News, current events, politics – those are easy. Easy for me to write about, easy to mock, easy to push “publish” on without a second thought. But the personal stuff? That’s the hard part. That’s where the keys get heavy, where the words stick somewhere between the heart and the keyboard.

And that’s why it’s taken me a while to get back here. The last couple of months have been rough – in the kind of way that reshapes your days, your thoughts, your family table. My keyboard has been quiet for a reason, and to get back to writing anything that feels normal, I have to start with something that’s not.

I have to write about my father-in-law, David Leslie Wood.

David died on October 12, 2025, at Poudre Valley Hospital – the same hospital where he was born on September 11, 1938. How’s that for poetic symmetry? A man who spent his life shaping Colorado in a hundred different ways came into this world and left it within a hundred yards of each other. Not many people can say that.

And not many people can say they’ve had as much of an impact on the place they called home as David did.

Now, “in-laws” are one of life’s great wildcards. Plenty of jokes start there – some end with therapy, some with bourbon. I got lucky. I hit the in-law lotto with David and Carol Wood. They’re the kind of people you hope your kids grow up to be like: good, decent, and genuine to the core.

When I met them, they accepted me immediately. It almost felt suspicious – it was too easy. But that’s who they are: gracious to their bones. They came from an era that knew how to do “community” right. They hosted parties. They understood gratitude, etiquette, and connection – not as performative gestures, but as a way of life. They built networks of real friendships – golf groups, bridge clubs, dinner gatherings – a beautiful web of relationships that made life richer. Watching them made me wonder: why don’t we do that anymore? Why don’t we open our homes, dust bunnies and all, and bring people together like that again? They showed me that relationships are worth the effort, even if the house isn’t perfect.

My own dad passed away in June of 2024. We weren’t estranged, just… distant. Geography and awkwardness are powerful walls, and we never quite figured out how to climb them. When he died, I didn’t really know the man whose last name I share. That kind of gap leaves a mark – and for most of my life, it made relationships with other men hard to navigate.

But God has a funny way of patching the holes life in a fallen world punch. The good Lord sent me a few men to help fill those gaps – a scoutmaster, a coach, a couple of bosses who believed in me more than they probably should have. But two men stand above all the rest: my grandfather, Kent Noble “Node” Carbaugh, and my father-in-law, David Wood.

Julie and I met a little later in life – early-30s, when you think you’ve got everything figured out and then meet someone who proves you very wrong. When her daddy walked her down the aisle, I was 34 and still trying to remember to iron shirts before big occasions.

I can’t remember exactly when I first met David and Carol – probably at a birthday party, where I was nervously clutching a Coors Light like it was a social shield. I do remember being nervous. I was a young program director at K99, carrying a beeper – yes, a beeper – and thinking I was pretty important. If a transmitter went down, I’d get buzzed like a heart monitor and race off to save the day. Then I met David, and suddenly my self-importance didn’t look quite so impressive next to a man who actually shaped institutions, not playlists.

David was an attorney – and a damn good one. He served as District Attorney for Larimer and Jackson counties, putting bad guys behind bars before moving on to business law, where he made his mark. One of his early clients was Pat Griffin, a pioneer of the self-serve gas world – the “Gas-o-mat” guy, if that rings a bell. When Pat died, David formed The Griffin Foundation, which quietly changed the lives of students in Colorado and Wyoming for generations. Later in life, he helped engineer the merger between the Poudre Valley Health System and UCHealth.

He also served on the boards of First National Bank and UCHealth, was president of the Colorado Bar Association, and was the President of the Fort Collins Chamber of Commerce at the ripe age of 28. He even has a boardroom named after him in Redstone. His career was a masterclass in leadership.

And here’s where I find myself stuck – not because his résumé isn’t impressive, but because it’s too much to list. I don’t know all the details of his career well enough to do them justice. Which leads me to two thoughts:

1. Spend time with the people you love. Know the details of their lives. It matters.
2. It doesn’t really matter – not in the way we think it does.

Because here’s the truth: the bullet points of David’s career don’t define him. The titles and plaques only tell you that he succeeded, not why.

David succeeded because of who he was.

He was a man of faith. A man of integrity. He believed your word mattered. That your “yes” should be yes and your “no” should be no. That promises weren’t meant to be renegotiated when life got inconvenient. These aren’t big, flashy principles – they’re the quiet kind. The kind that make the world work better without anyone noticing.

David was steady. Kind. A peacemaker. A man who didn’t need to raise his voice to be heard. Rock solid and reliable – a pillar in every sense of the word.

He and I were kindred spirits in a couple of ways – radio and politics. He loved the idea of broadcasting, even invested in a few stations years back. I don’t think those ventures went quite as planned, but God clearly has a sense of humor, because not long after, his daughter brought home a radio guy. David just smiled and rolled with it.

And politics – well, that was our shared language. We were both conservative to the core. We’d sit together at family gatherings – usually near the bar – and whisper our commentary like Statler and Waldorf in the Muppet balcony, poking fun but never starting waves. David was involved – volunteering for campaigns, supporting candidates like Peter Dominic and John Love, and quietly doing the work that mattered more than headlines ever could. He’d once considered running for Congress, but the family vetoed that idea, so the gig went to a guy named Hank Brown instead.

When I first entered the Woods’ world, I’ll admit – it was intimidating. I grew up in a two-bedroom, one-bath house in LaSalle, Colorado. We didn’t have much, but we had love, and that was enough. So, walking into a world of golf courses, country clubs, and bridge nights was foreign territory. I didn’t know what to wear or how to pour a glass of chardonnay without looking like the ranch-hand-turned-radio-guy that I was. But they never once made me feel lesser. They just welcomed me in, completely and without judgment.

That’s what grace looks like.

And that’s who David was. He was blessed, and he shared those blessings freely – never for show, but because generosity was woven into his DNA.

After a relatively short courtship with David Wood’s daughter, I knew she was the one. Before I asked her to marry me, I also knew there was a right way to do it – the traditional way, the David Wood way. So, I asked David and Carol to lunch at The Moot House on South College.

We talked about the usual things – work, life, small talk that was suddenly hard to focus on because I knew what I was about to do. As the meal wound down, I finally took a breath, gathered what courage I had, and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Wood, I love your daughter. I will care for her, protect her, and provide for her. May I have her hand in marriage?”

Carol immediately turned on the waterworks – the kind of tears that don’t need words to translate. David looked at me over the top of his glasses with that classic combination of seriousness and approval. And right about then, the server dropped off the check.

I reached for it. He beat me to it.

“Scott,” he said, sliding the bill out of my hand, “let me get that. You’re going to need every dime you have.”

He was right.

Just as he was right so many other times.

And after all this, here’s the delicate part. Writing about him, mourning him – I don’t have the first right to that. Julie and Jeff do. Carol does. The grandkids, the great-grandkids – they’re his blood, his legacy. I’m just the lucky guy who married into it. But still – my grief is real. Because when someone like David lets you into his circle, you don’t come out the same.

It’s a strange thing, mourning someone who isn’t your blood but feels like your backbone.

So how do I continue his legacy? And is it even mine to continue?

Maybe it’s this: David showed me that faith and conservatism aren’t about division or outrage. They’re about stewardship – about building, protecting, and preserving what’s good in this world. He didn’t talk about values; he lived them.

For my kind, regular readers, it’s time I get back in your inbox and in your ears with my take on the world around us – it’s what I do. But maybe, in his honor, I’ll try to offer a few more solutions too. Maybe I’ll try to be a peacemaker. I have been told I possess that quality, too.

If I can be even .015 of the man David Wood was, I’ll consider it a job well done.

David won’t trend on social media. There won’t be a documentary or a viral quote attributed to him by mistake. But if integrity, kindness, and friendships were currencies, he died a billionaire.

And if I can spend even a fraction of that inheritance in how I live, then I’ll count myself lucky.