I’m going over with J. Gary Dillon the agenda for my first ARRC meeting as president in January 2005. The program that night would tributes to David McKay, who I succeeded as president, and who had died the previous month.
I don’t remember the first time that I met J. Gary Dillon, but I remember well the first time that I saw him.
It was July 5, 2003, in Kent. I was there to ride an excursion train on the former Erie Railroad mainline from Kent to a point short of Ravenna Road in Brady Lake during the Kent Heritage Festival.
There was a man walking around in dark clothing with various medallions hanging around his neck and wearing a hat festooned with railroad patches and pins.
I didn’t know who he was, but he was an unforgettable sight. Three weeks later I attended my first meeting of the Akron Railroad Club and learned that the guy I’d seen in Kent was the vice president of the club.
What I remember about that meeting is how then-President David McKay called on Gary to give what was called the welfare report.
Gary proceeded to talk about who was in the hospital, who had died, and other tidbits that I considered to be gossip.
And he relished telling all of this in the manner of a town crier. What was that all about?
Little did I know that in just over a year and a half I would be the one turning to Gary and asking him for his “welfare report.”
There have been many colorful characters in the annals of the ARRC, but J. Gary as he liked to call himself was one of a kind.
In a tribute to Gary that I wrote for the 70th anniversary of the club, I labeled him Mr. Akron Railroad Club. The club was his “family,” something he reminded us of on numerous occasions.
He joined shortly after the organization renamed itself the Akron Railroad Club in early 1947 and has been a club fixture since then.
Gary was never a member of the Eastern Ohio chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, which was the forerunner of the ARRC, but he would have known or met many of those who were.
In short he was the last survivor of the pioneer days of the ARRC.
Gary was already an older man by the time I got know him after I was elected president of the ARRC in November 2004.
He never met a stranger and I was surprised at how easily he would ask the servers at Eat ‘n Park during the after meeting social gathering about themselves.
Gary had a stoic nature and that led to a crisis in his life not long after I became president.
The City of Akron condemned Gary’s house. A handful of ARRC members urged Gary to do something about it, including moving his considerable collection of railroad memorabilia to a safe place.
But Gary did nothing and one afternoon an Akron police officer showed up at Gary’s home and gave him 30 minutes to get out whatever he wanted before the structure was razed.
I never heard Gary express any anger about that and, in fact, he seldom talked about it except in passing.
It had to have hurt losing most of his possessions, but Gary seemed to take it in stride just as he did moving to a homeless shelter, then to a home operated by the Catholic Church, and then to a rental home on North Hill. In recent years Gary lived in the same assisted living facility in Stow that was once the home of the late Dr. Vaughn Smith, whose “welfare” Gary reported on repeatedly.
Gary did on occasion express sadness about the day when the streetcars operated in Akron for the final time on March 23, 1947.
He had a passion for traction and saw the last of those operations shut down in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Gary witnessed an incredible amount of railroad history in Akron during his lifetime. He enjoyed recalling past ARRC trips on rail lines and rail operations that no longer exist.
Some of the details that he remembered decades later, even during his final months, were amazing.
To my knowledge, Gary never had a driver’s license. He would ride the bus to downtown Akron to go to the library or to go to church. Otherwise, he got around with the generosity of others.
In recent years ARRC member Paul Woodring has driven Gary to and from ARRC meetings and other events of interest to Gary.
In my early years as ARRC president, I would often speak with Gary about club matters.
Gary sometimes would come to me when no one else was around to tell me things he didn’t want others to overhear.
That included giving up his duties as program chairman and saying he could no longer serve as the master of ceremonies at the annual December banquet. It also included expressing gratitude for the profile I did about him that appeared in a special edition of the Bulletin on occasion of the ARRC’s 70th anniversary and our making him a life member in 2010.
Alas, old age was catching up with Gary, but so was poor health.
Those who knew him best were often frustrated that Gary didn’t take better care of himself. Things came to a head in late 2014 when Paul and a niece intervened and saw to it that he received some badly-needed medical attention.
For years Gary had had possession of a key to the New Horizons Christian Church, where Gary was a member and where the ARRC meets.
But church officials let me know they wanted me to take possession of that key and to serve as the liaison between the church and the club.
It was a delicate situation and church officials and Gary’s caretakers handled that transition well.
Around this time Gary stopped giving his welfare report. He often sat in silence during the meetings.
But he still made it a point when he saw me to ask how my Dad was doing. Gary never met my father but knew that he lived in Arizona in an assisted living facility.
My Dad is doing fine and just turned 93 last month. Interestingly, Gary was born the same year as my mother, about a month earlier. My Mom, though, died in 1979.
A few years ago Paul told me that Gary had expressed the wish that I speak at his funeral when that time came.
In recent months I wasn’t sure that would happen due to my plans to move out of Northeast Ohio sometime next year.
So when Paul called to break the news that Gary had died, I recognized that I’ll be ending my tenure as ARRC president with a sense of symmetry.
One of my first tasks when I became ARRC president was to speak in January 2005 at a memorial event for Dave McKay, who died in late December 2004.
At the time, Dave held the distinction of having the longest tenure as ARRC president, 12 years.
Now one of my last tasks as ARRC president will be speaking at another memorial event, this time for the longest-serving vice president of the club.
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