Dear Family,
Can we still celebrate our eighty year old Dad and Grumpy? Here is the illustrated thank you note we read at Dad's party. Please feel free to add illustrations/photos! I just could not find that desert marble, though I did find that it had a Salt Lake City connection! I love you, Dad.
August 26, 2011
Dear Dad, thank you for:
1. Marrying one of the most spectacular and complex women possible
2. And making her our mother.
3. Thank you for accepting the number 4 slot among 5 brothers,
4. And bringing many gifts to the DWE family which are still bearing fruit.
5. Thank you for following your very tender heart and buying a little porcelain dog for your mother
6. And for telling the truth most of the time.
7. Thank you for loving the Weber 
8. And sharing that love with your children.
9. Thank you for giving it up for more time with Mom.
10. Thank you for loving her enough to become a “meat and potatoes” vegetarian.
11. Thank you for caring about your community
12. Enough to serve on many business and humanitarian boards, and teaching us to care about it, too,
13. And for running for the school board
14. And winning again and again and again.
15. Thanks for teaching us the work that goes into a campaign .
16. And letting us put up and take down lawn signs
17. And deliver flyers
18. Thanks for being a fun Young Men’s and Deacon’s quorum leader
19. A thoughtful Sunday School teacher, and
20. A southpaw chorister.
21. Thanks for teaching us that it is not where you serve, but how, and that every calling is beyond each of us without the Lord
22. Thank you for making me get the cereal out of the disposal and the peas from behind the radiator. That helped teach me integrity, which is one of my most cherished values
23. Thanks for harnessing the tote-gotes and taking kids all over the neighborhood.
24. Thanks for making me a model at an early age, and not making me keep it up when I was a teen and didn’t want to any more
25. Thanks for driving a truck where you could see the road under the wheels as we went along
26. Thanks for letting us watch geese grow up in our yard, and die at the cabin after running around with their heads chopped off, then letting us taste them (even though they were yucky).
27. Thanks for the extraordinary family Christmas cards, still cherished by old ladies
28. Thanks for teaching us to clean toilets and mow lawns (even on the riding lawn mower).
29. Thanks for getting rid of the Desert Marble client before we were killed by its fumes.
30. Ditto for the paint brushes in the freezer
31. Thanks for turkey beans and grandpa rolls;
32. Fresh squeezed grapefruit juice and baked apples with red hots
33. And rice–er-raisins and whole wheat cereal with butter and brown sugar
34. And pancakes in shapes
35. Thanks for teaching me to cast a line on a lake with a worm
36. And on a stream with a fly
37. Thanks for being very good with horses and teaching me to enjoy them
38. Thanks for letting us live in Phoenix, where Mom was so happy and we had many fine adventures, including a baby boy
39. And thanks for bringing us back home again to Salt Lake when the Spirit asked you to do so.
40. Thanks for teaching me to speak up and call into Public Pulse when you were doing public relations for 19 Indian tribes in Utah and Arizona
41. Thanks for taking me to the Indian rodeo.
42. Thanks for letting me taste the cubes of cooked turkey dipped in barbeque sauce at National Turkey Federation Events
43. Thanks for your delicious stuffing and teaching me not to overcook the turkey
44. Thanks for showing me up with your garden every single year without fail (I think I am grateful for that)
45. Thanks for teaching me about family councils and what it takes to wait until your turn to speak and to accept what the family decides, even if you don’t like it
46. Thanks for showing me true Christian friendship as we waited in the car while you cleaned up your friend Bob from the effects of drunkenness more than once
47. Thanks for taking me to the office, where I could meet wonderful people like Richard and Evelyn Marshall
48. Thanks for being Grandpa’s best friend, especially in his final years.
49. Thanks for loving our wonderful Grandmother Bea all of her life, too.
50. Thanks for enjoying history, and reading it, and giving me a passion for the same.
51. Thanks for telling us about the Dairy Queen at the top of the Log Drag
52. And singing “I’m on the trail of the Big Fingerrrrrr!”
53. And “You are my Sunshine,”
54. And “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,”
55. And “Home on the Range.”
56. Thank you for writing down your testimony and giving it to us.
57. And thank you for giving us our own copy of the Doctrine and Covenants and
58. The Cannon Family Historical Treasury
59. Thanks for creating our family vacations,
60. Especially those involving mud, sand, flies and the tent trailer.
61. Thanks for loving the great west, and taking us from Hermosillo to the Wind Rivers
62. Thanks for coming back to shore in the sailboat when we thought you might be gone forever.
63. Thanks for being the strongest man I have ever known, capable of immense physical work and willing to do it (I nowunderstand why you did not want to be interrupted when you were measuring or sawing).
64. Thanks for knowing how to use a power saw safely, and for making
65. Upstairs bedrooms and swing sets and climbing toys.
66. Thanks for turning the old bike into a Schwinn, complete with a big, white basket with flowers around it.
67. Thank you for watching over Mom for fifty-five years. 
68. Thank you for doing most of the driving while we were speeding through the desert on the way to California, because Mom was closing her eyes when she drove.
69. Thank you for staying active in the Church through thick and thin,
70. And for staying worthy to be in the temple with us and our children and their children
71. Thanks for being a grand friend to your brothers, especially Uncle Carl. I doubt he has a better friend.
72. Thanks for taking us to Madame Toussad’s and Ripley’s believe it or not when we were just the age to be awed by the experience.
73. Thanks for Fisherman’s Wharf.
74. Thanks for being a strong swimmer who could and would dive off cliffs
75. Thank you for serving a mission and looking so adorable in your bowler hat.
76. Thanks for getting braces. They really helped
77. Thanks for being tall and handsome to this very day.
78. Thanks for teaching us that if we could read, we could do anything (It’s worked pretty well, except for childbirth).
79. Thanks for giving me a beautiful blessing the night before I married Craig Galli
80. Thanks for loving a little girl like me and a little girl liker her, and a little girl like her, and a little boy like him.
Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you!
