Robert G. Dunmire

Robert ""Bob"" G. Dunmire, 78, died January 30, 2010. After a prolonged battle with cancer, he passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by family and friends. Bob was born on February 7, 1931 in Basin, Wyoming to George and Gladys Dunmire. Bob is survived by his wife, Helene; daughters, Mary of Denver, Linda (Wynn) Parrish of Winston-Salem NC, and Karen (Richard) Barowsky of Denver; siblings, Joe A. (Arlyne) Dunmire of Casper, WY, I. Dale (Carlynn) Dunmire of Stockton, CA, Belva (Chuck) Chapin of Boulder, NV; Sister-In-Law Jo Dunmire of Pueblo, CO; grandchildren, Jill Bookman of Denver, CO, Cady Parrish of Raleigh, NC, Ryan Parrish and Emily Parrish, both of Winston-Salem, NC and Justin Barowsky of Denver, CO. His parents and his brother Rance Dunmire precede him in death. Bob attended the University of Wyoming before moving to Denver in 1958 to become a Journeyman Electrician. He married Helene McCracken in 1959. He worked at various electrical companies for almost 40 years before retiring in 1994. He filled his time with various hobbies including many wood working projects, volunteering at the local elementary school as well as in his grandchildren's classrooms, helping refurbish a local trolley, enjoying his cabin, helping family and friends, among many, many other activities. His most recent favorite projects included his contributions to his family's ever increasing box collections and ant farms. Bob never met a stranger and was always more than happy to join a friend on a new adventure. His memorial service will be held Friday, February 5th at 11:30 AM at Horan & McConaty on South Wadsworth Boulevard. His family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations are sent to ""Dollar Dictionary Drive"" at www.neighborhoodlink/com/inc/home. Click on ""Dollar Dictionary Committee."" Bob's ""brother"" Don McCracken, a brother in every sense of the word, shared with the family a memoir he wrote about Bob. It has touched us deeply and we would like to share it with you, his family and friends…. Bob There are times in one's life when their sails fail to catch the wind. The fabric goes slack, the water turns to glass, the craft drifts. One must wait for the breeze that will charge the wizen sails. Today is one of those days. In these doldrums memories come to me. My earliest memories of Bob go back to when an Apache, step-side pickup truck came to rest on the dirt in front of the house. I remember walking around it and marveling at the newness of it. It was light brown, shiny. It rested in the sprawling shade of the maple tree in front of the house. It came unannounced. All too quickly it was gone. There was a Saturday morning years ago when the kitchen floor of the Iliff house made room for his tool chest, tote trays and a thing he called a ditty bag. He began to work on a fan, a Montgomery Ward catalog item that Mom had to have. I was just a boy then. Still trying to get a feel for what grown-ups were all about. This was a strange thing to watch, indeed. By the end of the day the job was done and a fan now hummed as it pushed air from the kitchen to the back bedrooms. I remember spending time in his garage near City Park when Bob and Helene lived on 17th Street. Summer weekends I rattled around in his Pearson Electric service truck like the junk that sat on the parts shelves in the back. We cruised that neighborhood, if you can say that a service truck could cruise, downtown and citywide, fixing electrical mishaps run-a-muck. I had never known a man who could fix things before that day, certainly not on the scale that Bob could. I remember the ladies and the men we met as we went from stop to stop. I remember something about the way the ladies and the men took to Bob. They enjoyed, even relied on his judgment and conversation. I remember mom back then, babbling about this and that. The conversation was sprinkled here and there with Depression Farm Logic, about her concerns for her new son-in-law. She was consumed in a tizzy because Bob had been reckless and put the financial stability of his family at risk. Bob had made a deal with the devil to pay for a purchase with money that he had not yet earned. Bob took me to meet the devil soon after that. The devil was a man in shined shoes, slacks, white shirt and tie. And I too, because of Bob, went to see the devil many times. The devil resided in the basement in the Cherry Hills Shopping Center in the Sears and Roebuck Tool Department. Bob bought enough power tools to fill a shop. That was the day when the factory of his imagination went into production. On a Saturday morning in his shop in the alley off 17th Street he showed me how to make a boomerang. We cut it out of plywood and shaped the wings with a sander to make an airfoil. I took it across the street and deep into a grassy field in City Park. The boomerang when thrown, accelerated out and up far into the air, crossing right to left as it spun. It flew birdlike, and then as if by magic, it came back to me. Bob, because of the devil, became what he was meant to be. Bob had a mind chocked full of inspiration and imagination. It moved his hands that worked the tools that built the projects that came from the drawing board of his mind. My house is filled with these projects: The Toy Era Collection, the Christmas Ornament Collection, Things That Hang on the Walls Collection, Dinosaurs on Wheels Collection, Ants in the Garden Collection, Canning Jar Candy Machines Collection…I could go on. Bob showed me these things as they exited the assembly line of his shop. Many things my own mind pondered when analyzing them, sometimes I admit, I asked myself ""Why this?"" I share time with a child a few hours a week now. She is three. When the day is spent and night comes, I play with the girl in the living room. The misadventures of Nemo blare in the background in High-Def to no one's benefit. I see the child and watch her eyes as she plays. She plays with the chicken-pecking-paddle, the choo-choo train that goes in endless loops on the table as she sings ""She be comin' 'round dat mount'n."" Wooden biplanes dogfight overhead, while wheeled dinosaurs on the loose crash into the train and then suddenly, of course, all this comes to an abrupt halt. Interrupted by the trip that must be made to the pond behind the sofa. There she pulls fish from the depths with a spiffy wooden rod and reel. It is times like these that I see Bob and start to understand. I see what imagination is and the power of it. I finally get it. But Bob was more than this. More than a man that overflowed with imagination. Helene once said, ""Bob never met a man he couldn't talk to."" Bob's smile and his blue eyes that twinkled, engaged everyone. People that met Bob succumbed to the man and his charm. Was it his stories? Is it possible to get a fix on him? Was it when he said, ""That reminds me of when Rance and I were on the farm…"" that transported us to a time long ago? Was it when he went on about his past and what made him? Was it his parents that showed the siblings how one survives when times were hard? How did such a treasure grow on a farm in Wyoming, where not much can grow, when the Depression of that day, did not give, but took away? Was it his stories of the Navy or the days in the service truck in Denver that drew us close? Or was it just the man, the way he enjoyed his family and his life? I remember all the houses: The basement apartment on 17th Street, the Olive house, the Jasmine and the Perry. I ate more than my share of meals in all of these. I watched three girls grow up as they sat around the tables in these houses. Dinner was always superb and dessert was a given, because Bob loved his desserts. He cautioned me more than once not to be overly praise worthy about anything, ""You mention you really like something,"" he said, "" and you'll never get it again."" And when dessert was gone and the story had been told of Bob's odyssey at work that day, the room filled slowly at first with a giggle from one of the girls. Soon the giggles became pandemic. It was predictable. Bob sat at the end of the table and smiled. The dinner was complete. Bob often said that he could have hired onto jobs where the pay was more lucrative and he would have had more money, but he said, ""Then I wouldn't have had time to spend with the family."" Surely Bob's greatest creation was not his woodshop masterpieces, but these girls and the families that grew up around him. I remember the night Dad died. The family was in a room at the hospital, waiting for the resident minister to give us his parting shot. We were all heathens in good standing. We were not raised that way but ended up there by our own volition. We didn't need anyone to prop us up with readings or a prayer, but we waited for the man just the same. He addressed us and asked us about our father, getting what information he could. He made a comment that has stuck with me ever since. He said, ""We were blessed and shouldn't be sad, but happy, even thankful. God let us have our father for a long time. Not everyone gets that gift."" It was that simple. We had been blessed. A man I know once said. ""Grief is the price you pay for love."" And so it is with us. Our grief is piled high and will last until we go. It will lessen at times and almost disappear, but it will be there. It will be there when we think about Bob, how much he made us laugh, and how, by just being Bob, he enriched us. The measure of a person is how much they affect you. Bob could have been just a brother-in-law but he became a brother and a son. He became the man my parents and my family asked for when they were in need. He came from the outside and became one of us. To many people Bob met he charged the fabric of their sails, energized the water and made their craft move. Certainly Bob did that to me. Don McCracken Please share Memories of Bob and condolences with his family by selecting the ""Sign Guestbook"" tab below.