always with his shades up
the look he gave the camera
always surrounded by people
From the boy in Denver who couldn't pronounce his sister's name, to the man who built half of our memories with his own two hands. Pulled from his own words, and mine.
always with his shades up
the look he gave the camera
always surrounded by people
The youngest of five, raised by John Oliver Gaiter, a Navy man turned janitorial business owner, and Jewell Odessa Love Gaiter, who taught him to cook with love folded into every dish. He grew up watching his dad jingle his keys and shoot hoops in Bermuda shorts and tube socks after working day and night. That's where he learned what an engaged father looked like.
Headed west to California, living on little money and less electricity with four close friends. Fresh out of high school, he was running football two-a-days for Imperial Valley Junior College near San Diego, playing ball and spinning records as a DJ before an injury changed his path.
Hurt, homesick, and low that summer, he picked up a Gideon Bible on a Marine base and, as he told it, was led "down Romans Road" to accept his savior. He didn't know it at the time, but he would come to call it the greatest decision he would ever make in his life. Everything after was built on it.
The summer of 1980 in Commerce, Texas, he met Pamela Kaye Bowie. He was city, she was country, and it didn't matter one bit. In his words, he'd had plenty of friends in his life, but no one who wanted to know what was really on his heart, until her. She became his confidant, his lifelong friend, and then everything else.
Almost forty years of marriage followed: joy, growth, adventure, sadness, and suffering, all of it. They raised two children together, Gabriell and Daunte, plus a host of godchildren and adopted nieces and nephews who all called him "Uncle Mike."
He joined the City of Garland in building inspection in 1990 and grew up inside that department, moving from position to position. About nine years later, around the time his son was born, he was appointed the department head, the building official. As he put it plainly, at that time none of the building officials in Texas looked like him. He held that role for fifteen years, part of nearly three decades with the city, helping shape its growth, including Firewheel Town Center. He earned his Bachelor's in Public Administration and a graduate certificate in government at UT Dallas along the way, and retired in 2018.
He grew up the son of a janitor and worked the way his father worked, hard. Construction became his life. He learned the trade in the cabinet shop under men he never stopped naming, Jack Westover, Pete Carpenter, and Bill Allen, and those skills took him from the interior of the Sixth Floor Museum to an extra room built onto his family's first home, plus more shelves, counters, and furniture than anyone could count. He could build anything you asked him to, and plenty of things you didn't.
Deacon since 1988. Trainer of new deacons, Sunday School teacher, marriage ministry leader, Shepherd/Care Group leader, mentor, usher, and an occasional voice in the men's choir. His deepest study was the Book of Revelation, the relationship between the church and the bridegroom, a subject he treated like a celebration, not a burden.
He never caught a cold. He got genuinely worked up about people who "hogged all the weights at the gym." He could talk Revelation and the Fast & Furious franchise in the same breath, with equal seriousness. He was a die-hard San Diego Chargers fan. He named the family truck "Sasha." He found almost every family mishap hilarious, and never let anyone forget it.
He passed at 64. In his own words, written for the people he loved: "I have fought the good fight; I have finished the course. I am now at peace."
When he retired, he stood up and took the whole room down the journey of his life, just the high points, as he put it. Faith, family, the work of his hands, and every person who had a part in raising him. This is him, telling it himself.
This journey for me, it really started on a Marine base in San Diego back in the summer of '79. on where it began
I didn't know it at the time, but this turned out to be the greatest decision that I would ever make in my life. on the Bible that found him
In high school I had so many friends, but no one wanted to know what was really on my heart. But this country bumpkin did. She became my confidant, my lifelong friend. on meeting Pamela
Not many people, or should I say none at that time, looked like me who were building officials in Texas. But the grace of God is sufficient. on the work
I don't see this retirement as the end, but the beginning of the next phase. on what comes next
Y'all say I touched a lot of people in this community. This whole community has touched me, and had a part in raising and being a part of my life. on everyone in the room
— still saved, still read
Written in his own voice and shared by his family, his full obituary lives on the Chamberland Funerals tribute wall, including the original tribute wall where loved ones have left their own memories.
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