Dr. Willard F. Odle, Dentist With Dry Wit

He had lived 82 years and stared into the gaping mouths of strangers probably 200,000 different times, and still, somehow Dr. Willard F. Odle managed to keep a sense of humor, even on the day he started to die.

The retired dentist had suffered a bad stroke, and doctors were about to run him through a machine that would scan his brain. The people nearby could hear him, this man with the driest of wits, asking for something. "What do you want?" somebody said. "Does anybody have any spare parts?" he asked.

In life, Dr. Odle was known as a pillar of order, professionalism and no nonsense. Once, when his children were younger, he had gotten a copy of the Royal Canadian Air Force's exercise program and he regularly gathered his family to get fit, said his daughter Kristine Odle Norton of Seattle.

Somehow it still seemed right that when Dr. Odle died April 11, he let loose a little, even if it was only to lighten the tension of somebody leaving the world. The family can't remember what the jokes were, but he was cracking wise even when he was at the emergency room.

A lifelong Seattle-area resident, Dr. Odle worked as a dentist downtown for 40 years. He grew up in Bellevue, went to college at Seattle Pacific University and went to dental school at the University of Washington.

He demanded a lot from himself. He played golf, and he played it hard. Once, he got a hole in one. Shortly before his death, Dr. Odle still walked three miles every day, around Green Lake.

His daughter Norton said: "When he was in the hospital, I was standing by with my hand on his chest. He was very ill. I was just sort of patting him. Then he brought his finger over and he was patting me and he smiled a little. He was partially paralyzed, but he was trying to reassure me."

Other survivors are Dr. Odle's wife, Eleanor, of Seattle; children Linda Finlay (who lives in California) and Dean Odle of Ollala; and 11 grandchildren. There will be a memorial service at University Presbyterian Church at 10 a.m. Tuesday.