Daniel Dessinger

Category: family

  • Saying Goodbye To My Grandma, Judy Dessinger

    I said goodbye to my Grandma last week. She was someone special to me. Not always the softest person, but she was absolutely my biggest supporter. No one made me feel special like Grandma. I will always cherish her generosity, and the satisfying warmth of being genuinely celebrated each time I visited.

    She’s one of my favorite people EVER. She will be missed.

    Jewell ‘Judy’ Shorter Dessinger

    Mar. 6, 1923 — Oct. 20, 2012

    The Duncan Banner

    DUNCAN — Jewell (Judy) Shorter Dessinger, 89, entered the eternal presence of her Heavenly Father on Saturday, Oct. 20, 2012. She was “a woman of noble character worth far more than rubies” who was blessed with a long and happy life. Her memorial service will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday at Jubilee Full Gospel Tabernacle, two miles west of U.S. Hwy 81 on Seminole Road in Duncan, officiated by Rev. Alton Hutto.

    The service will be followed by interment in Duncan Municipal Cemetery under direction of Carter-Smart Funeral Home. For memorials, flowers may be sent to Carter-Smart Funeral Home in Duncan.

    Jewell was born Mar. 6, 1923, in Duncan, to the late Jesse Shorter and Ruby Brooks Shorter. She was their first daughter, the third of seven children. Jewell graduated from Empire School and began working at the Palace Drug Store in Duncan where she met her husband-to-be, Army Staff Sergeant Howard Dessinger who was serving at Ft. Sill. It was love at first sight. Howard and Jewell were married three months later on Leap Year — Feb. 29, 1944, in Duncan. Shortly after their marriage, Howard was sent to the Philippine Islands, and Jewell remained in Duncan. Jewell was proud of Howard’s military service. Jerry, her first son, was born while Howard was overseas. After returning from the war, Howard, Jewell, and Jerry moved to Fort Dodge, Iowa, Howard’s hometown. There her second son, Steven, was born. In 1956, the family relocated to Tulsa. Jewell loved children and enjoyed teaching Sunday school in the Junior Department at Sheridan Christian Center for over 15 years. She loved to visit with her wonderful friends in the Gleaners Sunday school class. Jewell graduated from Hillcrest Nursing School in Tulsa and worked as an LPN for nine years. She later received her nursing home administrator license and served as the nursing home administrator at Tulsa Christian Home for 19 years. Jewell was a natural caregiver who loved to visit each of her patients every day.

    Jewell enjoyed cooking, gardening, crocheting, listening to hymns and gospel music, and traveling the world with her husband. She especially enjoyed their trips to Switzerland and Hawaii. Jewell’s warm smile, humor, listening ear, and generous heart blessed many. She never met a stranger and put people immediately at ease. Her greatest joy was providing love, encouragement, and support to her family, friends, and neighbors. This included serving her Berean Sunday School Class at Woodlake Assembly of God by making phone calls to encourage her dear friends. She had an impact on her family and friends that cannot be estimated. Her smile, laugh, and hugs will be greatly missed. Her legacy will live on through the lives of those who loved her.

    The Scripture Proverbs 31:28 is a fitting description: “Her children rise up and call her blessed. Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all.”

    In March of 2009, she moved to Texas where she lived with her younger son Steve and his family. In July of 2009, Howard, her husband of 65 years, passed away. Their faithful love and commitment to each other has been a beautiful inspiration. In March of 2011, Jewell moved to Wilkins Nursing Center in Duncan. The family would like to thank Wilkins Nursing Center and Ross Hospice Care for their loving care and support.

    Jewell was preceded in death by her parents, Jesse Shorter and Ruby Brooks Shorter; her brother, Marion Shorter; her brother, Wayne Shorter; her sister, Delores Shorter Brooks; her brother, David Shorter; and her husband of 65 years, Howard Dessinger. What a wonderful time of reuniting and rejoicing that must be.

    Jewell is survived by her brother, Roy Shorter of Duncan; her sister, Clairece Shorter Hutto of Duncan; her son, Jerry Dessinger of Tulsa; her son and wife, Steven and Marian Dessinger of North Richland Hills, Texas; her granddaughter, Kristine Dessinger of North Richland Hills, Texas; her grandson and wife, Daniel and Heather Dessinger of Franklin, Tennessee; her great-granddaughter, Kathryn; her great-grandson, Micah; her beloved sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, nieces, and nephews; and a host of dear friends.

  • To My Firstborn

    I have wondered about you for 20 years. I have hoped that I would do right by you, and feared that I would not be able to help but fail you. I have wondered who you would be. I have wondered if you would be like me. I have feared that you will receive all the attention, and the next will feel forgotten.

    You are the greatest gift, though you barely exist. You have existed in my heart for years. I have written to you and for you in my journals these past ten years. I have thought much about the life I will prepare for you.

    I will not turn you into a task. You will not be my list of do’s and dont’s. You are mine. You come from me. I will honor your life with my fullest attention.

    I will not make you an idol. I will live a balanced life, and show you how to do the same. You shall have everything that is mine. Nothing will be withheld from you.

    I wait to meet you face to face with great anticipation. Your arrival will mark a miraculous moment in my life. You will teach me what I have forgotten: to see the world with eyes of wonder, fear, astonishment, and joy. You will draw from me latent wisdom and understanding.

    I have not met you, but you are no stranger. Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. You are a part of me. I am a part of you. When you suffer, I suffer. When you rejoice, I rejoice. Your suffering cannot go unnoticed by me. Your hopes and dreams are more precious than a lifetime of fame. Your success is my success.

    You will live with possibilities I never knew. I will encourage your creativity, your curiosity, and your passion. You have my blessing to be exactly who God made you to be. And I will be every bit the father you need to make the journey. And should I fail, your heavenly Father will cover you and protect you with his love.

    It is not long now. Soon, we will meet, face to face. Enjoy the journey, my beloved.

    — Pappa

  • Family Moving Back to Texas

    It’s official! My family is moving back to North Texas. There’s nothing like the DFW area. It marks the soul. The only thing greater would be to be rich and travel to exotic places and relax on tropical beaches. I say that now, but summer’s coming and I’ll be ready to go arctic.

    We can’t wait to have my family back in the area. We’re hoping to have monthly, if not weekly, Shabbat dinners in our home with family and let our parents help us out with babysitting when the first kid comes along.

    Please keep my family in your prayers. They are still looking for work.

    Have a great one!

  • Phillips Family Portrait Fall 2006

    Phillips Family Portrait 2006

  • Christmas at the Dessingers

    It’s Christmas Day, and we’ve already celebrated with one set of family. Heather, my mother-in-law, and I visited my family for an early Christmas celebration. We had a wonderful time in the Oklahoma City area. There is something so different about OKC and Edmond. The air is so calm and peaceful in comparison to Dallas / Fort Worth. The entire region’s atmosphere is simply more calm. It’s like going to the DFW suburbs and vacuuming the frenzy right out of everyone’s lives. I sometimes wonder if the people in Edmond even have real problems.

    I am destined to smell good this year. Common gifts I received from family members this years were colognes and Barnes & Noble gift cards. Apparently I need to both groom and educate myself better.

    We enjoyed some good eats while we were there. The main holiday dish this year was beef brisket, and it was good! We also hit up a sandwich shop called McAllisters (not sure about spelling) near UCO that makes a killer reuben sandwich. Last night we tried The Cheesecake Factory for the first time. Wow. It was awesome. I’m not a huge cheesecake fan, but the Tiramisu was slammin’.

    Perhaps the best parts of the time we spent with the family were the personal and homemade gifts a few people gave. My wife made an excellent gift for my grandparents. Needless to say, I don’t think a single female in the house made it through the gift giving process without shedding at least a few tears. It was one of our best Christmases ever.

    We’re getting ready right now to go visit Heather’s sister. I am beginning to love the holidays more and more.

  • Writing the First Family Christmas Letter

    It’s the most wonderful time of the year. That is what they say, right? Yesterday, the Christmas cards started piling in. It’s a shame, really, that we all don’t find excuses to communicate more often. Still, it’s heartwarming to receive them, and probably more so because of the Christmas season.

    A few couples including my grandparents (Howard and Judy Dessinger), David and Caroline Shorter, and Russ and Christy Hemati have gone a step further by writing a Christmas letter. I love the Christmas letter. A year-end summary tells me what I’ve missed, and reminds me why even great distances cannot keep me from caring.

    In light of the heartwarming effect Christmas letters have on me, I am inspired to write my own. Most of our friends and family don’t spend much time on the Internet, much less reading blogs like this. In order to keep in touch with most of the people we love, emails and/or conventional letters are still more successful.

    So this year, we will send out our first family Christmas letter. It’s exciting to begin traditions, especially if you can recognize them as such from the beginning. It is a husband’s privilege to feel he has contributed to the formation of traditions within his family.

    I am grateful, and pleased to know that many years from now, we will have a tradition in place which will be treasured for years to come by friends, family, and our children.

  • Thanksgiving Day Celebration

    We made it to my parents’ house. It’s great to see family. I’m pausing to write a brief post here because I needed to get away from the discussion of declining ethics and morals among Americans. Yes, I agree that such decline exists. But no, I have no desire to wax on and on about it because there’s nothing I can really do about it.

    We’ve experienced a couple mini crises over the past 24 hours. My wife lost her wedding ring last night, which is simply heartbreaking for her. I even took apart the sink pipes to check, but no luck so far. Heather’s mom is praying that the ring will appear somewhere soon. I don’t have the faith to really pray for that, but I’ll take it if it comes. I got the crap beat out of me on the basketball court last night. My foot hit a major wet spot on the floor and slid out from under me while the rest of me decided to fall in a crumpled heap, resulting in the first splits I’ve performed in my entire life. I’m suddenly very grateful for the butterfly stretches I started doing a week ago. Doing the splits still hurt like hell, but I might have been temporarily disabled if not for the stretches.

    We’re waiting for my sister to arrive from Tulsa. She spent the day with our grandparents. They’re awesome people. I miss them. It’s unfortunate that they couldn’t make it this year. Reason number one for convincing the family to move to DFW. Once my sis arrives, we’ll dig into some tasty grub. Right now, the women are talking health and kittens. I’m going into the living room to catch the Cowboys with my dad. Happy Holidays, everyone! I have much to be thankful for.

  • Holiday Season 2006

    It’s November 12th, 2006. Thanksgiving Day is right around the corner, and Christmas is right on its heels. It is the happiest time of year and the time of greatest suffering. Holidays are like Jedi Knights: they are intensely powerful, whether for the good or the dark side. Indifference implies callousness. Unless, of course, you come from a third-world country with no familial holidays. I love this time of year. I have never been the guy most geared toward family. I rejected family as a teenager (go figure) and refused to identify myself with “those people.” A successful holiday used to mean a bottle of liquor, a mixed cd, and a trip to the movie theater… alone. I still wonder what the holiday means to my family as we get together. Do they care if the conversation is just idle nonsense, or do they really have things they want to know and say? If so, why do they never bridge the gap between us and share their feelings? I guess I live in a very private family on some levels. We get along, and we are very kind to each other (I was the last one to participate there), yet we know very little about each other on so many levels. Despite the unknowns, holidays are still a chance to appreciate those you love, despit the fact that you may not be able to explain why you love them or what you get out of it. Even with so many unanswered questions about the mysteries of familial bonds, it’s nice to know you can always come home to people who know who you were before you got hurt and started faking it. It’s nice to be accepted. I realize that this does not speak to everyone, and many would rebuke me for generalizing everyone into a quasi-successful family role. I know that there are far too many out there who don’t have anyone to turn to. I know that there are many who would rather die than come home. I know that there are some who can’t remember if home even exists. If you fit into one of those categories, I do not apologize for my generalizations. I do appreciate your patience with me as I express different memories, for I can only communicate what is my own. I hope and pray each one of you finds a new family rising out of the ashes which are your memories. I pray that God will surround you with people who possess the god-given capacity to know you, love you, and appreciate you, so that you will live a life worth living. I pray that you will each know what it means to sit around a table with those you love and share moments of joy and satisfaction. Happy Holidays.

  • The Miracle of Life and Childbirth

    You probably think that I am about to wax on about the miracle of childbirth. I’m not. Not because it’s not miraculous. It is. I posted this photo because the sight of it struck me so.How do I explain? This is a man whom I respect and admire. He is not perfect. I do not pretend he is without flaw. He does, however, live out of a certain sense of duty, virtue, and ethics.

    That also has nothing to do with why I posted his photograph. Truth be told, I miss him. Both he and his wife are dear friends of ours, and we rarely see them. Now Russ is a father and Christi is a mother. They have been translated into another phase of existence. This is beautiful. It is also lonely.

    It’s a loneliness that only those of you who allow yourselves to indulge in a little self absorption would likely recognize. When you can go to a wedding, a funeral, a birth, a celebration, and walk away with a sad loneliness and sense of personal loss, you have arrived at the type of feeling to which I refer.

    Russ will never be a bachelor again. He will never not be a father. He is forever something else. Something much more, perhaps, yet still something “other”. It’s not that I wish he would return to his former state. I do not wish him to undo his lifelong covenant with his bride. But the past is something never to be regained, and significant events state this truth clearly to those of us paying attention. Once you pass a milestone, it becomes yet another marker in time you will never recover.

    The miracle, though, is that this man is a father. Yes, it is a miracle that the baby was conceived, carried to term, and born. But I see a miracle in Russ. I see a man in the process of development, nurtured and challenged by the march of time.

    Though younger than me by a year or two, he has learned some valuable lessons about living and treating one’s neighbor that I still struggle to learn. He has patented the ability to nurture a fragile person without wounding his or her ego. He knows how to listen, to ask the right type of questions, and to speak with a heart that expresses true concern for the other person’s well-being. And now he is a father.

    Our beliefs are not identical. For all I know, he may think of me as a radical charismatic. We do not see eye to eye on everything, but I have high hopes for this child, and any children to follow. They have a blessed future: two loving parents devoted to truth and to the tender expression of it to those in need.

    The miracle of life is that sometimes a child is born into the right family.

  • First Annual Shrub Day

    The first annual Shrub Day was a smashing, though a bit prolonged, success! Two and a half days of labor and deliberation wrought a beauty our little house never thought possible. Grinning from chimney to gables, our little house was delighted at its extreme makeover. For two years, my wife and I have lived in a house that looks much better on the inside.

    The outside wasn’t hideous, mind you. No, it was just plain, bare, and altogether uninteresting. I had not realized how uninteresting until I noticed how many neighbors were suddenly waving as they passed by. Apparently we were doing something to our yard which they highly approved of. I took the glass half full point of view and took it as a compliment to our choice of shrubs and plants. Rainy weather couldn’t stop us!

    We were green machines. We stared down severe thunderstorms without flinching a muscle or twitching an eyelid. We were fearless. We were courageous. We were fierce. We were really stinkin’ tired. I mean TIRED!!! Have you ever taken an axe and tried to hack thick tree roots out of your way? Luckily, I only broke one shovel and cut two fingers throughout the process. Considering the conditions and strength of our opponent, those were acceptable casualties.

    Nah… It wasn’t a battle. Well, it was in a way. But it was more like an adventure. I discovered Calloway’s, a paradise of flowers, shrubs, trees, and vines. I wanted to buy everything – well, everything that suits my taste (i.e., not girly looking flowers or your traditional boring perennial greenery). I would have spent much more had my wife not been present and ready to smite me with a spade. Who knew that I, the guy who rarely even cares to go outside, would find a nursery to be so delightful? I will discuss some of our new plants when I have photos to post.