Fun-filled and fearless, Melvyn John Otterstrom joined the special forces and loved to climb mountains. He drank up what had become a delicious life.

He was crazy about his wife, Kathy. The couple worked hard to get through college, buy a house and plan a future that was just right for their baby boy, Jason.

But on Oct. 24, 1984, Ronnie Lee Gardner murdered Otterstrom, shooting the 37-year-old accountant in the face at close range.

Gardner awaits a June 18 execution date for the April 2, 1985, murder of another man, Michael Burdell, 36. Gardner also pleaded guilty to killing Otterstrom.

Met at Safeway » In old photographs, they make a handsome young couple: Melvyn is a tall strapping guy with a mustache. Kathy is a petite brunette who lookes like the movie star Vivien Leigh.

They met at Safeway, where both had found jobs, Kathy remembers. She was just 20. He was 22. They fell for each other and several months later, married on Dec. 19, 1969.

The young couple imagined a future, then went for it, putting each other through college at the University of Utah. He got a degree in finance, she in biology and sociology.

They put off having a family and saved until they had enough for a down payment on a duplex. By the time Jason arrived, a decade into the marriage, things were on track for what Melvyn and Kathy saw as a life as close to idyllic as they could make it.

Melvyn was the comptroller at Utah Paperbox Co. Kathy taught junior high biology. Young Jason was the apple of his parents' eyes.

'There is something missing' » But Gardner, 23, ruined it all late one night when he shot and killed Otterstrom during a robbery at Cheers Tavern in Salt Lake City. Otterstrom was working a second job as a bartender to help a relative who had financial problems.

Jason was only 3.

"Gardner shattered our lives, Jason's and my life," Kathy Otterstrom Potter said in an interview. A private person, she had never before spoken to a reporter about her late husband's death. "I didn't want to go on. But I needed to go on for my son. Jason had a right to a good life."

She succeeded in giving him one.

Jason, now 28, graduated summa cum laude in physics from the U. of U. and is working toward a doctorate at Harvard University. He's engaged to be married.

Despite his success, Jason remains troubled by his father's death. He has few memories of Melvyn.

"I feel like I know a lot about him through the stories," Jason said. "But I just didn't get the chance to get to know him. I feel like there is something missing."

Several years after the murder, Kathy married the couple's close friend, Jim Potter.

Jason credits Potter as a good stepdad. Nonetheless, as Jason grew older, Melvyn's absence filled him with anger.

"My life has been so shaped by his death," Jason said. "Any kid wants to make his parents proud. I just always wanted to make my dad proud."

It still burns Craig Watson that Melvyn, Watson's cousin and boyhood pal, didn't get to watch Jason grow up.

Now a Sandy police lieutenant, Watson looked up to Melvyn when they were boys. They built a dune buggy together, played around on Honda dirt bikes. And as a Highland High student, Melvyn lined up Watson for his first date.

"You go through a lot of anger," he said. "After years and years, you become used to it. But when [Gardner's] name comes up in the headlines, it brings back bad memories."

For two decades, as Gardner has appealed his death sentence, Otterstrom's name has popped up as something of a footnote. Press reports sometimes referred to him simply as a bartender.

That hurts Kathy deeply. She remembers the man who was so much more: a member of 19th Special Forces Group of the Utah National Guard; a mountain climber and all around do-it-yourselfer who loved getting his hands dirty, whether it was fixing a car or landscaping the yard.

It's part of the painful experience she and her son share every three or four years when Gardner makes headlines. Each time, she relives that horrible morning long ago when she found Melvyn on the floor of Cheers.

"I woke up in the middle of the night and I knew something was wrong," she recalled of that October night long ago.

She found her husband's car at the bar and the manager came and unlocked the door.

"He was flat on his back. He was shot in the face," she said haltingly. "Nobody should have to know that horror."

Jason was too young to understand what had happened.

"When he was about 5, he wrote a letter to his dad," Kathy said. "It's still taped to his crypt."

Neither Kathy nor Jason will weigh in on the death penalty, but both say they find relief knowing people who harm others suffer consequences.

Melvyn's death remains a defining moment in their lives.

"It can either destroy your life -- you can become a victim -- or you can use it to make yourself stronger," Kathy said. "You can't let it destroy you. Gardner has destroyed enough lives."