Clinton "Clint" Passeno

He was born Clinton Edward Howard in Detroit September 22, 1928, to Theodore R. & Hazel Passeno Howard. When he was 3 months old, his mother, 23, died of pneumonia. Before her death she had asked her brother, Albin, to "take my baby." His father kept his older brother, Ted, Jr. Albin & his wife, Arvilla, reared Clint as their own; & he was always known as Clinton Passeno in Cheboygan, MI. When Clint was nearly 10, Ted, Sr. died at age 38; & Ted, Jr. came to live with the Passenos. In 1939, Albin & Arvilla officially adopted Ted & Clint.

But how did Clint get to be the extraordinary man he became? He always credited an uncle, whom he overheard asking Albin when Clint was about age 4, "What are you going to do with him? He'll never amount to anything, you know!" with being his incentive to Be Somebody! to Do Something!

As he grew up in Cheboygan, he fished & hunted & biked & did everything boys growing up during the Depression did. But he was "adopted," & he wore glasses, & Arvilla made him wear KNICKERS, which other kids called Bloomers. Of course, he learned to fight! And when he grew big enough & strong enough & smart enough, he did so effectively. He worked on fishing boats & lied about his age to join the Merchant Marines. When he came home, he sometimes worked 3 jobs, saving money to buy a truck so he could haul things & earn a better living. He'd learned basic mechanical & welding skills from Albin, & for the rest of his active life he was always challenging himself to improve on them.

Clint had many skills: working in a machine shop as a welder (5 different times, he thought); as Engineer (& sometimes Captain) on the White Swan, the last wooden freighter on the Great Lakes; as a welder & then as one of the hard-hat construction divers working to build the Mackinac Bridge; as a supervisor/foreman working for 3 different marine construction companies; as a pilot & airplane builder & restorer; as a heavy equipment operator & mechanic; as a long-boom crane operator. He built & operated a One-Hour Martinizing drycleaner in Petoskey. If it was mechanical, he could take it apart & put it back together--& probably better. Or he could invent it & build it in the first place. He owned & enjoyed operating many airplanes & boats & motorcycles. As a proud member of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 324, he advocated collective bargaining to achieve workers' rights in the workplace--& he was an effective union Business Representative for several years.

Clint was smart. He could always get to the principle of a thing, whether it was how to move it, or how to fix it, or how to heal it. And curious. He was a voracious reader, one who always headed for a book (or, later, the Internet) for more knowledge. And joyful about so many things: watching things grow, like flowers, & tomatoes, & clouds rising up across the lake; seeing the many wild creatures that populated his world along Round Lake--minks, beavers, great blue herons, skunks, porcupines, snapping turtles, foxes, coyotes, deer & their fawns, possums. He was so proud of his children & their accomplishments & who they grew up to be. He liked (& sometimes loved) women, & he was always protective; but he was a man's man, spending most of his life working & playing among men.

If you're old enough, you remember a Readers Digest monthly article called, "My Most Unforgettable Character." Clint was mine. And many other people's. Anyone who ever met him remembered him. He gave hundreds of airplane rides to kids of all ages. He helped anyone who needed it, willing to spend time & energy to fix something or to fix a problem, willing to share his knowledge & skill. He valued hard work--& was, in fact, the hardest worker I've ever known. His mind was always working, planning the next steps in a project, how to do something better.

Clint was 97 when he died, & he was proud of reaching that age. He had been fighting (again!) for several years with several health problems & the treatments for them, as well as the accumulating years, & he was sometimes discouraged; but he never gave up.

He was preceded in death by his parents, his brother, the mother of his children (Eunice Chapman Passeno), his son Robert, and 2 grandsons, Alex & Clinton.  

He is survived by his children: Randy (Penny), Debra (Robert's widow), Tamara (Mark) Krohn, Jeff (Sherry), Mark (Jayne), & Valerie Keiling; 8 grandchildren; & 12 great-grandchildren; & his wife of 40 years, Beverly.

There will be no funeral services, but the family will gather in the summer of 2026. If you wish to contribute to a cause in Clint's name, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital & Shriner's Children's Hospitals are the two he preferred.

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