My name is Colleen Winslow, I'm Carol Poole's oldest daughter and I've known Gene since I was 16 years old. He took me and his boys fishing under the Deception Pass bridge, which is one of his favorite spots to fish. I lost touch with Gene and his family, being busy with my life and then in 1992 my mom married him. It was a very happy time for our family, we had an extended family of the Poole family, that was a blessing for our family. Every year we celebrated Thanksgiving and sometimes Easter together. Mom always made two turkeys, which Gene thought we needed, because we might run out of food!! We prayed as a family and ate together as a family, all was good. I never grew tired of listening to Genes' stories and hearing him laugh, he had a great laugh. Gene loved to smoke salmon, so I asked him if he could smoke some salmon and I could take it to France, when I visited my grandchild. I had a couple people I wanted to give salmon to. He not only gave me the salmon, but he made two wooden boxes to put the salmon in. I felt so honored giving those gifts to relatives and in the back of my mind, I was thinking I would love to keep the boxes for myself, to remind myself of Gene. I'll truly miss Gene. It's so hard to put into a paragraph how Gene affected my life, there were many ways. I have great memories of him and I'm a better person, because he was in my life.