Richard Harold Vesey

He was born Feb. 17, 1922 in Green Springs, Ohio to Irene and Ralph Vesey. He made Green Springs his home for the next 37 years, graduating from the local high school where he lettered in track events. In the Fall of 1940 he attended Ohio University briefly but missed a certain girl, Norma Goetz of Tiffin he had dated back home, and also his father needed help running their floor covering store. He wrote years later that he knew then that she was without doubt, the person for him. The country was plunged into war and in September 1942 he joined the US Coast Guard and was assigned to port security during WWII in New York City. Once he knew where he would be for the next few years he asked Norma to marry him and the wedding took place in Tiffin on February 18, 1943. He and Norma lived in Brooklyn and on Staten Island where she worked as a phone operator at Halloran Army Hospital on the island. Their son David was born to them one year later. After the war ended, Richard and his father owned and managed Vesey’s retail store in Green Springs selling floor coverings. Richard’s brother Bob also sold household appliances in the store. Two more sons were born in 1946 and 48 until they were blessed with the girl they always wanted, Mary in 1952. As they grew, Dick coached Little League baseball and the store sponsored a team.

Camping trips to Indiana, Pennsylvania and New York were a popular pastime during the early 1950s for the Vesey’s. Richard was always a fan of the American West so two lengthy family trips were taken to the western states in 1954 and ’55. Sadly, 1958 saw the death of Dick’s mother Irene to a heart attack. His dad soon remarried and wanted to buy out Dick’s portion of the store. In 1959, Dick took that opportunity to move his wife and four children to Boulder, Colorado. One school teacher in Green Springs was aghast that Dick and Norma would take their young family to a place with dirt streets, wooden sidewalks and horse hitching posts. Apparently she had seen too many westerns. He began operating a ServiceMaster carpet cleaning franchise in Boulder County. They had a home built in the new subdivision of Fairview Estates off Baseline Road on Teresa Drive, six miles east of Boulder. They joined the new Mountain View Methodist Church and soon made many lasting friendships. A year later they opened a retail floor covering store just east of Broadway on Arapahoe Avenue in addition to the cleaning business. In later years they moved the store to better locations on Pearl Street and then on East Arapahoe.

Knowing that Colorado University had about 20,000 students on campus, they invested their limited savings in student and rental housing in Boulder. In 1962, they purchased and operated a room-and-board student house on 13th Street next to the Flatiron Theater with Norma having to prepare most of the meals. From the profits from these properties, they purchased larger real estate investments in Thornton, Denver, Alamosa, Lamar and in Minnesota at various times.

Their oldest son David by this time had taken employment with Western Airlines which gave his parents the ability to fly on passes to many destinations including Hawaii. Dick and Norma said they would like to live there someday if circumstances ever permitted. By 1978, the kids had grown and begun lives of their own. Dick and Norma purchased a home on a shoulder of Mauna Kea on the big island of Hawaii to start a new phase of their lives. Unfortunately it was at an elevation of 2500’ and subject to rain and cold weather for days at a time. They found another new home down by the ocean near the village of Pahoa and moved there. They planted 30 papaya trees, some banana and even pineapple plants and settled in to enjoy the warmer weather.

In 1983, news came that Dick’s stepmother, Ruth, had passed away. Dick and Norma decided to sell their wonderful little home in Hawaii and move to Indialantic, Florida to help his aging father, Ralph. They moved into his home on a barrier island off the coast at Melbourne, Florida where they enjoyed the next 25 years of their life. Ralph had a stroke in 1988 and passed on several months later at the age of 95. Eventually, as the years passed they saw it was time to move closer to their children once again and so sold the house and returned to Boulder in 2008. They have a comfortable apartment near Baseline and Mohawk which allows them to be visited by their family, to rejoin the Mountain View Methodist Church and renew friendships begun decades earlier.

Dick always taught his children to respect the earth and was an environmentalist and recycler decades before it was popular.

He is survived by Norma, sons Dave and his wife Nell of Salt Lake City, Tom and his wife Jennifer in Golden, Jack and his wife Bonnie and son Drew of Edwards and their beloved daughter Mary, who teaches at Boulder’s Flatirons Elementary, her spouse Bruce and two children, Trent and Joy and great-grandson Laron. Dick’s older brother Bob, 90, is still living in Green Springs, Ohio.

A memorial service will held at Mountain View Methodist Church at 355 Ponca Place, Boulder on Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 2:00 PM.

Donations may be made in his name to: HospiceCare Center of Boulder and Broomfield Counties, 2594 Trailridge Drive East, Lafayette, 80026,www.hospicecareonline.org ,303-449-7740 or Mtn. View United Methodist Church, 355 Ponca Pl. Boulder, 80303, www.mtview.org, 303-494-5025.