A tribute to my father….

This story is about my father…George Dymond….

He was born in 1929 and he passed away in 2011. He passed 4 days before his 83rd birthday.

My father was raised in the New Paltz, NY area. His parents worked for the Smiley Family at Mohonk Mountain House

He met my mom at Lake Mohonk.. My father worked on the Mohonk property doing random jobs and my mother moved there in her early 20’s to work as a live-in waitress…

My father was educated in a small Quaker school near or on the Lake Mohonk preserves. The fact that he never really spoke much of his school years leads me to believe that he did not graduate from High School. I guess I felt bad asking him about that in case he was embarrassed about it.

…My father had many friends and enjoyed drinking beer… He loved his cars (always)… Fancy new cars every few years.

He married my mother in 1957.

Way before I was born, my parents temporarily moved to the Phoenix, Arizona area… Then moved back after my mom became pregnant and home sick.

My parents eventually settled into our family home in Kingston, NY.

My parents had a total of 5 children. I am the youngest.

My dad became a truck driver for a living once he moved away from Lake Mohonk. He was a member of the Teamsters Union for many, many years. Much of his middle aged years, he worked for a company called “Van’s Auto and Air Express”…

His main job was to deliver IBM equipment and computers to the 3 major airports in the NYC area. He drove them by means of tractor trailer.

As a kid, I worried terribly about my father.

He would often come home after working 16-18 hour days and mention that he caught himself dozing off behind the wheel. He sometimes pulled over to nap a few minutes on the side of the road. Also, those seats were never good on his back and I worried about how he would be uncomfortable all day..

One night, when I was 14 years old…. a few days after Christmas….The dreaded phone call come in to my house.

I can tell by the tone of my mom’s voice that something had happened to my father.

It was not good.

…. This is what happened.

It was a cold winter night. There was ice and rain. It was cold and wet and miserable out. It was around 8  pm. It was dark… and gloomy.

My father stepped up to get into the cab of his tractor trailer (getting ready to leave for an airport delivery) and his workboots slipped on the top step.

He fell backwards full force and landed on the ground.

He  landed on the icy concrete and directly on his tailbone.

At the time, my father was about 6 foot 2 and weighed 225 easily.

When he landed on his tailbone, it snapped right off of him. That’s right, his tailbone broke off.

Also, his pelvis was crushed in 4 places.

He was hurt so badly that the pain was unbearable.

He rolled around in pain in that rain and ice because he did not know what else to do. He wouldn’t let anyone touch him… He said it was indescribable..

This happened in Newburgh, NY… which was about 45 minutes from our house.

He was in the Newburgh hospital for about a week.

Because my mother did not have her drivers license, we worked it out to have him moved to the hospital in Kingston close to our home so that we could visit him.

He was in the Kingston  hospital for a total of   3 months..

Times were tough. My mom had to get a second job until things settled with my dad’s hospital bills and the disability paperwork was finished up.

This accident left my father permanently disabled.

My dad was only 55 when this happened to him.

Once he got home from the hospital, things changed a lot. He went from a man that was not home very often and always on the go… To someone who could only really walk a little bit and sat around at home all day, in pain….

A year after that he had a massive heart attack.

He knew that he had to keep moving in order to stay as loosened up as possible. No matter how much it hurt, he forced himself to start moving more….He had a motivation to be able to drive a car again….

In due time, he was eventually able to drive again. He had to really test out the cars he could drive. They had to have leather seats so he could slide easily in and out. They had to be a height that he could also easily get in and out.. Not too high .. not too low..

He had to use a cane at times.

Once he could drive again, he started driving to our local mall and met up with his friends to walk around inside the mall early in the morning. He officially became a mall walker.

If you could see him walk, it was obvious he was banged up. He walked hunched over and often looked crooked… He did what he could.

Meeting up with his friends in the mall made him a much happier person. It was a good distraction in addition to being good for his health. Those mall walkers and mall employees absolutely adored my father. He was a handsome man. A full head of grey hair and light blue eyes. A very warm and sincere smile… And always up for being silly … Making funny duck noises and then looking away like he didn’t do it, complimenting the ladies, and just overall being a sweet man…

He would sometimes see his own primary care doctor shopping in the mall. He would make a point to say hello and show him how he’s trying to be good and healthy…. He’d say “Look at me, Doc… I’m getting my exercise”…He would go on to ask “Now, when I go home I’m going to have beer and junk food. That’s ok, right?”… The doctor would shake his head and chuckle..

My dad tried to get opinions from surgeons about how to fix his back. They told him that they could operate on his back BUT it was a high likelihood that he would be in a wheelchair the rest of his life as a result… Dad did not want that so he refused the surgery.

I cannot begin to describe the pain this man was in. Every time he sat down and stood up there was a moan that came from him that was like no other. He was always trying to work through the pain.

Even though he was in this awful pain from the age of 55 until he died at age almost 83, he was still a happy go lucky guy. He loved, loved, loved his grandchildren and took every opportunity to visit them and spend time with them….

They called him Poppy Boss.

He loved all his friends who spent time with him in the mall.

He eventually became a widower when my mom died in 1994.

He did well taking care of himself after my mother’s death, but he regretted terribly that his pain caused him to be more grumpy towards my mother than he felt he should have.

When the disability caused him to be home most of the time, it caused a lot of bickering … After my mom died, he cried often and said he wished he wasn’t like that ..

He was a sweet man. He got sweeter with age although his pain got worse and worse….

He really wanted to see his grandchildren and not be stir crazy being in the house all of the time. It would take a lot of effort to get in his car and come over to my house to visit. I lived 10 minutes from him. But it was good for him to try to keep moving and had a motivating factor for doing so.

There were times that he shared with me his frustration with the pain….He would sometimes tell me that the pain was so unbearable that if he owned a gun, he would have committed suicide. Seeing a grown man hunched over hold his head and saying things like that is not easy…. I worried about that often.

What an awful way to live…..He hardly slept.

Eventually, all of his injuries caused him to have terrible arthritis through his entire body … Every part of his body……It slowed him down…

He started to fall a lot and started to get in such terrible pain that he was in and out of the hospital and in and out of rehabilitation centers in order to get strong enough to go home, again. This became a constant cycle…

He had mostly bad days.. And in time, by the end of 2010 he was completely bed ridden.

He was lucky enough to be able to remain in his own home and comfortable environment as his health was failing to the lowest.

My oldest brother became his caretaker for the last few years of his life….

He became so frail and weak. It was often hard to understand what he was trying to say when he spoke…

My father died in March of 2011.

It was a very sad day…But, I’ll be honest….Knowing he was no longer in pain was such a relief and actually was a day to rejoice that he no longer had to suffer. So, it was definitely bitter sweet.

The longer time goes on without my dad, the sadder I feel for him and the pain he endured.

Most of the time he brought a lot of sunshine and laughter into people’s lives.

Well, most of the time…. Here’s a story of when he didn’t…

Back when he was a truck driver before his bad accident (in the 70’s)…. He was driving his tractor trailer to and from NYC. He stopped at a truck stop to get something to eat. When he came out, he caught a thief in the cab of his truck going through all his “stuff”. That did NOT make my dad happy. The tractor trailer just so happened to be parked very close to a phone booth… My dad was so strong, he picked the guy up by the back of the shirt and threw the guy into the air. The guy happened to land inside the phone booth by means of going through the glass…

But that was never the dad I ever knew. That was just a “tough guy” story he loved to share …

This is the dad I knew….

Here are some great things I would love to share about my dad , George Dymond.

He had several nick names, Mr Mayor, Mayor of the mall, Leggs Dymond, Boss Man, Poppy Boss… and many more.

He used to bring bags of M&M’s home from work and leave them on the corner of the kitchen counter for me. He worked long hours and went right to bed. So, when I woke up… I would find the surprise on the counter… Always a warm memory for me.

In his retired years, he loved watching the country music channel and The Wheel of Fortune. He always had comments to make about Vannah Whites outfit and/or her hairstyle.

The most memorable car of all of his collections over the years, was the turquoise blue T-Bird convertible. He bought this car when he was 75 years old. He must have really loved it because that car sat so low, he had a hard time getting in and out of it.. He got a lot of attention driving around in that, though. He even let me drive it a few times.

He loved wearing outfits from LL Bean. They made jeans that were lined on the inside with the same material as the flannel shirt that matched them. So, when he wore the jeans with the cuffs rolled up by the ankle with the matching shirt, he would joke that his shirt tail was so long that he had to roll them up at the bottom with his pants.

He wasn’t an educated man. He wasn’t a man that did any big community volunteering or anything political that would catch attention like that  .. He wasn’t a rich man… But, he was a hard working, blue collar, man that raised his family to have strong morals, to work hard and have good manners…That, to me, is the best way to be raised…. I wouldn’t have it any other way.