RIP, Mr. Dillard

I went to the funeral home this evening to see the family and remains of Mr. James Dillard. He was 90.

I met him shortly after I started going to the gym. We would try to work out three times a week, the same three I try to go. He had been a small business owner and on the side, made a LOT of money working very hard at owning/managing rental houses. Since Mr. K was just getting into that, I spoke with him a lot. He was full of lots of good advice, and was always willing to share it.

A couple times he'd be gone from the gym for a month or so, but eventually he'd be back. Last time I saw him was in the spring. I've been keeping my eye out in the paper for his name in the obituary section, and Saturday I saw it. I've met his wife a few times, and she was very nice. Mr. Dillard always made it clear she was the love of his life and his reason for living. His first wife had left him out of the blue after around 20 years of marriage, and he told me he felt like dying until he met his second wife. They married three months later, and have been married almost 37 years.

His wife is very, very sad. She felt the same way about him.

I knew when I met Mr. Dillard that I was lucky to have met such a man at all. He was a really good man who really loved his family. He loved to wear a thirteen-year-old sweatshirt to the gym that his kids, grandkids, etc. had written on in fabric paint to wish him a happy 75 th birthday.

Mr. Dillard said more than once that he owed his life to President Truman dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. He was in the navy in the South Pacific and would have had to go in and fight if President Truman hadn't brought WWII to a halt with so much sudden force. Mr. Dillard took great pride in America and his service to his country.

I miss him. I've kept hoping he'd come back to the gym, but I always knew one day he wouldn't, and I wouldn't have very long to know him since I met him so late in his life. What luck I had to meet him at all.