Carl W. Sottler

As the celestial sun set on Valentines Day/Monday/14 February 2022, God’s promised eternal sun rose on Carl William Sottler.

     With his wife, Brenda of 47 years, brother Nick and sister in-law, Theresa, near him, Carl Sottler gently joined the Eternals.

     A long time resident of Pleasant Valley, MO, Carl was born on 21 June 1953, in Denver, CO. Carl’s family resided in Cheyenne, WY, before moving to Trenton, MO, in January 1961—the family’s adopted hometown.

     For Carl and his brothers, growing up in Trenton was nothing short of magical—his family, friends/schoolmates, and the adults of the town making it so. Carl was always engaged with-and-by his many friends.

     As with most boys-to-men, his boyhood interests were too those of his adult years. Carl loved football. For Trenton’s Junior and Senior High School football teams, he was a talented quarterback. On defense, he was daring and sometimes “inadvisably” and wondrously courageous playing linebacker.

     In his youth, every summer, from morning-to-dark, he lived outside, playing with his brothers and neighborhood friends—football, whiffle-ball, hide-and-seek and kick-the-can (only after dark), and role playing Marines, cowboys, Indians, detective, Vikings, racing bikes, constructing from boards and roller skates, and riding, the initial-adhoc version of today’s renown skateboard. Too, to fill his early summer days, Carl-and-crew would play astronaut—going where no boys “had gone before”—“somewhere out there”—because they “wanted to believe.” Carl, his brothers, and friends constructed their spacecrafts from coffin crates they recovered from the funeral homes in Trenton, dragging them a quarter-mile or so to the side yard of their home. Playing little league and pony league baseball, Carl was an able and dependable catcher. Carl earned the rank of Eagle Scout, enjoying a summer’s week of Scouting at Camp Geiger near St. Joseph, MO.

     Graduating ninth grade, he turned-to to start making his own way, working full-time (six days a week) both in retail, and in the summers, putting up/hauling hay for two cents a bale. In high school, he’d work after school and on Saturdays, when not practicing and playing on the high school’s football and basketball teams.

Carl graduated high school, May 1971. His senior year, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps, shipping out to recruit training in August of that year. Enlisting with an “open contract”—meaning the Marine Corps could assign him any occupation according to the needs of the Corps—his high mental test scores led him to be assigned to the military occupation that paralleled the then budding profession of business-and-industry of that as a computer programmer—a profession which would be his profession for life. In 1974, having earned the rank of Corporal, Carl separated from the Marine Corps after honorably serving his two year enlistment.

     Post Marine Corps, Carl returned to Trenton, working retail, attending college, then to marry the former Miss. Brenda Rosenstangle of Trenton. Moving to Savannah, MO, Carl worked as a programmer at Missouri Western State University before he and Brenda moved to the Kansas City area where he worked as a programmer for a couple of businesses prior to joining Waddell and Reed Financial Inc. as a programmer. After thirty-one years with that firm, he retired in 2016.

     Being well read and informed, possessing a quick wit and sense of humor, Carl was good and interesting company. He was a good thinker—applying the science of reasoning and the art of common sense to issues. For his lifetime, he was an avid reader, football fan, and a Beatles fan since first hearing them on his transistor radio circa 1964. Too, he played a respectable game of golf although he seldom played.      Raised by parents who were both WWII veterans—father/US Marines, Mother/US Army, WAC—Carl well understood and respected “The American Way.”

     The Native Americans of the northern plains believed one’s terrestrial-life to be one’s temporary-life—believing one is born into their real-life after their earthly death. 

     Carl was preceded in his real-life by his parents, George and Marion, and oldest brother, Bob. Those he left living their temporary-lives are his wife, Brenda, brothers Tom of Wichita, KS, and Nick and his wife, Theresa, of Alexandria, VA, and their son, Aric, a Foreign Service Officer, serving as a Vice Consul at the American Embassy, Beirut, Lebanon, and his wife, Brianne.

     He requested no memorial service—only that his cremated remains be placed at Arlington National Cemetery as were his parents and brother Bob’s are honored.

Carl was—is yet and will be—ever loved by family and friends. Truly so.

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