Man Writes Own Obituary; Includes a List of Confessions

A scientist from Salt Lake City, Utah had some confessions to make, and he did so in a different way. Val Patterson passed away from throat cancer on July 10. Before he passed, he penned his own obituary, and in it he included a list of things that he thought everyone should know.

The most revealing confession is that Patterson told his colleagues that he didn't actually earn a PhD. In fact, he never even graduated from college. He claimed the degree was accidentally mailed to him by the University of Utah. That's definitely a lucky mistake. Patterson apologized for the error, but backed up his work at the same time. "For all the electronic engineers I have worked with, I'm sorry, but you have to admit my designs always worked very well, and were well engineered, and I always made you laugh at work," he included. If the work was done correctly and accurately, what is the importance of a piece of paper anyway?

The false PhD claim wasn't the only thing the 59-year-old decided to spill. He also wrote that he had stolen a safe from the Motor View Inn Drive in 1971 and that Disneyland and SeaWorld could remove the "banned for life" stamp on his name. As for now, there isn't much proof of Patterson's claims, as he was known for having a great sense of humor. That's obvious as he wrote the obit in a comedic style.

Although most of the piece was filled with humor, he did take the time to apologize to his wife. "My regret is that I felt invincible when young and smoked cigarettes when I knew they were bad for me. Now, to make it worse, I have robbed my beloved Mary Jane of a decade or more of the two of us growing old together and laughing at all the thousands of simple things that we have come to enjoy and fill our lives with such happy words and moments...I feel such the 'thief' now -- for stealing so much from her...," he said in his final document.

While some might find Patterson to be a "liar" or a "fraud," it seems that he was just a fun guy who wanted to be remembered in that very way. He wrote his own obituary—it doesn't get much more interesting than that.

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