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Donald Jay Weymiller passed away Tuesday, August 6, 2024 in La Crosse, WI with his sister Dietsy by his side. Earlier in the ER while surrounded by family, a nurse asked him who he had with him and Don replied, “Everyone.” Services were held August 9 and a celebration of life August 13.
Relating what a special person Don was is difficult. His brother Tim said it best: My brother loved to ride good stock in rough country, the wilder and less populated the better. He called it the high lonesomes and we rode a lot of lonesome country together. Leaving nothing but hoofprints and taking nothing but memories, we rode as far south as the Big Bend Country of Texas and as far north as the Colorado Trail in the Rockies, with the Dragoons, the Galiuros, Santa Rita’s, Superstitions and San Franciscan mountains of Arizona in between. Don was a whiz at reading topo maps, and while he might run out of food, coffee or tobacco, he could always find water and we never were lost.
He wasn’t dealt a very good hand in the game of life, with kidney problems as a child, epilepsy as a teenager and a stroke caused by an industrial accident as a young man, but he never complained about those lousy cards.
In my mind’s eye, I can see him sitting by a campfire, coffee and cigarette at hand, studying the map, comparing it with our compass, planning the route for the next day’s adventure.
While my brother hasn’t ridden the high lonesome for some time, I still do. I strap on a set of spurs he paid $15 for at a Gallup, New Mexico pawn shop, and put under my saddle his old Navajo saddle blanket so in a way he’s still with me on the trail.
I think of him often as I ride the high lonesomes, the wilder the country, the rougher the trail, the more spectacular the scenery, the more he comes to mind.
He was the bravest person I’ve ever met, always had my back and, like the old cowboy saying, ”A man to ride the river with.”
So if you’re ever on a lonely trail in rough country and you meet a grey-haired man sitting on a rock with a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other that wants to discuss quantum physics or particle theory and its effect on the rotation of the earth, then you may have met Don.
The one paper kid is rolling again, without camels or coffee or cold morning winds, the one paper kid is rolling again. He will be so missed.
Don is survived by his parents, Patricia Mullen of Yuma, AZ and Waukon, and Donald Weymiller of Fredonia, AZ and New Albin; his brother Timothy Weymiller and sister-in-law Trudy Balcom of Silver City, NM; his sisters Gaianne Joaquinn of Decorah, Ann Weymiller of Burlington, VT, his favorite dance partner Dietsy Weymiller and brother-in-law Ray Mitchell of Waukon, and Penny Weymiller of Idaho Falls, ID; his nephew Jesse Weymiller and his wife Tina and son Jameson of Waukon; his niece Dietsy Mitchell (Nick) of Dallas, TX; his niece Lacey Mitchell of Rochester, MN; as well as his many cousins and friends.