CHRISTINE BALABUZKO COMBS
August 7, 1962 to July 31, 2018
Editor’s Note: Christine passed away July 31, 2018 after bravely fighting cancer for three years. She was just 56. Born August 7, 1962 in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, she graduated from the University of Illinois with a B.S in Engineering Physics, and from Loyola Marymount University with an MBA. After hiring on at Hughes Aircraft Company, she had a long career in South Bay aerospace, including infra-red airborne navigation, satellite technology, and unmanned aircraft at Hughes, Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. In the course of her work, she got to experience a catapult launch off the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan near San Diego in 2014. Chris leaves her husband, Gary, Daisy the cat, and a very old Plecostomus (fish). Please make a donation to South Bay Wildlife Rehab www.sbwr.org/birds, She Rocks KXLU at kxlu.com, or the USO. Funeral arrangements made by White & Day Mortuaries.
Gary Combs presented Christine’s eulogy at Palos Verdes Golf Club on Saturday, November 17, 2018.
EULOGY
By Gary Combs
“I stayed good at planning trips”
I met Chris at Hughes Aircraft around 1985. She was engaged at the time, but she broke up with her fiancé shortly after. She told me it was because he told her that her career didn’t matter. Almost as importantly, her cat didn’t like him. Her cat liked me, though. Over the Labor Day weekend in 1986, I planned a trip to Monterey Bay. The aquarium had just opened, so I booked a hotel, got tickets to the aquarium, and looked up other things for us to do while there. This was all before the Internet, so I used the old Auto Club tour book. Chris later told me that the fact that I had planned the trip, and that all she had to do was to go along, really impressed her. She said that was when she started to fall in love with me. So, I made darn sure that I stayed good at planning trips.
“We did a good amount of international travel”
Insurance adjuster, X-ray technician, Hypnotherapist, Roger’s legion of friends knew him best as an affable host, always up for making whatever room he was in a better, happier place. So, it would be criminal ingratitude for me to repay a debt of joy with the currency of tears. Roger provided me many happy memories and I will repay him with the interest on that debt and in kind, but never have I found words so heavy than when I tried to lift sad ones to find the happy ones crushed beneath. So I’ll refer to this as a celebration since Roger would be appalled to find himself the cause of an unhappy gathering. He wouldn’t hesitate to remind any of us this is his party and everyone should be having fun. He’d also be asking why there isn’t an open bar, a dance floor, and shouldn’t there be more people here.