Susan George

I'm Richard's oldest daughter Susan. Richard was commonly called "Dick" and our mom "Kay" Gagne who predeceased him in 2015 from Lymphoma. Both were generous to a fault mostly to family but to St Jude mom gave $9000, one time and dad commented he could have had a gazebo but it was his way to give his dry sense of humor about life situations. Dad was a newspaper man in Boston and got most of us kids delivering papers as kids and he helped us in rain or snow before going to work. After coming to Florida he sold vacuums, then managed a country store in Therra Verde, then was a handyman/screen man also in Terra Verde. When I told people what he did they would ask if he was the old man or the young man and I would smile because everyone knew him. Now the young man is the old man since my dad is gone. Did you know that he was still getting calls up until we shut the phone off only a week ago? It had slacked off from 3 a day to 2 a week but still, that's remarkable. As a family we were all close he helped everyone sometimes on his own dime. He gave me thousands of dollars and rarely asked for anything back. Hurricane Milton is when dad took a turn for the worse and all of us kids were there for him and many of his grand kids were with him at the end. Dad was so proud of his grand kids he had 7 natural born, 2 step, and 1 great grand kid. Every week dad used the coffee mug that my nephew gave him but only on Sunday the rest of the week it was his his Ray's mug of which dad was an avid fan. He wouldn't watch the game when they were losing but he told the nurses on his death bed they had better get they're tests done before the world series came on because he wanted to watch it and he did. Baseball was one of dad's passions another was watching the wildlife we both watched a falcon jump from his tree onto the roof of my car last summer. I'm so glad he didn't lose that tree with Milton like so many did and we're still seeing Hurricane damage not cleaned up yet. Dad was so happy his house only had minimal damage not like my daughter his 1st granddaughter who lost everything. If dad was still here he would have done everything to fix problems like that. We had dad's celebration of life in late December right before Christmas but if anyone would like to comment in this obituary it would be most welcome and appreciated. Dad is in heaven with our mom now and with my dad's dog who also passed from cancer. God bless you and thank you.