Sunday night – Remembering Pat and Sam

Today was the 10th anniversary of the day of Sam’s accident.. . As in every year since, we came together today to remmeber him..

as we were surrounded by our freinds.., we learned that our very close friend and neigbor Pat Quinn passed away this evening. Pat and his wife Janet have been our next door neigbors for the past 34 years. Our kids grew up hangining out in their house… Janet died in 2013… Pat lived alone since.. with lots of familty and freinds around him.

Pat worked his whole adult life as the butcher for Quinn’s store, the Jonesville store, The richmond Corner Market and the Richmond Market. He was working there until 2 weeks ago when he got sick..Before that, I don’t ever recall him being sick a day in the three and a half deades I’ve known him.

You could hear him anywhere in the store with his whistling. and his stories. Like the time our tenants tapped an Elm tree by accident to get syrup.. he never let me forget that 🙂

Pat knew everyone.. and everyone loved him . He was an institution ! .We will all miss Pat so much.. It’s hard to imagine our town without him.

Pat and Janet have a really wonderful family… we are thinkign about them all tonight..

You can read about Pat in this article on WCAX back Iin 2012 .. http://www.wcax.com/story/17237821/super-seniors-pat-quinn.. thats where I found these pics.

here he is with janet back in the old store.

The news about Pat came on the 10th anniversary of Sam’saccident. Sam was down visiting freinds in Florida. Sam and his friends Eric and Parker where crossig a street in Florida when a car swerved to avoid one of Sam’s freinds. The car hit Sam .. His sould left his body instantly.. His body stayed strong for two more days which allowed him to donate his organs to save 4 other people

Our lives changed forwever that day.. . The 10 years since have passed in such a strange way..today it seems both long ago and recent.. It has been so, so hard to be without Sam…. at the same time.. we have been surrounded by so many wonderful people and expereinces.

we market today like we have in each of the 10 years.. we began with a hike up Bolton.. aplace that Sam really loved.. Every year we climbe the rickety fire tower at the top and launch fireworks.. THis time we put soem of Sams ashes in teh shell.

always strange opeing Samsashes..

we poured soem in and plugged the hole

wow.. just saw we were using Sam’s drill !

despite the rain down in the valley.. it was snowing like crazy up at bolton. we had a good size crowd..

the climb up was fun..by the top the snow was about 10 inches deep .. It was freezing.. so it felt good to go in the cabin and get out of the wind

max, gabe and I went on ahead to do our toast to sam on the tower. It was mid winter at the top .. gale liek winds and blowing snow.. our hands froze instantly ..