The first man to ever love me, the man to whom all future men were compared, my Dad, died January 9, 2026, with his son Shawn and me, his daughter, by his side. Nearly a firecracker baby, Donald E. Burgess was born the only child to Gene and Minola Mayhew Burgess in Aledo, Illinois on July 5, 1940. Upon graduating from high school, Dad attended Western Illinois University to major in Industrial Arts. As fate would have it, he moved into a basement apartment and hollered “hey good lookin’” to my Mom when she walked out of her house next door. Two years later they were married on February 28, 1960. Dad did not finish college as two young sons arrived in quick succession and Mom was attending college full-time. While they lived on mostly love in a small aluminum trailer, Dad worked, of all things, at a laundromat, and the Rock Island Arsenal. In early 1964, he joined the Illinois State Police, and I arrived a few years later. He worked the road and swing shift for many years, then took a desk job for more regular hours in 1972 in Springfield which led all of us to our home in Girard, Illinois.

I could write about the awards he received, the promotions he earned but that does not tell what kind of policeman he was. At some point the ISP adopted the words “Integrity, Service, & Pride,” and Dad embodied all those traits. To our chagrin and many who came to ask, he would never “fix a ticket,” or allow his name to be used to get out of trouble. We quickly found it was better to receive the penalty rather than have Dad find out we’d used a name drop. Even worse, he drove the speed limit. Always. Locals freely passed him and waved, and he calmly returned the polite gesture. Because he was the only state policeman in our community, he was often called in times of trauma to take word to a soon to be grieving family or intervene in a dangerous situation. Dad did so at any time of day or night and he would never discuss with anyone what he had seen or heard. Dad was a policeman 24/7. One time when we were getting gas in a larger city, we left and he pulled the car up the block and went back to the station. Quietly he told Mom to get into the driver’s seat and to drive away quickly if she heard a skirmish. While in the station (no pay at the pump back then), he had a funny feeling about two patrons leering at the worker. All he did was return and stand with his gun and badge discreetly displayed, and the potentially nefarious characters left without incident. We went on our way to visit our grandparents and thought really nothing of the event. It is who he was, always protecting no matter where we were. The 60’s and 70’s were a tumultuous time to be an officer, and often even within the ranks could be challenging. There was a young Black man hired to the ISP and this was an anomaly in 1974; the officer was not treated well by many. Dad asked Mom to fix her best spaghetti, buy a bottle of red wine, and that the first Black family we would meet was coming to our rural home for dinner. Despite my brother Scott telling the officer’s wife she was the same color as our Labrador and even had the same name (Barbara) we had a wonderful evening, and Dad was instrumental in the acceptance of the officer in the mostly white unit. He loved putting on his uniform every morning, his gun was a part of who he was, and he was highly annoyed when civilian clothes were adopted for his position. He did not remove his gun from his side until he retired December 31, 1990, and he walked for the rest of his life, even when using a walker, in the unmistakable gait of a policeman whose hip will never forget the weight of a weapon.

Besides being a policeman, our Dad was a wonderful carpenter and a man who could fix just about anything. Having grown up in his own dad’s business “Burgess Cabinet Shop,” there was not much he could not build or make. He designed and constructed our home near Rock Island and leaving that was hard on my Mom, especially when she saw the lake house Dad had purchased on his own. But throughout the years, Dad took the home through two complete renovations, then finally had enough money to pay to have one done; I know the construction crew certainly appreciated his continual oversight of the work. Though Mom was largely known for her fabulous lake parties, it was Dad who designed the spaces and put the finishing touches on the famous Burgess Rocky Beach with its one-of-a-kind hand built wooden diving board and iconic death-defying metal slide rescued from demolition at West Grade School. Our garage was mostly his workshop which held many wood projects, engines both large and small, and whatever else he had an inkling to craft. As a little girl, I was absolutely in want of a canopy bed. For my birthday one year, he wrapped up the design plans for a bed and had me watch and help while he created the “sleeping quarters for the princess.” Next, I longed for a table to match, so he took me on a sweltering summer day to an auction of old motel furniture and purchased the ugliest 1950’s brown workstation I had ever seen. However, it wasn’t long before he transformed it into a darling white desk with pink knobs and a curved hutch to match. It is still sitting in my daughter’s room today. With my brothers and the neighbor boys who had tragically lost their own dad, they built a treehouse on nearby lake property. I spent the day ferrying hammers, nails, wood, and lemonade back and forth in my red wagon and if it appears idyllic, it was. He spent many very early mornings taking those same boys and my brothers to their sports practices, to their dismay, in his squad car but they never missed because of Dad. Both of my brothers are very fine fix-it men themselves and like Dad, there is not much they cannot do. If Dad had to pay to have something repaired, we all felt the pain as he opened his wallet, and as Mom would say, let the moths out as well as a little cash.

Dad spent the first part of his official retirement working as a crop adjuster just to have some fun, and fun he had. This work often brought him to Normal, Illinois where I lived and attended college. Many times, he would stay with me in my little apartment, we would cook dinner with my friends and have a ball. One particular day I had a poetry presentation after his visit and while it was not awful, my professor said, “I do believe you partied too much with your father last night.” She was right. In 1994, he established with my brother Shawn, Burgess & Son, Plumbing and Heating which they ran together until it closed in 2024. In the early days, Dad and Shawn did everything, from keeping books to running backhoes. And I might add, according to Shawn, there were many things Dad did not know how to do but did them anyway.

For many years, Dad enjoyed working on his little farm he bought near our home. A menagerie of misfit and unwanted animals often found their way to the property, and he forever got calls about a goat, or a llama, or something else that had escaped. He ate free for years at a local restaurant when he took a horse a worker could no longer afford and he allowed her to ride and visit her pet whenever she pleased. My own horse made her way there as my first born arrived and I was short on time, and money. His 2000-pound Belgium horses were his loves and those horses gazed at Dad adoringly. I used to tell him he did not have any trouble telling me no but certainly did with the animals. Not much could get children out of the lake on a swim day, except for the trip to Gramps’s farm to feed the animals. We argued constantly that his truck smelled like horse crap and he said it did not, but if it did, it was the smell of good living.

While Dad was an ISP officer, beards were not allowed and after he retired in 1990, he never shaved again. During the summer of 2005 while we were on vacation together with Mom and Dad, a woman came up to us in a restaurant and said “Excuse me but my kids think you are Santa Claus on vacation, could you go talk to them?” Dad was delighted to do so, and I can still see the joy on his face and on the little boys’ faces when he joined them in their booth. After a bit, my oldest exclaimed to us, “Our Grandpa isn’t Santa!” And I said, “Well, he has made a lot of dreams come true for countless people, including me, so that may very well make him Santa.”

I will miss my personal Santa for the rest of my life, but he joins Mom who died in 2021. Every time I went to visit Dad in his little apartment, I said “Hello Dad! How are you today?” and every single time he replied: “Better now that you are here.” I did not realize how wonderful those few words were until I found I would never hear them again.