It was Beau Okata’s last day. His stepdaughter, Chloe Curtis, got the phone call that he was in his final hours and rushed immediately to his home on South Irena Avenue, already crying before she had entered his room.
Okata looked over to his stepdaughter. “What’s the matter…did your boyfriend break up with you?” he asked.
Tears in her eyes, she began cracking up laughing.
“He just loved to laugh, and he made me laugh even to the last day,” Curtis said.
Okata died on Sunday, Dec. 18, surrounded by friends and loved ones, due to complications caused by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
In the days since his passing, his home has been a continual parade of friends and neighbors. His pride and joy were his family and his work, but people were his passion.
“I think that’s one of our family traits — we’re all talkers,” said Stuart Okata, Beau’s brother. “He knew a million people, and his journey was a non-stop flow of people coming over to hang out and talk to him.”
The two were partners throughout their lives, from childhood to shared high school sports, to their careers, building fireplaces, until Stuart shifted into the film industry.
“Everything that a big brother should be is what he was,” Okata said. “He made it easy for us to follow behind him.”
Curtis was five years old when Beau Okata came into her life. That was when Okata reconnected with Denise Porter, his high school sweetheart from their days at Aviation High School. The two parted ways after graduation, and wound up back together in their hometown years later.
When Steve Aspel decided to run for Mayor of Redondo Beach in 2013, he was working to put together a list of campaign endorsements on his mailers.
Okata, he said, was the person he wanted at the top of his list. But his campaign consultant balked and asked “Why him?”
“Because,” Aspel said, “if you don’t like Beau, you don’t like anyone.”
The days following Okata’s death have been hard on Aspel, who dedicated his weekly radio hour to Okata’s memory.
“From an official stance, it’s a tremendous loss to the citizens of Redondo Beach and the world…if you met him, you were his friend, immediately,” Aspel said.
One Saturday following a youth soccer tournament, Aspel was among the fathers who were left behind to clean up. “Beau lived around the corner, saw us working and came to clean up for no reason other than, well, what the hell,” Aspel said. “It shakes your faith sometimes, when a guy who is as wonderful as him catches a disease like this.”
Beau Okata was diagnosed with ALS in January 2014. While it was a devastating discovery, Okata didn’t lose his sense of self.
“People would see him, he’d tell him he had Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and they’d gasp,” Stuart recalled. “Then he’d say, ‘I don’t get it — I haven’t played baseball since high school.’”
Beau’s sudden death came as a surprise to his friends and family, who expected they’d have, at the least, many more months with him.
“But maybe a month ago, he said he wanted to go on his birthday, Dec. 29…he thought it’d be a great thing to come in and go out on the same day, so we’re only sad for one day and not two,” Stuart said. “I should’ve told him he can’t go yet, he’s got 12 days to go.”
Beau Okata is survived by his wife, Denise; sister Maxine; brothers Stuart and David; daughters Chelsea and Mariah; son Keenan; and step-daughter Chloe.
His family is planning a celebration of his life on Thursday, Dec. 29, outside of his home at the corner of Serpentine Street and South Irena Avenue, at 3 p.m. ER
