From brother, Mike to Uncle, Jim

Uncle Jimmy, in my childhood memories and in my heart you will always be one of the best story tellers I've ever known. I still get goose bumps thinking about some of those times. You knew just how to tone your stories and when to put the surprise emphasis on the scary part. All the money in the world couldn't replace those times.

I am not a writer but I always did dream of putting some kind of book together of someone I always admired greatly. He was a strong but gentle man. He always made you feel secure wherever you went. This was partly because of the way he always held your hand. Respect - that should have been his middle name. By now, you know I'm talking about your dad and my grandpa.

Whenever we went for walks, he would always be on the look out for anything on the ground and he would always find something. I still do that to this day. During my whole childhood I always thought his name was “Neighbor”, because that is what everyone called him and naturally, we had to stop and chat for  awhile but I never did mind. There was a kind of a peace when we were together.

The walks would include the train station and sometimes, we even got on and I think once we rode downtown and back, the park with the playground, Velvet Freeze, the police station and I couldn't leave out the ‘five and dime’ store. 

Once he bought me some Mexican jumping beans, well I thought I died and went to heaven. Naturally, we always got candy (sweet tooth Deans)! I remember how he always put milk on everything like cake or graham crackers. Just think how much money he would have made if he would have come up with that graham cracker cereal! There are so many stories and so little time.

His life was so interesting and so blessed that someone should write a book about him then we can make it into a movie. Since you have the experience, I'm assigning you with this task. Ha! Ha!  Don't laugh, I mean it. Think of all of the stories you know and each of us have something we can add, if we put our heads together.Time is running out, we need to get started!

Did I ever tell you of the time I went to Staunton, Illinois. I went to the library and looked up some of his fights. Amazing is the word. What great respect fighters had for the sport, back in those days. Gramps even lost one fight because he refused to continue to beat the guy.

During those days, when I would go to the library, I was delivering furniture for a living and just happened to be in Staunton. I knew that my grandparents and my mother lived there for a time. On one occasion I, I made a delivery and when I got done and was ready to leave, something told me to go back and ask them if they ever heard of Ora Dean. Hold on to your seat! They told me that their house was the Dean's house at one time. It gets better! They also said that when they were little that they actually saw from their second story window, the robbery that we all heard about with the coal miners payroll and with Ora riding shotgun. What are the odds of that happening? Anyway give it some thought.