Mr. Marian Rakusan

Mr. Marian Rakusan of High River, Alberta passed away on January 16, 2023 at the age of 56 years. Marian is survived by his wife Dasha, son Tomas, daughter Nikol, father Vlastislav, and brothers Pavel and Petr. He was predeceased by his mother Dobromila. Marian was born on February 14th, 1966, in Zlin, Czech Republic. Like his father, he fell in love with flying and at the age of 15, he started his training with gliders, and later on powered planes. His other passion was technology, which is why he decided to study Electrical Engineering in Brno, Czech Rebublic. This was though a very hard time for Marian as during it, he had to not only study, but also help his father take care of his mother. He was only 20 years old when his mom passed away. He did his best to live life to the fullest and loved to travel. His brother Petr reminded us of one funny story from one of his travels with Marian: In the sumer of 1989, Petr and Marian decided to travel out of the country in the old vehicle Octavia named “Red Arrow.” At one point they were in Yugoslavia near Banja Luka when they needed to fix a wheel that had fallen off. Luckily despite being in the middle of nowhere, the locals decided to help them. While waiting for a bearing locals decided to fill them up with their alcoholic beverage named Rakija. It didn’t go too well though, and Marian and Peter had to spend the night in a house that was still under construction with the permission of the locals. After he finished University of Electrical Engineering in 1989, he took the job in TOS Hulin. This company was engaged in manufacturing a variety of machinery and machine tools. Unfortunately, he worked there for only a couple of months as in the Czech Republic at that time, military service was mandatory and so Marian had to join. Later, after one year of it, he started to work again for TOS Hulin. Between flying and working he didn’t have time for anything else, or at least he thought he didn’t. That is, until a new girl signed up for gliding training and fell in love with this young man. It took her 3 years to convince Marian that she was the right girl for him, and became his wife. Marian and Dasha’s first child Tomas was born in 1996, and 2 years later they had a girl named Nikol. After the children were born, Marian took a job at TOS Varnsdorf which that required a lot of travel to North America. Because of this, Marian decided to move his family to Canada in 2006. First year was very challenging for everyone, but after a couple years it felt like home. Later, Marian became a gliding and private power pilot again and enjoyed seeing the world from the sky. He loved spending time with family, talking about cumulus clouds, selling machinery parts, joking around with friends, and talking about cumulus clouds again :). He joined the gliding competitions in Canada and the USA. His last success was in Chipman, Canada where he joined the Club Class Nationals and finished second with 6,422 points. Just 87 points behind first. He decided to move with his family to Alberta 2 years ago, and he absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have enough time to enjoy it more. His passion was to fly high over the mountains. A visitation/viewing will be held at the Lyle Reeves Funerals Atrium on Friday, January 27, 2023 from 11:00am - 1:00pm. Caring for the family is Lyle Reeves Funerals of High River (Craig Snodgrass) 403.652.4242.

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Mr. Marian Rakusan

February 14, 1966 - January 16, 2023