EAST JORDAN -- Mary Anne Smigulec often joked with her husband about the benefits of old age, like AARP membership.
Smigulec would have turned 55 today, but the East Jordan man died Saturday night after he crashed into trees and was thrown from his snowmobile.
"It looks like the accelerator stuck," she said.
Family members found his body in the snow hours after the accident, said Antrim County Sheriff Dan Bean. Smigulec was transported to Charlevoix Area Hospital, where he died from blunt force trauma. He was not wearing a helmet at the time of the crash, Bean said.
Smigulec passed up a snowmobile trip Saturday with friends so he could tinker with engines, a hobby for which family and friends will remember him.
"He was always making them faster and better," said Mary Anne. "He tried doing stuff for himself, even though he had a disability."
Smigulec was legally blind, but had a knack for repairing engines, said Angela Sieh, a family friend. That included everything from lawn mowers to automobiles.
"He loved to be outside, and he loved to tinker," she said.
He worked on his own snowmobile engine Saturday afternoon in hopes he could loan it to a fellow rider.
Northern Michigan provided Smigulec with the right amount of open land so he could hunt and snowmobile.
"It was his dream to move up here," said his wife, who moved with him to East Jordan from Livonia in 2005.
Dave Nagy met Smigulec through a mutual friend during a hunting trip, and said they immediately became friends.
"He was the kind of guy who invited everyone," Nagy said. "It was always the more the merrier with him."
And Smigulec's neighbors never had to worry about taking their engines to a shop.
"He'd always tell them, 'Bring it over. I'll work on it and see if we can get it fixed up,'" Nagy said.
Smigulec's visitation is scheduled from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday at A.J. Desmond & Sons Funeral Home in Royal Oak, with funeral services following.
