John Owen Dunfee

Born in Huntington, West Virginia, John built a beautiful life in Columbus, Ohio, with the love of his life and best friend, Tami, his wife of nearly 50 years. Family and friends admired their love story. Together they built not only a beautiful, loving marriage and family, but also multiple homes with their own hands, filling each one with love, laughter, and unwavering devotion.

John is survived by his beloved wife, Tami; his son, Andy Dunfee (Cristina Crimaldi); his daughter, Amie Dunfee (Christian Rattin); and the five grandchildren who brought him endless pride and joy: Charlotte & Elliot Bland, Samson Dunfee, and Kyla & Isabel Rattin. Brothers Greg (Vicki) Dunfee, Michael (Lora) Dunfee, and sister Missy (Doug) Martin; sisters and brothers-in-law Debbie (Jay) Huffman, Mark (Janet) Fox, Christy Eastwood, Cindy (Michael) Gloyne, Kathy Jacobsen, Greg (Georgia) Fox; and many nieces and nephews.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Robert & Barbara Dunfee; parents-in-law, Carl & Patricia Fox; sister-in-law, Kelly O'Neill; and brother-in-law, Steve Eastwood.

Construction wasn’t simply John’s career, it was who he was. He spent his entire life building. Whether it was a house, a deck, a Barbie house complete with tile floors and cedar shingles, or helping family with a project, he never hesitated to lend his time, talent, or strength. If someone needed something built or repaired, John was there. He was the hardest worker anyone knew, and he gave generously without expecting anything in return.

John had a heart every bit as big as his work ethic. He loved being on the water; relaxing with a few Bud Lights;starting each morning with a cup of Folgers coffee;watching his grandkids play soccer, football, baseball or basketball; and participating in family game night, but only by shouting out answers from the corner of the room instead of actually participating in the game. He adored dogs, especially his granddogs.

Anyone who knew John remembers his unmistakable low, raspy voice and West Virginia accent. More than once, family joked that he needed subtitles when he talked—but somehow, even when you couldn’t understand every word, you always understood his heart. His laugh, his smirk hidden under his white mustache, and his presence made everyone feel at home.

Above all else, John loved Tami. Through nearly five decades of marriage, she was his greatest joy, his partner in every adventure, and the love of his life. Together they built an extraordinary family, and that legacy will continue through the children and grandchildren who will forever carry his strength, kindness, humor, and generous spirit.

John leaves behind a home filled with memories, projects built with his own hands, and countless lives made better because he was always willing to help. Though his voice has fallen silent, his love, his craftsmanship, and the example he set will endure for generations.

The world lost a builder, a husband, a dad, a Pappy, a brother, and a friend. But heaven gained one of the hardest-working men we’ve ever known. He will be deeply missed, forever loved, and never forgotten.

Tami's Eulogy for John:

As I am sitting here reflecting over the past 49 years I was blessed to spend with John, I find myself going back to the very beginning of our story.

John and I didn’t date for very long before we knew we wanted to share our lives together. I will never forget our wedding day or what John’s dad, Bob, said to me right after the ceremony. He walked up with a smile on his face, looked at me, and said “He is all yours now”, and then walked away.

At the time, I couldn’t figure out what he meant. It didn’t take long before I found out. You see, John had a knack for hurting himself. Never on purpose it just seemed to happen to him. You could always count on John’s DNA being left just about everywhere he went. In fact, the day before our wedding he accidentally shot himself in the leg with a nail gun. You would think that might have been a warning sign, but apparently not!

One time my sister, Christy, was visiting while John was playing basketball. After she left, she called to ask if he was home yet because her friend’s husband had also been playing basketball and told her someone on the other team had broken his leg. For some reason, Christy immediately thought of John. To no one’s surprise it was John.

John was one of the hardest-working men I have ever known. He was always striving to do more for his family. After attending trade school to learn carpentry, he became an incredibly talented in this trade. He owned his own construction company for 15 years and all of his customers loved him because they knew how honest and reliable he was and he would make sure the job was done correctly.

He loved building things, especially for the people he loved. He built Charlotte and Elliot their own kitchen set, complete with a full size refrigerator. Then there was the three-story Barbie house he built them, complete with hand-cut cedar shingles and real hardwood floors. Nothing but the best for his girls.

I pretty much always went along with whatever John wanted to do. One day he told me that building a house from the ground up was on his bucket list. How could I say no to something he had always dreamed of?

Since we already owned land at Candlewood Lake in Mount Gilead, he bought a camper for us to live in while we built the house. So there I was an office worker learning construction, and a city girl learning how to live in a camper! He told me many times that was the best time of his life. Building, sitting by a campfire at night drinking his bud light and sleeping in a camper with me.

It wasn’t always easy, but it brought me so much joy watching John in his element, doing what he loved. We were also incredibly fortunate to have family members who came alongside us and helped make that dream a reality.

One day John gave me instructions on what he wanted me to do, but apparently I wasn’t doing it correctly. He firmly corrected me, and I burst into tears. Without missing a beat he looked at me and said, “There is no crying in construction.”

As most of you know, building one house wasn’t enough for John. We ended up building three before his body and his wife finally said, “We’re done.”

And, of course, while building house #2, John somehow managed to nail two of his fingers together while framing an interior wall. My brother Greg just shook his head and said, “You’ll do anything to get out of a little work.”

Just recently he noticed that there was a piece of soffit on the side of the house that was coming down so he decided he was going to fix it with my help, once I returned from church.

When I got home John was patiently sitting in the kitchen waiting for me. He told me he had everything ready to go and he would meet me on the side of the house. I walked around to find he had put his ladder in the bucket of the Kubota tractor and he was standing on the ladder.

I shook my head and said “absolutely not get down”. The man had no fear and could come up with more ways to get hurt than anyone I know.

John believed in teaching his children everything he knew. He passed those lessons on to Andy and Amie, and later to his grandchildren.

When we lived on Northstar (when Andy and Amie were younger) our hot water heater needed replaced, John thought it would be a perfect opportunity to teach Andy how to do it. Andy smiled, and told him he already knew how to do it, he bent over as if picking up his phone and said, “Hello, Dad I need you to come replace my hot water tank”.

John loved spending time on our boat with his family. It wasn’t until years later that Andy and Amie confessed they never actually liked boating. All those years we thought we were making wonderful memories with them!

One day we were boating on Dillon Lake in Zanesville, and John decided he wanted to water ski. When he bought the boat, I made it perfectly clear that my role was to be the passenger, Apparently, he forgot.

He explained what I needed to do, and the only part I remembered was “full throttle.” Unfortunately, I forgot the part about easing back once he got up on his skis. After what probably felt like several minutes of having his arms ripped out of their sockets, John finally let go and disappeared into the water.

Andy calmly informed me that we should probably go pick up Dad. I turned the boat around still going full throttle. As we headed straight toward him, John later said he saw his whole like flash before his eyes. Thankfully, I shut the engine off before we reached him.

Let’s just say he wasn’t very happy when he climbed back into the boat.

I reminded him that I had clearly stated I was only supposed to be the passenger. He never asked me to drive while he skied again and I was perfectly okay with that.

We spent many wonderful years boating at Lake Norman with Doug, Missy and their family, making memories we’ll always treasure.

There was one trip to Lake Norman that will always remain in my memories. One evening Doug and John were enjoying their beer a little too much and John decided that was the night he was going to sleep on his boat under the stars.

I of course was worried sick. I kept imagining him falling off the boat during the night and drowning. I lay in bed for hours, unable to fall asleep. My mind kept racing with one thought: How am I ever going to get him home and I don’t even know how to tow a boat behind the truck.

I woke the next morning very tired, to find John drinking a cup of coffee and very happy as can be because he slept on his boat for the first time.

John also enjoyed another favorite pastime sitting at a bar with friends and a few Bud Lights.

One year we vacationed with Bruce, Shirly, Doug, Missy, Gary, Lori and Herbie, we rented a condo together. The landlord stopped by to make sure everything was okay, took one look at the mountain of beer cases, and informed us she was going to need a much larger security deposit!

We loved our family vacations and our family dinners with our kids and grandkids. John’s family was everything to him. Even though he was a quite man of few words, the kids and I never doubted how much he loved us because of everything he did for us.

He was so excited when Charlotte and Elliot were born. He even watched them a few days each week after they arrived. He learned how to change diapers, something he never did with Andy and Amie. He loved being called “Pappy”!

Then came Samson John Dunfee. John was incredibly proud that Andy and Cristina chose to give Samson his name. The day Samson was born, Andy told us to stay home and said that after they had some family bonding time, we could come to the hospital to meet him. John looked at me and said, “The heck with that we’ll just wait in the parking lot.” So when Andy called to say we could come up, he wasn’t surprised when I told him we were already there.

John loved watching Charlotte, Elliott and Sam play sports. Even when he wasn’t feeling well enough to sit by the field, we would still drive to the games. He would sit in the car and watch them play from the parking lot because being there to cheer them on meant everything to him. Nothing was going to keep him from supporting his grandkids.

I will always be indebted to OSU Hospital and to the young man whose generous gift of donating his lungs gave John three more precious years with us. His first year after his transplant wasn’t easy, but he never gave up. We had hoped for another seven to ten years together, but GOD had other plans for him.

We started out as two love struck teenagers, and through every season of life, we never lost sight of the love we shared. Even during the difficult years through Amie’s health struggles, John’s health challenges, and my own-we always knew we could weather any storm as long as we faced it together.

I will miss us going on vacation, working together in our yard, going to Tee Jaye’s for breakfast and J. Alexander’s for dinner, watching TV together and all the other little things we did together.

He gave me 49 wonderful years filled with love, laughter, and unwavering devotion. Those years are a priceless gift that I will cherish for the rest of my life, until the day I am reunited with him again.

The world has lost one of the truly great ones, and I will forever be proud and grateful to have called him my husband.

Andy's Eulogy for Dad:

First, thank you all for being here, for all the support you’ve given. My dad would have been truly touched to see how many people came out to celebrate his life. I sometimes feared he didn’t know, and I didn’t articulate enough myself, just how loved and appreciated he was.

Since the words of my mom and Amie so completely captured him, I’ll try not to say too much, but will give a few of my favorite stories, maybe ding him up a bit. A few details may be open to scrutiny, but they’re all true to my memory.

There’s been a lot of talk about how my dad was a builder, which is painfully true, but he was also a teacher.

One of the biggest lessons he gave me came when I was 14, during the summer before I started to work for him full time. I had got caught starting fires, dropping smoke bombs down chimneys, and making flamethrowers out of hair spray cans with the Leitch boys, who lived next door. As a punishment, or opportunity for growth, he took me to work at a jobsite where they had demoed a roof the day before, before the dumpster had arrived. I was introduced to a mountain of shingles that reached the peak of the building and to a dumpster that was at least a foot taller than my fully expanded arms. He said to me, “your job is to get that entire pile into that dumpster.” Well, I certainly tried. But at the end of the day the pile still reached the peak of the building, and the dumpster was mostly empty. They all had a laugh, but then he got serious and said something like, “if you don’t get it together, that will be your life.”

There was another summer when I was at least old enough to drive, when the crew had been expanded to include my high school friends—Philip and KC—and we were spray painting the front doors of apartments. You first had to open the doors to remove the weather stripping before you could tape and paint. The building manager would give us keys. We would go door-to-door, knock three times, and then could unlock and open it if nobody answered. My dad explicitly instructed us to yell, “maintenance!” loudly whenever we opened a door. I naively asked, “why maintenance?” And he said, “so you don’t get shot.”

He taught me, Amie, and my mom a bevy of construction skills, including how to paint, operate all the different saws, work a nail gun, tile, and even run electric. I intentionally excluded the adverb “patiently” from that sentence.

My dad had to be early to everything. Yes, this included the birth of my son, Samson, a story my mom has already told, but it also included getting to the start and leaving before the end of baseball games. We have been to several together over the years, including at the Reds, Braves, and Angels. We had an incredible time in 2012 when the two of us went on a road trip and did three major league games in three days in three different cities—Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit. But I had one non-negotiable: we couldn’t leave a game before the last pitch was thrown. Because I didn’t want to repeat the mistake we had made on August 17, 1992, when we, with Michael Gloyne, left a Dodgers game early to beat the traffic, and had to listen on the radio as Kevin Gross completed a no-hitter.

He was also ornery, bordering on devilish. He got many of us with the old, “hey, can you go to the truck and get the wood stretcher,” bit. He loved trying to get us to fly off the tube when pulling us with his boat. And one time, when he was the coach of my baseball team, and family was there to watch me play, he put me, a pitcher and second baseman, at my least favorite position, catcher—when we had the best catcher in the league—just because he thought it would be hilarious to watch me flail around on my knees.

My dad was most in his element when building and I was incredibly grateful to have his assistance when I remodeled houses on Cooper Rd. and again on 9th St., though I sometimes grew impatient with his impatience and scared of his fearlessness. I tended to lean on his help less over the years, realizing I liked to work at a slower pace, but he was always there when I called to give me an answer or advice, and wouldn’t hesitate for a second to hop in his truck and help me get a load of lumber or other supplies.

The second most likely place to find him, when not working or helping someone, and only on the weekends, was at the end of a bar, in a sort of Norm at Cheers kind of way, drinking Bud Lights, strictly out of a bottle. He could make friends with anyone close enough to make out what he was saying, or he would just do the listening. And he might’ve flirted with the female bartenders a time or two, with a certain, innocent, hillbilly charm and a garbled mumble. On occasion, when working for him in the various small towns of Ohio and staying in such lovely roach-ridden motels as the Rodeway Inn, he would half-ass try to introduce me to the younger bartenders. I’m thankful this never went anywhere. I’m thankful I had better judgement.

I’m thankful because had it ever gone somewhere, then I might have made a whoopsie and might not have ever met Cristina or had Samson, whom my dad adored, loved getting game updates on, and was immensely proud of.

He was so proud of all his grandchildren—Charlotte, Elliot, Kyla, Isabelle, and Sam—and loved being called Pappy. He loved having them around and watching their games. He would talk them up to any stranger.

He loved his family, especially his wife, my mom, Tami, and loved everyone that is here today. And he showed this by being incredibly generous with his time and knowledge, often helping with various house projects, giving expert advice, or lending equipment.

He will forever be missed.

I love you, Dad. I hope you are comfortable and at peace.