A Father's Heartbreak: Cody Scheetz Remembered

There were those moments shortly after died on March 31, 2011 that his father wished he could turn back time.

The family would have gathered at Cody’s grandparents’ house on Americus Drive in Salisbury Township, as they would every Thursday. Cody, a happy-go-lucky 20-year-old, would not have gone downstairs yet to wake his grandfather sleeping on the couch to tell him dinner is ready.  He would not have seen the guns. He would not have picked up one of the pistols. He would not have said, “It’s loaded.” He would not have accidentally shot himself. He would not be dead.

But Chris Scheetz lives with the reality that his oldest son is gone forever. He sees this everyday when he visits his son’s grave at Resurrection Cemetery in Upper Macungie. Friday was particularly tough. On Feb. 3, the day before what would have been Cody’s 21st birthday, the Lehigh County District Attorney’s office publicly released the findings of their investigation into Cody’s death. The .38-caliber pistol discharged as he was tucking it into his waistband. The pistol belonged to his grandfather, Larry Scheetz.

“The case was closed in my mind a year ago,” said Scheetz, who lives in South Whitehall. “I am relieved that people will know what I already did know.”

That it was an accident doesn’t relieve his pain, Scheetz said, perhaps it’s even more tragic knowing that his son was “a little careless” with the gun. Cody liked guns, he said. He used to go to a local shooting range with his grandfather. “He was taught safety,” Scheetz said.

Cody liked shooting zombies, especially Nazi zombies, in videogames almost as much as he liked watching movies about zombies and writing about them. He created a character, Sergeant Barron, who hunted zombies on a game on deadfrontier.com and published two novels online about zombies. “He had talent,” his father said.

“I personally never got into firearms, never got a thrill from shooting them,” Scheetz said, nor are they what he thinks about when he thinks about Cody.

“He was a fun-loving, sincere and conscientious person,” Scheetz said. He worked part-time as a cashier at the at Village West in South Whitehall and was planning to return to Lehigh Carbon Community College to study English..

Good-looking, extroverted, popular with women, Cody loved life so much his family jokingly called him, “the Celebration.”

“He was a happy guy,” Scheetz said.