Family History - Stories of Grandpa Danny [Part 1]
We always lived far enough away from my father's family that when any of them would come over to visit it was always a special treat. One thing that would almost always happen is we would hear great stories about what it was like to grow up on Bacigalupi Dr., racing down Cardboard Hill, or building makeshift explosives, or sending sisters down hills in home-made go-carts.
The last several times we've been visited I've had the distinct impression to record these stories and to direct the conversation around my grandfather Danny. Grampa Danny passed away when my dad was only 17 so I have never met him and have a strong interest in who he was.
The following is the transcript of when my Uncle Joe and Aunt Lisa came to visit on September 27th, 2017. (If you would like to listen to the original recording you can do so by clicking here [be warned though that it is not a perfect recording])
Andrew: Let me get your thoughts going. Dad tells us of when he and Daniel, um, had worn out their shoes, and Grandpa would take them to Walgreens or Rite Aid -
Steve: It's called Thrifty.
Andrew: Thrifty, and pick out some shoes out of the bin and, uh, good luck finding your size, just because he was generally thrifty.
Joe: Oh generally?
Steve: No...
Lisa: Just because he was generally thrifty?
Joe: That is probably an understatement.
Steve: He was just cheap.
Lisa: Tell Dad's shoe story, Joe.
Joe: I remember when I went up to Grandpa Danny's house to visit and he came in from work and came and sat down on the couch in front of me.
Lisa: A professional.
Jose: And he crossed his legs and I noticed there was a big hole in the bottom of his shoe and I said "Danny you've worn out your shoes" and he goes "Nope. There's a little piece of cardboard in there, I can get another twenty thousands miles out of these shoes!" I mean he's an executive at Lockheed Martin, he was doing pretty well, he could afford a pair of shoes.
Lisa: Yeah
Steve: Yeah
Joe: He chose not to.
Steve: There were a lot of things he chose not to do because he was saving for other things.
Lisa: Well yeah, we went on a lot of big vacations. You know we always were traveling. We did nice planned vacations. We would sit down and have planning meetings about what we were saving up for. So we all knew that we were saving up to go to the Grand Tetons in Yellowstone, I remember that one. We saved up for a boat. The reason we got the boat was Mike and I had a college fund and I think there was $800 in each of our college funds. But I think I was probably 14, Mike was 15, and we had a family meeting that we thought it would be really cool to get a family boat to spend family time together. But we would have to use our college fund to support that. And [college] was so far away! We're like yeah let's get the boat. So we went searching in the newspaper and stuff trying to find a good deal. And it was the Mercury, the white boat with the black engine, and we went to the guys house and got it and brought it home and we had so many wonderful times on that boat! It was worth my college fund $800, you know, because I think we got the boat for $1200 or something like that. But I remember the engine, mid 70's, yeah 'cause I was... I must have been 16 'cause I graduated from high school in '74. But we'd be out on the lake, and the engine would overheat, something would always happen, and Dad would take the cover off of the engine - hot - and it dropped into the lake, and he'd be diving into the lake trying to get the cover and the engine's all exposed and then he'd say - one time he couldn't get the cover, it was gone - "Lisa," 'cause I'd have to pull him on the skies, so we're driving with the cover not on the engine and Dad would wear a cowboy hat and he had double skies, and vrrrrrrrr I'm gunning the boat and there's Dad -
Steve: 200 pounds...
Lisa: ... a shell of water coming over, hanging on he'd go, a shell of water he's hanging on the boat, and finally out of this shell of water emerges Dad with a cowboy hat. Sometimes, and I'd have to circle around with him and we'd all try and reach and pick it up out of the water, he'd try and grab it, he'd put it back on all wet. But we had so much fun with that boat. And we ended up getting the tri-hull with the -
Steve: The Glastron
Lisa: And I think I was already gone to college by then, but you guys had more fun years with boats.
Steve: That boat was a tri-hull so it was pretty rough on Clear Lake. It definitely had more power, it was an inboard outboard.
Lisa: And it had more room so people could sit in it. And Dad's thrifty-ness, when we lived on Santa Rosa Court, before Steven was even born, I remember Dad mowing the lawn with the whole entire crotch rotted out of his pants with a towel tucked into his belt, and mowing the lawn. And Mom's like, "Change your pants!" "Why, these are fine!"
Joe: He had torn out the back of his pants one time and he was outside with a towel around his belt just covering his rear end. Very very practical. Let me tell you, your grandpa was, I remember taking a tour through Lockheed Martin, I was doing a senior project for Lockheed, and um, your grandpa walked me through the department he was in charge of, which was basically facilities at the time. He walked by every desk, knew everyone by their name, knew what was going on with their families. I mean he'd walk over "how's your wife doing?" and you could just see these people just lit up. And that, your grandpa recognized them and knew something about them, and he was so well respected. It was amazing.
Steve: I remember going, so there were two times I went to Lockheed, they used to have "family day". They built, or I don't know if they built them or just designed them, Joe, missile bodies for the MX or the trident missile, anyway the ones that launched from the submarines. Anyway we toured the facility and they had some of the missiles laying, like you could walk by them. They had some of the missile, maybe a mockup, I just remember the missile body laying there and you could walk by and see it. And I was a young teenager but I'm like "What's this for?" and he goes "they put them on the submarines as an armament" and I'm like "what do they do with that?" "well, they blow stuff up. They have nuclear warheads, they're nuclear missiles. This missile could have 24 nuclear warheads on one missile."
Lisa: Wow.
Steve: And he said "we make enough of these missiles every year to blow up the entire Earth."
Joe: Yeah. It's true...
Steve: And he was embarrassed. He said, "it's not something I'm happy about, that I do this, but it's something we need to do." And I never asked him if he was a pacifist or anything like that but he felt it was a job that he needed to do and that we needed to do and he believed in Ronald Reagan but he knew that he wasn't happy to be part of it.
Lisa: Yeah.
Steve: The second time we toured Lockheed he was in charge of facilities and they were building a brand new building and he was in the HR department I think, anyway he was the director of HR I think, but it was a really cool building and he was super proud of it because it had a couple of features that were unique. One of them was that they were trying out these newfangled "cubicles" so they didn't have offices. So it was an open floor plan and they were going to have cubicles so you could stand up and see over everything. He had never seen cubicles, it was a time when everyone had offices and you walked out, right?
Lisa: Right.
Steve: But the reason they were doing that is that the outside of the building had these wings on it, and there was enough light that it would hit these white kind of wings on the outside of the building and naturally light the whole building by reflecting light, and bouncing light, off the ceiling.
Joe: Really?!
Lisa: That's way ahead of its time!
Steve: Yeah. Way ahead of its time, this would have been in the early 80's, and um, he was really proud of that. He's like "this is an innovative building that's gonna..." and the same thing, we're walking past people's desks and everybody knows who he is. Dan Townsend, he went by Dan there, but to all of our family it was Danny but at work it was dan.
Lisa: How fun.
Steve: I do remember it was a defense contracting company. But another time he brought home one of the tiles, I think it was actually from NASA -
Lisa: The heat tiles!
Steve: But he brought home one of the tiles from the shuttle. They didn't, again it was more of a science and engineering rather than a manufacturing site...
Joe: They were developing that ceramic...
Steve: Yeah they were developing it there and he brought home one of the prototypes, it was pretty rad.
Joe: I heard it was amazing.
Lisa: In the 60's when Dad, because when we were little he went to school during the day, he was studying to be a school teacher, and he went to school during the day. We had one car and we'd hop in the car to go pick him up from school like at 2:30 or 3:00, we were out of school, we'd go get him. And then he'd come home and we'd have dinner early, like 4:30 and he'd work swing shift. At the time it was Ames research center. And he would go over to Ames and work until like midnight and come up and get up and go to school the next day, we'd pick him up and the only time we saw him was early dinner. And I remember Halloween he'd come home and he'd eat our candy out of our bag and then leave for work. When he switched over to Lockheed, 'cause when he graduated from college they offered him a teaching job in Gnobe Alaska and Twain Harte and he had four kids by then he was going to make so little money at either of those jobs, it wasn't worth it. So he worked for Lockheed and got more money than he could have being a teacher. But he always wanted to be a teacher. And he took us in the 1960's was the first computer at the company and it was "family day" and this computer took, I remember, it took up the entire room and the big deal was it printed out for me "Happy Birthday" dot dot dot dot dot dot dot on this big with the punch things on the side and Dad hung it up in my bedroom.
And it was like a big deal because it came off of the first computer.
Steve: A computer! That's right!
Lisa: Yeah
Steve: I remember seeing that in your room.
Joe: Didn't your dad say when he retired that he wanted to teach.
Lisa: He wanted to teach.
Joe: I know he wanted to teach.
Lisa: Yup he wanted to go back and he wanted to be a teacher.
Steve: And he pined after Twain Harte as well...
Lisa: Twain Harte, yeah....
Steve: We would go up there periodically and he's like "this is where we would have lived, this is where we would have grown up, there's the school I interviewed at."
Lisa: We went up there, he interviewed at the school and everything and he wanted it so bad, but money wise it -
Steve: It just didn't make sense.
Lisa: And the Gnome Alaska one ended up, they had the giant earthquake and so that one was out. And I remember going to Twain Harte and thinking "we might live here" and um, just money wise it wasn't going to be enough money. But he did want to retire and live in Twain Harte right by where Mom is now and retire there. She's living the dream...
Steve: Remind me about, the kids ask this all the time, about doing chores. So I remember, 'cause they get bugged 'cause they know we have a yard because we're raising kids, not we have kids because we need someone to do the yard. They have to do chores. And we didn't call them chores, we called them jobs, you gotta do your jobs. Tell us about that.
Lisa: The chore chart is on the back page of Dad's journal. What I loved, being a girl, was we have the chore chart and everybody was equal. Dad was so good, I did yard work, um, I did dishes, the boys did dishes, the boys did yard work and it was, we had a circle for a while, but Dad always had it organized, columns and it rotated. But we all had our jobs and then every Saturday we got a dollar allowance. It would be laying on my bed, my dollar, for doing our chores. But I loved that it wasn't like, this is girls work, this is boys work, it was like, we all work together. And I loved being outside and I loved working with my dad outside. And he and I, the rock on the Bacigalupi house, that path right by the street, it was rocks. We went around the neighborhood and collected rocks, Dad and I in the old truck. And I loved hanging out with him. He was so fun and I remember it was raining and we were trying to lay the cement and put the rocks in and it started raining he's like "Lisa Rae we gotta get this done before it rains to where the cement's not gonna set!" And I remember hanging out there with him and the evergreen bushes were smelling really good and we're laying the rocks in the cement and he's like "good job" and it felt so good to do that with him.
Andrew: That reiterates the point. They needed rocks for the path so they went around the neighborhood and just picked some up.
Lisa: We did, and they were big! We just picked them up! I felt it was fair and I liked that. The chart was great, and it was fair. Everybody, when we bought the Bacigalupi house there was no landscaping, everybody's hards were dirt. And to level out our backyard Dad took a big telephone pole, long thing, and hooked ropes on each end and he would drag it on his shoulders behind, and we would take rakes and rake behind it to level that backyard out.
Steve: And it was pretty good too.
Lisa: It was a good job. And we, I remember snakes. Gopher snakes.
Steve: Yeah, totally. I hated the freakin' snakes.
Lisa: Yes, the snakes. And the ice plant, because they had built the new neighborhood, the hill had been carved into and then it was the ice plant across the way to kind of stop erosion, but the first winter we were there it rained really hard and the giant mudslide came down over the ice plant into our yard, the Lamborn's yard, all of us facing the hill, the mudslide came down, everybody had to get and dick all the mud out of the hill and you could still, to the day -
Steve: Yeah, you can see the whole hill had kinda dropped.
Lisa: Yeah, it was in our front yard, it was down the street, it was just huge mud. But, everybody dug. You know I ran into Jerry Dane, down at the LA temple, and Jerry told me a cool story about Dad. The Dane's lived next door to us and we were not members of the church yet and they were. But they had a side yard and we had a side yard that just had a fence in between, and the two, Jerry and Dad, decided they would help each other lay cement along there. So Jerry came and helped, no Dad helped Jerry lay his cement, and then when it was our turn that Saturday that Jerry was going to come and help Jerry got pneumonia and said he was in bed and couldn't come and help. NO! I'm sorry, it was the other way. Jerry helped us Dad was going to help Jerry do it, the day it was Jerry's turn Jerry had pneumonia couldn't do his own and Dad took all the boys and the cement truck came and they did Jerry's cement patch, and when he told me that he cried. He said "your dad, that's the kind of man your dad was. He was always true to his word, always helpful. The best neighbor ever" he goes "I loved your dad."
Steve: That's great, that's a good story.
Lisa: Yeah, good story. You know I was standing in the Celestial room, Brent was just getting ready to go on his mission, Tiana was going to be getting married and I had a tap on my shoulder. And somebody goes "Lisa Townsend" and I turn and I go "Jerry Dane?" and he goes "yeah how are you?" and I looked at him, and I said, 'cause he's the one that baptized our family. And I looked at him and I said "thank you!" and I looked at him and I said, I'm gonna cry, I go "I want to tell you thank you for what you did" and he said "I didn't do anything, I was just your neighbor." And I said "because of you here's my son Michael, here's my daughter getting married, here's my son who's just leaving on a mission," and I said "thank you so much". And he said "I was just a neighbor." And I said "but you were such a good neighbor, a good example." And he said "I love your family". Just a cool guy.
Steve: So awesome.
Lisa: I know! He just turned 80 years old, and he always sends us a letter and stuff.
Steve: It's called Thrifty.
Andrew: Thrifty, and pick out some shoes out of the bin and, uh, good luck finding your size, just because he was generally thrifty.
Joe: Oh generally?
Steve: No...
Lisa: Just because he was generally thrifty?
Joe: That is probably an understatement.
Steve: He was just cheap.
Lisa: Tell Dad's shoe story, Joe.
Joe: I remember when I went up to Grandpa Danny's house to visit and he came in from work and came and sat down on the couch in front of me.
Lisa: A professional.
Jose: And he crossed his legs and I noticed there was a big hole in the bottom of his shoe and I said "Danny you've worn out your shoes" and he goes "Nope. There's a little piece of cardboard in there, I can get another twenty thousands miles out of these shoes!" I mean he's an executive at Lockheed Martin, he was doing pretty well, he could afford a pair of shoes.
Lisa: Yeah
Steve: Yeah
Joe: He chose not to.
Steve: There were a lot of things he chose not to do because he was saving for other things.
Lisa: Well yeah, we went on a lot of big vacations. You know we always were traveling. We did nice planned vacations. We would sit down and have planning meetings about what we were saving up for. So we all knew that we were saving up to go to the Grand Tetons in Yellowstone, I remember that one. We saved up for a boat. The reason we got the boat was Mike and I had a college fund and I think there was $800 in each of our college funds. But I think I was probably 14, Mike was 15, and we had a family meeting that we thought it would be really cool to get a family boat to spend family time together. But we would have to use our college fund to support that. And [college] was so far away! We're like yeah let's get the boat. So we went searching in the newspaper and stuff trying to find a good deal. And it was the Mercury, the white boat with the black engine, and we went to the guys house and got it and brought it home and we had so many wonderful times on that boat! It was worth my college fund $800, you know, because I think we got the boat for $1200 or something like that. But I remember the engine, mid 70's, yeah 'cause I was... I must have been 16 'cause I graduated from high school in '74. But we'd be out on the lake, and the engine would overheat, something would always happen, and Dad would take the cover off of the engine - hot - and it dropped into the lake, and he'd be diving into the lake trying to get the cover and the engine's all exposed and then he'd say - one time he couldn't get the cover, it was gone - "Lisa," 'cause I'd have to pull him on the skies, so we're driving with the cover not on the engine and Dad would wear a cowboy hat and he had double skies, and vrrrrrrrr I'm gunning the boat and there's Dad -
Steve: 200 pounds...
Lisa: ... a shell of water coming over, hanging on he'd go, a shell of water he's hanging on the boat, and finally out of this shell of water emerges Dad with a cowboy hat. Sometimes, and I'd have to circle around with him and we'd all try and reach and pick it up out of the water, he'd try and grab it, he'd put it back on all wet. But we had so much fun with that boat. And we ended up getting the tri-hull with the -
Steve: The Glastron
Lisa: And I think I was already gone to college by then, but you guys had more fun years with boats.
Steve: That boat was a tri-hull so it was pretty rough on Clear Lake. It definitely had more power, it was an inboard outboard.
Lisa: And it had more room so people could sit in it. And Dad's thrifty-ness, when we lived on Santa Rosa Court, before Steven was even born, I remember Dad mowing the lawn with the whole entire crotch rotted out of his pants with a towel tucked into his belt, and mowing the lawn. And Mom's like, "Change your pants!" "Why, these are fine!"
Joe: He had torn out the back of his pants one time and he was outside with a towel around his belt just covering his rear end. Very very practical. Let me tell you, your grandpa was, I remember taking a tour through Lockheed Martin, I was doing a senior project for Lockheed, and um, your grandpa walked me through the department he was in charge of, which was basically facilities at the time. He walked by every desk, knew everyone by their name, knew what was going on with their families. I mean he'd walk over "how's your wife doing?" and you could just see these people just lit up. And that, your grandpa recognized them and knew something about them, and he was so well respected. It was amazing.
Steve: I remember going, so there were two times I went to Lockheed, they used to have "family day". They built, or I don't know if they built them or just designed them, Joe, missile bodies for the MX or the trident missile, anyway the ones that launched from the submarines. Anyway we toured the facility and they had some of the missiles laying, like you could walk by them. They had some of the missile, maybe a mockup, I just remember the missile body laying there and you could walk by and see it. And I was a young teenager but I'm like "What's this for?" and he goes "they put them on the submarines as an armament" and I'm like "what do they do with that?" "well, they blow stuff up. They have nuclear warheads, they're nuclear missiles. This missile could have 24 nuclear warheads on one missile."
Lisa: Wow.
Steve: And he said "we make enough of these missiles every year to blow up the entire Earth."
Joe: Yeah. It's true...
Steve: And he was embarrassed. He said, "it's not something I'm happy about, that I do this, but it's something we need to do." And I never asked him if he was a pacifist or anything like that but he felt it was a job that he needed to do and that we needed to do and he believed in Ronald Reagan but he knew that he wasn't happy to be part of it.
Lisa: Yeah.
Steve: The second time we toured Lockheed he was in charge of facilities and they were building a brand new building and he was in the HR department I think, anyway he was the director of HR I think, but it was a really cool building and he was super proud of it because it had a couple of features that were unique. One of them was that they were trying out these newfangled "cubicles" so they didn't have offices. So it was an open floor plan and they were going to have cubicles so you could stand up and see over everything. He had never seen cubicles, it was a time when everyone had offices and you walked out, right?
Lisa: Right.
Steve: But the reason they were doing that is that the outside of the building had these wings on it, and there was enough light that it would hit these white kind of wings on the outside of the building and naturally light the whole building by reflecting light, and bouncing light, off the ceiling.
Joe: Really?!
Lisa: That's way ahead of its time!
Steve: Yeah. Way ahead of its time, this would have been in the early 80's, and um, he was really proud of that. He's like "this is an innovative building that's gonna..." and the same thing, we're walking past people's desks and everybody knows who he is. Dan Townsend, he went by Dan there, but to all of our family it was Danny but at work it was dan.
Lisa: How fun.
Steve: I do remember it was a defense contracting company. But another time he brought home one of the tiles, I think it was actually from NASA -
Lisa: The heat tiles!
Steve: But he brought home one of the tiles from the shuttle. They didn't, again it was more of a science and engineering rather than a manufacturing site...
Joe: They were developing that ceramic...
Steve: Yeah they were developing it there and he brought home one of the prototypes, it was pretty rad.
Joe: I heard it was amazing.
Lisa: In the 60's when Dad, because when we were little he went to school during the day, he was studying to be a school teacher, and he went to school during the day. We had one car and we'd hop in the car to go pick him up from school like at 2:30 or 3:00, we were out of school, we'd go get him. And then he'd come home and we'd have dinner early, like 4:30 and he'd work swing shift. At the time it was Ames research center. And he would go over to Ames and work until like midnight and come up and get up and go to school the next day, we'd pick him up and the only time we saw him was early dinner. And I remember Halloween he'd come home and he'd eat our candy out of our bag and then leave for work. When he switched over to Lockheed, 'cause when he graduated from college they offered him a teaching job in Gnobe Alaska and Twain Harte and he had four kids by then he was going to make so little money at either of those jobs, it wasn't worth it. So he worked for Lockheed and got more money than he could have being a teacher. But he always wanted to be a teacher. And he took us in the 1960's was the first computer at the company and it was "family day" and this computer took, I remember, it took up the entire room and the big deal was it printed out for me "Happy Birthday" dot dot dot dot dot dot dot on this big with the punch things on the side and Dad hung it up in my bedroom.
And it was like a big deal because it came off of the first computer.
Steve: A computer! That's right!
Lisa: Yeah
Steve: I remember seeing that in your room.
Joe: Didn't your dad say when he retired that he wanted to teach.
Lisa: He wanted to teach.
Joe: I know he wanted to teach.
Lisa: Yup he wanted to go back and he wanted to be a teacher.
Steve: And he pined after Twain Harte as well...
Lisa: Twain Harte, yeah....
Steve: We would go up there periodically and he's like "this is where we would have lived, this is where we would have grown up, there's the school I interviewed at."
Lisa: We went up there, he interviewed at the school and everything and he wanted it so bad, but money wise it -
Steve: It just didn't make sense.
Lisa: And the Gnome Alaska one ended up, they had the giant earthquake and so that one was out. And I remember going to Twain Harte and thinking "we might live here" and um, just money wise it wasn't going to be enough money. But he did want to retire and live in Twain Harte right by where Mom is now and retire there. She's living the dream...
Steve: Remind me about, the kids ask this all the time, about doing chores. So I remember, 'cause they get bugged 'cause they know we have a yard because we're raising kids, not we have kids because we need someone to do the yard. They have to do chores. And we didn't call them chores, we called them jobs, you gotta do your jobs. Tell us about that.
Lisa: The chore chart is on the back page of Dad's journal. What I loved, being a girl, was we have the chore chart and everybody was equal. Dad was so good, I did yard work, um, I did dishes, the boys did dishes, the boys did yard work and it was, we had a circle for a while, but Dad always had it organized, columns and it rotated. But we all had our jobs and then every Saturday we got a dollar allowance. It would be laying on my bed, my dollar, for doing our chores. But I loved that it wasn't like, this is girls work, this is boys work, it was like, we all work together. And I loved being outside and I loved working with my dad outside. And he and I, the rock on the Bacigalupi house, that path right by the street, it was rocks. We went around the neighborhood and collected rocks, Dad and I in the old truck. And I loved hanging out with him. He was so fun and I remember it was raining and we were trying to lay the cement and put the rocks in and it started raining he's like "Lisa Rae we gotta get this done before it rains to where the cement's not gonna set!" And I remember hanging out there with him and the evergreen bushes were smelling really good and we're laying the rocks in the cement and he's like "good job" and it felt so good to do that with him.
Andrew: That reiterates the point. They needed rocks for the path so they went around the neighborhood and just picked some up.
Lisa: We did, and they were big! We just picked them up! I felt it was fair and I liked that. The chart was great, and it was fair. Everybody, when we bought the Bacigalupi house there was no landscaping, everybody's hards were dirt. And to level out our backyard Dad took a big telephone pole, long thing, and hooked ropes on each end and he would drag it on his shoulders behind, and we would take rakes and rake behind it to level that backyard out.
Steve: And it was pretty good too.
Lisa: It was a good job. And we, I remember snakes. Gopher snakes.
Steve: Yeah, totally. I hated the freakin' snakes.
Lisa: Yes, the snakes. And the ice plant, because they had built the new neighborhood, the hill had been carved into and then it was the ice plant across the way to kind of stop erosion, but the first winter we were there it rained really hard and the giant mudslide came down over the ice plant into our yard, the Lamborn's yard, all of us facing the hill, the mudslide came down, everybody had to get and dick all the mud out of the hill and you could still, to the day -
Steve: Yeah, you can see the whole hill had kinda dropped.
Lisa: Yeah, it was in our front yard, it was down the street, it was just huge mud. But, everybody dug. You know I ran into Jerry Dane, down at the LA temple, and Jerry told me a cool story about Dad. The Dane's lived next door to us and we were not members of the church yet and they were. But they had a side yard and we had a side yard that just had a fence in between, and the two, Jerry and Dad, decided they would help each other lay cement along there. So Jerry came and helped, no Dad helped Jerry lay his cement, and then when it was our turn that Saturday that Jerry was going to come and help Jerry got pneumonia and said he was in bed and couldn't come and help. NO! I'm sorry, it was the other way. Jerry helped us Dad was going to help Jerry do it, the day it was Jerry's turn Jerry had pneumonia couldn't do his own and Dad took all the boys and the cement truck came and they did Jerry's cement patch, and when he told me that he cried. He said "your dad, that's the kind of man your dad was. He was always true to his word, always helpful. The best neighbor ever" he goes "I loved your dad."
Steve: That's great, that's a good story.
Lisa: Yeah, good story. You know I was standing in the Celestial room, Brent was just getting ready to go on his mission, Tiana was going to be getting married and I had a tap on my shoulder. And somebody goes "Lisa Townsend" and I turn and I go "Jerry Dane?" and he goes "yeah how are you?" and I looked at him, and I said, 'cause he's the one that baptized our family. And I looked at him and I said "thank you!" and I looked at him and I said, I'm gonna cry, I go "I want to tell you thank you for what you did" and he said "I didn't do anything, I was just your neighbor." And I said "because of you here's my son Michael, here's my daughter getting married, here's my son who's just leaving on a mission," and I said "thank you so much". And he said "I was just a neighbor." And I said "but you were such a good neighbor, a good example." And he said "I love your family". Just a cool guy.
Steve: So awesome.
Lisa: I know! He just turned 80 years old, and he always sends us a letter and stuff.
-TO BE CONTINUED-
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