We will miss Dan, always entertaining. I have a couple years of texts with Dan that I just looked at to remember what we talked about. It's a good mix of who's plowing what, keep an eye on my house while I'm out of town, bear sightings in the neighborhood, fish pictures, how's the skiing?, lots of discussion about the Patriots and "hey, how are you guys doing" if we hadn't talked for a while. He was always there to help, real proud of his kids and always made me laugh.
One of the stories that comes to mind, he and Joann invited the neighborhood over for a party and when Laurie and I walked in the door he yelled from across that room, "Hey Mr. Holland, what do you think of that punter for the Patriots?" I said that I wasn't even sure who it was and he said (in that Mass. accent) "well... his name is Zoltan Mesko and he's standing right next to you". He'd flown Mesko up to workout with Griff. It struck me as a hilarious introduction but also, I would never have even thought to ask an NFL punter to come up and workout with my kid, or have been able to figure out how to do it! How great is that!? He was a character.
I'll miss his stories and our conversations, someone should write a book, what a life.
Over the years he introduced me to senators, 4 star generals and 2 astronauts! He bought the supplies and flew up the owner of Radiantec floor heat in St Johnsbury VT to install our in floor heat in 1999 in exchange for a fishing trip! He was very resourceful.