Thursday, June 20, 2019
Dear Aunt Joanne, Nicky, Kevin, Janice and Lori - My thoughts and prayers are with you all. I have a long history of memories of Uncle Nick from when Janice, Lori and I were little girls playing at the farm and our parents were all young, and Uncle Nick working at IBM and you girls going to the IBM country club to swim (how lucky you were), and his wedding to Joanne and birth of Nicky and Kevin - thinking, isn't Uncle Nick kind of old for that? Well Uncle Nick had the last laugh on me. But most of all my intimate connection with Uncle Nick was when I returned from Dachau and we stood outside his house on a cold October Morning and he looked at the photos I had made for him of where he spent part of his youth during WWII, and the factory where his parents labored and cried. He thanked me for 'doing this' I said doing what - he said going there to remember us, to remember what we went through. He made me cry all over again. The next time Uncle Nick made me cry was when I was told Tony was dying. I called and Uncle Nick, stopped everything and came to Tony with Uncle Walter - at the horrible group home - and put his arms around him - he was his father at that moment. Our father had been in heaven for almost 20 years, and we needed our father at that time more than ever. Uncle Nick was there for us. I love him and respect him, and he earned the right to be unfiltered and anything else he wanted to be. May you rest in peace Uncle Nick and fly with the angles. With Love Dianne.
