Gilbert Daniel Sikora

Our family is saddened to announce that Gilbert Daniel Sikora passed away on April 5, 2020, after a 14 month battle with cholangiocarcinoma.

Born the 5th of February in 1946, Gil grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he spent the first half of his life before moving to Florida in 1987. Gil had an illustrious 47 year career with Westinghouse-Siemens where Gil took great pride in his work, both on the factory floor as an hourly employee to travelling the world as a manufacturing engineer for the company. His career provided us with wonderful opportunities to travel and also to live the ex-pat life in Ulsan, South Korea and Shanghai, China.

Gil was passionate about spending time with his family, going on adventures, never knowing where we’d end up but had a great time on the way, turning shortcuts into long cuts. He had a song for everything in life and could always make me laugh. Gil spent his retirement time gardening, bird watching, fishing, golfing, poker, and building anything you would want. He loved providing for his family and teaching us to take care of ourselves.

In 2019, we made our final move to our wonderful community at Latitude Margaritaville in Daytona Beach, Florida. Gil was diagnosed with Cholangiocarcinoma, 6 weeks and 6 days after moving into our new home. We were informed this was a very rare cancer with few treatment options and is considered a terminal cancer, but we could buy him more time with the treatments available. So we made a pact to do what we could to buy him quality time and make the most of the time he had left. He went through various chemos, infections, hospitalizations, radiations and procedures knowing his prognosis was 6-8 months if he did nothing. In the end, we were able to get him 14 months.

Knowing his time was short, we did everything we could to squeeze in as much family and friends time as possible and filled those moments with laughter, joy and more love than you can imagine.

We will miss him terribly but he will remain in the hearts of his family and friends, near and far.

There is so little known about this rare cancer and we want to help the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation with awareness and research of this deadly cancer. We graciously ask, that in lieu of flowers, that you consider providing a donation to the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation. Hopefully our donations can help other victims of this cancer with treatment advances and comfort. Gil's family thanks you for your support.