Michael VanSlate’s humor always left you smiling

Michael VanSlate’s down-to-Earth humor kept spirits high for family and friends.

Michael, 42, died Oct. 18 from injuries suffered in a car accident while hunting.

His wife, Cindy, said he never knew a stranger and had a way with talking to people like he had known them forever. When it came to having fun, he never had a filter.

“Whatever came through his head came out his mouth,” she said.

When they first met, he’d tell Cindy a new joke every day for the first year. They married in 1985. She always admired his ability to spread smiles, and when she could only explain parts and pieces of a joke she heard, Michael could re-create it and ad-lib until his audience cracked.

He also loved to hunt and fish, and the family would tag along to spend two-week campouts in the mountains during hunting season.

His brother, Rod, said they were best friends, hunting partners and teammates.

“Every time we were together we had fun, it didn’t matter what we were doing,” he said.

They grew up a few blocks from Lake Coeur d’Alene and spent time together fishing and hunting as children and as adults. Each time they bagged an elk, they worked together to pack it out.

While hunting this year, Michael went head-to-head with another jokester for four hours trying to top each other with their jokes. Rod said as the competition wore on, he started hearing jokes he heard in first grade.

“I’ve never laughed so hard,” he said. “I was crying.”

They also spent time together on softball teams for more than 20 years. They often played on the same team and always picked each other up for tournaments.

Rod said his brother had an excellent arm as a right fielder and maintained a .600 batting average.

His sense of humor was matched by a dedication to his work.

Michael wasn’t afraid of heights and spent 22 years as a window washer for the Hagadone Corp. It was his first full-time job and he worked from 4 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. He liked the hours because he could pick up his kids, Dylan and Kalyn, from school and spend time with them during the day, said Cindy.

“He was one of those dads who got to spend a lot of quality time with his kids,” she said. “He was not just a father but a daddy.”

She said he always had a way with pet names and called the kids K-Bosh and Dill-Bob. He always referred to Cindy as Silly.

When his birthday came around each year on Halloween, it was often offset by trick-or-treating and the family would go out to dinner the previous night. But he always joked that he would go out one year in his birthday suit, she said.

“He was my favorite Walt Disney character and I married him,” she said.

Rod said now things are “goofy” without him.

Michael would get himself into pickles at times, Cindy said, but he always had nine lives in his pocket and, except this once, he always managed to come out on top. She said rescue teams tried everything they could, and the family thinks nobody could have done anything different to keep him alive.

“We knew that daddy would move the world for us to not have us go through this,” she said.

His funeral was held at the Coeur d’Alene Resort and more than 750 friends and family attended. Rod said people who couldn’t stay formed a line several feet out the front door to sign the guest book.

Rod knew every person in line and said Michael was without an enemy.

“He always did the best that he could and gave the best that he had,” Cindy said.