I married Walter Dunmore in 1974.
He drove one truck back then. He owed money on it. And he proposed to me in the cab of that truck at a rest stop outside Toledo, at eleven o’clock at night, with the heater blowing and a Merle Haggard song on the radio.
The ring came out of his shirt pocket wrapped in a paper napkin.
“I’m still paying for it,” he said. “Six more weeks. But I couldn’t wait.”
I laughed so hard I cried. Then I said yes.
He built that company one route at a time.
Ten trucks. Then forty. Then a terminal out on Route 30 with a gravel lot and a mortgage, and a reputation all over northwest Ohio for one thing. Dunmore trucks showed up. On time. In snow. In ice storms. On Christmas Eve, if they had to.
“Showing up is the whole business, Dolores,” he used to say. “Anybody can own a truck.”
He never thought of himself as rich. Even when he was.
In the spring of 2017, a national carrier out of Chicago offered to buy Dunmore Haulage. Two men in good suits sat at our kitchen table on Elm Street and slid a piece of paper across to Walt.
I watched him read it. He sat very, very still in his chair. I’d never seen him sit that still. Not even in church.
He signed on a Tuesday.
He told nobody but me. And a lawyer named Hollis Grant, a dry old man who wore a bow tie every single day of his life and kept peppermints in his desk drawer.
That night, after the dishes, Walt sat at the kitchen table turning his reading glasses over in his fingers. Over and over. The way he did when he was thinking hard.
“Let’s not tell the kids,” he said.
“Walt.”
“I mean it.” He set the glasses down. “Money shows you who people are, Dolores. Let’s not find out until we have to.”
I thought he was joking. I really did.
He wasn’t.
We kept the same little house on Elm Street. Three bedrooms, one bathroom, a porch that needed painting every four years. We kept the same Buick. I kept clipping coupons and sticking them on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a semi truck.
And Walt kept driving a route two days a week. Lima to Fort Wayne and back. Just for the pleasure of it. Just to sit up high in a cab and watch the fields go by.
“A man needs something to do with his hands,” he said.
The money went into a trust. After taxes, three million, eight hundred thousand dollars.
It sat there. Quiet as a stone.
For six years, nobody knew but us.
Lila Hart is a dedicated Digital Archivist and Research Specialist with a keen eye for preserving and curating meaningful content. At TheArchivists, she specializes in organizing and managing digital archives, ensuring that valuable stories and historical moments are accessible for generations to come.
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