Harry called me Sunday night so we got the news. It was very sad.Here are some of my memories of Don:
Don was the best rewrite man ever but more importantly a neighbor and friend to me, my wife Marcia, our kids Laura and Patrick and various dogs that Don also got to know.
When I first got to the Beacon Journal in 1970, he helped me figure things out.
I got to help him with one of Pat Englehart's sagas on Gene Chicoine and drug-dealing in Mogadore and the rest of Summit County. One of my favorite reporting experiences, still.
Before he became a great rewrite man, Don also was a great reporter, conscientious, thorough and always accurate.
Don and his wife Judy lived near us in the Highland Square neighborhood and Don was a frequent visitor at our house. He was always ready to help.
He and I put our daughter Laura's first bike together and couldn't figure out why there were some parts left over. She rode the bike anyway.
When our son Patrick stuck a tomato stake through his nose and had to go to the hospital emergency room, Don happened to be walking his dog Drumbeat by our house and volunteered as babysitter for Laura.
When we came to Akron from Columbus to take our Ethiopian refugee friend Aderajew to visit the church that had sponsored him, all of us stayed at the Bandys, of course.
The greatest testament to Don's nice-guy credentials came from my mother Josephine Hershey, a teetotaling Methodist. My mom fought a 60-year stalemate with my beer-drinking dad and never served alcohol to anybody, ever.
Don was the exception. He came up to my parents' lake cottage in Michigan for a weekend and Marcia and I were stunned to see my mother carrying a can of beer down to him on the dock.
-- Bill
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