of walking…

Nels did not operate like most people operate. This meant that he would do things like get into a car and do reckless donuts around a church parking lot with me screaming. And it also meant he would experiment with driving my “red rat” car while nearly lying flat, and while encouraging me to sing radio songs because the red rat radio only featured AM. And it meant sleeping over at Rockport reservoir so we could be the first ones on the water in the morning. But this also meant that he believed in things like “paying it forward.” I remember once he bought a pair of waterski gloves that turned out to be flawed and so he needed to get a new pair. So we went to the store together and he got another pair, and I said, “Aren’t you going to return the gloves for a refund?” And he said, “No, I figure if I let them keep the money, it will eventually come back to me somehow.” It also meant that he was merciful to people when others weren’t and he was compassionate when others weren’t. And it meant that he did not have the ego that most people have. Given my own proclivities with being judgmental and egotistical, being his friend was transformational for me.

One of the turning points in my life occurred because of Nels. I had just had some disappointment—an award that I wanted that I didn’t get, an achievement I didn’t achieve. It was a warm summer night, and as we walked together, I described my disappointment. He explained to me that one doesn’t derive self-esteem from all our accomplishments; rather, we get our self-worth from knowing that we are sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. Surely I had been taught about my “divine nature” in church, but this was a watershed moment for me: I could be someone of value simply because I was a daughter of Heavenly Father. And furthermore, he explained, all the gifts we have come from Heavenly Father anyway. “What about your viola playing,” I queried. “You are the one who practices.” “Yes,” he replied, “but even my motivation to practice comes from Heavenly Father.” This whole concept rocked my world, and has stayed with me ever since.

Nels was a breath of fresh air and rarity among people. He was pure, carefree and always exuded love and cheer. And he was authentic. Because of this, he elicited an authenticity from everyone he touched. I know he did from me. This was one of his greatest gifts he gave me—teaching me how to be authentic and helping me to understand who the real “me” was. And this is why I loved him. His was one of the most important friendships of my life. I am so very grateful that I had the privilege of knowing and loving him. I miss you, Nels.

Love, Mar

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