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Helmut Lilischkies

Image of Helmut Lilischkies
Death Date: February 17, 2011
Age at Death: 72

Marriages

Renata

Obituaries

Vail Daily page A7 - February 19, 2011

EAGLE, Colorado – Like a lot of post-war Germans, Helmut Lilischkies came to this country seeking a new life away from war-torn Europe. He found a new life, a new home and any number of friends in the Vail Valley.

Helmut died Thursday at his home near Eagle, with Renata, his wife of 50 years, at his side. Sitting in the family’s living room, Renata and the couple’s son, Ron, talked about a man who seemingly had more lives than even the luckiest cat.

He survived a world war, life in a tent city, a diving accident that should have killed him, two kidney transplants and more.

“He had it very hard,” Ron said. “But he stuck around for us.”

The Lilischkies family’s life together started in 1960, when Helmut put a classified ad in a German newspaper looking for a wife, or least a companion for the coming Olympic games. Some of Renata’s friends wrote back in her name. After a year of writing back and forth, and getting Renata’s father to settle down because a 22-year-old was courting his 16-year-old daughter, the couple married in 1961, and returned to the 5,000-man tent city at the nickel mine in Manitoba, Canada.

Ron was born in 1963, shortly before the Lilischkies left the tent city and went back to Germany for a year. Helmut, who trained as a baker as a youth in Germany, was lured back to the New World by his brother, Peter. The two bought a bakery in Santa Monica, Calif. Living on the coast, Helmut started taking deep-sea diving classes. Not long after, Peter and Helmut found work on a crew in Louisiana.

For a time, Helmut held a record for the deepest working dive. And, Renata said, he loved the work.

But an accident in 1971 left him paralyzed for nearly a year and badly damaged his kidneys.

“It was just by his determination that he walked again,” Renata said, a moment later acknowledging her role: “I’d put him over my shoulder, put him in the van take him to the levy, lay him down and tell him to walk.”

Before Helmut’s diving accident, the family took a road trip that included a stop in Vail. The family fell in love with the place, and quickly bought a building lot on Garmisch Drive.

The Lilischkies had planned to retire to Vail, but Helmut’s diving accident changed the family’s plans. Looking through the help wanted ads in The Vail Trail, Helmut found a job as a baker in Red Cliff, staying at the YMCA in Minturn while waiting for the school year to end so Renata and Ron could join him.

Bakers work odd hours, and Ron remembers going to work with his dad in the early mornings. The family wasn’t able to take many vacations in those days, but Ron helped his dad, and would go on fishing, camping or hunting trips in the area.

The family bought the Eagle-Vail Cafe in 1989, and the place became a local landmark, known for its food, pastries, and, to those in the know, the gasoline was always a few cents cheaper than any other place in the upper valley.

“We made so many friends there,” Renata said. And, with a difficult-to-pronounce last name, lots of people know them less as the Lilischkies and more as “Helmut and Renata from the Eagle-Vail Cafe.”

But as Helmut worked through the years, his health continued to fail. He received a kidney transplant in 1985, and another in 1999. Ron was the donor for that second transplant.

The Lilischkies sold the cafe in 1999. With Helmut on oxygen full-time, he and Renata moved to Phoenix for a year in the early 2000s. The lower elevation didn’t help Helmut, so the couple quickly moved back, and settled into the old farmhouse on Castle Peak Ranch.

“This is home,” Renata said. “All our friends are here.”

Friday, those friends were calling the house almost non-stop. But Renata and Ron were able to remember a lot of what was special about Helmut – the relationship he shared with his brother Peter, who preceded him in death, his love of the outdoors, and the quiet influence Helmut had on people.

“He didn’t speak much,” Ron said. “He spoke by doing things -that’s how he showed his love. And he loved a great deal.”

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