Dutch's Page


Happy 80th Birthday!	Some of Dutch's many fans	Brothers Dennis and Tom with Dad Dutch	Emma, Beng, Sharon, Cleo


Dave, Chester and Dutch	Tom & Wilma, John Gamber & Sweetheart and Dutch	Dutch could always "wow" the Ladies!	Dutch in his favorite spot


He's at it again!	John Gamber & Dutch 1999	GrandPa Dutch with Son Tom & GrandDaughter Corina	Dutch & Alona Tom & Wilma


A Proud GrandPa	Tom, Wilma, Corina and Dutch	Dutch, Tom & Wilma, Corina & Carla	Wilma, Corina & Dutch


Tom & Dutch Father & Son		Dutch with Tom & Wilma, Corina & Carla

When Tom and Dutch left Reno for the Philippines many years ago I was left behind to clean up the mess. To this day people in Reno and especially Virginia City seek assurances that they are gone for good. In the morning of his life Dutch was an older brother. His brother Fred, whom many of you met when he was here a couple years ago, has told me many times that Dutch was the kind of brother who would not allow his little brother to be left behind just because he was younger. Where Dutch and his friends went, Fred went in the good company and protection of his older brother. Now in the sunset of his life Dutch has the company and protection of my older brother and it has made his life richer and better.

As you may know, Tom Brokaw has written a book, The Greatest Generation, about my father's generation. But it focuses almost entirely on the war and so misses the real reason they earned that title. It was the depression years. MY FATHER WORKED HARD EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE. A pattern set when he grew up on a farm in Cozad Nebraska working from dawn to dusk. He told me once, "I left home when my father put headlights on the tractor."

That example of hard work was there for my brother and I to imitate and though it took a while to stick it is part of our heritage. This is my first trip to the Philippines but I want to announce to you now that we have reserved this room for ten years from tonight and I will be back to celebrate Dutch's 90th birthday.

    I'm sending this to those of you who wrote in the past week about Dutch Myers' death. Like all tragedies I heard from people I had not heard from in years and I'm glad to be back in touch. Thanks very much for all the heartfelt messages. The following is a recap of Dutch's Memorial Ceremony on February 2.

    We took all the tables out of Mangos but left the chairs and put in more. We had seating for 140 plus the bar stools and standing room and the outside beach. The place was packed. We covered the pool table and put a painted 4 x 8 sheet of plywood upright down the center utilizing the light. On that we put pictures from Dutch's various lives. They included:

Also on the covered pool table were 200 flyers that Wilma and I made up with a front page picture of him and his obituary inside as you may have seen in the Reno, Cozad, Sparks, Virginia City papers. (Dennis and I co-wrote this a couple years ago and our dad approved it. On the back we had printed the speech above that my brother Dennis gave at Dutch's 80th birthday here. Dutch's ashes were also on the table with a bible and a folded American flag that the VFW later presented to me. Someone also put a gin and tonic on the table.

I asked a friend, retired Captain Jack McDonald to MC the ceremony: This is how he opened it:

We are gathered here to one of the barrio's greatest.....Papa Dutch. I include patriots because Dutch was a GI, a sailor during world war II, and is definitely one of the 'greatest generation' discussed in Tom Brokaw's book of that name. Dutch gave some instructions to his son Tom to make this a festive occasion and not a downer. To honor his wishes we are going to do this like an Irish Wake---drink, eat and have some fun. Afterwards please enjoy the pictures and e-mail messages on the pool table. Now here is the sequence of events.

Mama Beth will lead us in a prayer. Next, son Tom will give us a remembrance of Dutch's 80th birthday last August including the eulogy which Dutch personally approved. We'll have some of Dutch's favorite songs in the background. Then I'll read selected excerpts from a few of the messages from Dutch's family and friends worldwide. Then we'll have the open microphone for anyone who wants to say a few words. The Shriners and VFW will have short ceremonies after which Dutch will be taken to sea and his ashes distributed on Subic Bay as he requested. There is room for additional passengers as the family embarks. All you ladies remember that from now on when you eat fish, you may be getting some part of Dutch--I hope it's the good part. If the fish winks at you you'll know."

The ceremonies were brief. The Shriners sang some song about bubbles rising. Messages from John Doherty, Kevin Mitch, Daryl Clark, Mike Cohn, Mike Gaskins and Nancy Robinson were read. Someone talked and put a viagra in the box of ashes. The VFW did their traditional final salute minus the taps.

The best and most memorable part was the walk to the beach and the waiting boats. Wilma had the ashes. I picked up both our daughters one in each arm. Filipino Baby by Ernest Tubb was playing. The crowd fanned out on both sides. We waded into the water and I handed up my daughters past the outriggers on the banca boat. It was a big boat and we had 34 people on it. Two other smaller boats were filled. So it was between 60 and 70 people. Everyone had gathered up the flowers that had surrounded the pool table (Thank you Mike Cohn, Steve Casey, Mike and Lourdes, Mango employees, Jim Robertson) and we distributed them among the boats.

We went maybe a mile off-shore and killed the engines. The wind was coming south to north (toward Subic City.) It was quiet and very serene with just the sound of the waves lapping the boats. People broke apart flowers and tossed them overboard. Nancy White read a poem. The wind gently turned us all inward. I held Corina and Carla and Wilma opened the box and poured the ashes overboard. No dry eyes but this was as beautiful as something so final can get. (This morning I was on a walk and saw the flowers washed up on Baloy Beach).

The following is the eulogy I gave. Then I'll include the obituary as it appeared in the papers. (You will definitely learn some things you did not know about Dutch, like how he got the name Dutch). If you finish all this we have a test on Monday. I will be scanning the pictures used at his ceremony and putting them on disc. If anyone is interested in any of them let me know and I'll send them, and of course they are available on this page.

On behalf of myself and my family I'd like to welcome all of you and thank you for coming. I'd also like to thank you for your prayers and support over the last couple of years. I want to single out Mike Trimble, Bill Dingess, Lee Williams, Health Visions and my wife Wilma for their special help during my dad's illness. And for the personal care and day to day attentions they provided we are especially grateful to Ate Lita and our Ya-Ya.

For years around the barrio I've been told what a cool dad I had and how lucky I was to share my adult years with him. I also realize that I have shared him with many of you who adopted him as a kind of surrogate father. So we share this loss together. I think it's important today to keep things in perspective. This memorial was intended to celebrate a man's life. I started to wear a black barong this morning and then realized that it set the wrong tone. I have received a lot of mail and it has all had one theme. DUTCH LIVED A GOOD LIFE.

When Dutch was 78 he had a girlfriend who was 20. I got out a calculator and figured out that if I lived to his age and had a girlfriend who was 20 that she wouldn't be born for another 7 years. DUTCH LIVED A GOOD LIFE.

A few months back my dad was really sick. We took him to the emergency room at the Cubi hospital. He was having trouble breathing and they put him on oxygen and a nebulizer. There was a room divider and I could hear sobbing on the other side. Curious, I looked in. A man about my age was staring down on a bed at a girl about 2 years old, my own daughters age. Feeling like an intruder I couldn't help asking, "What's wrong with her?" Through his grief the man choked out, "She was fine until a few days ago. She went into a coma and won't wake up." I looked over at my 80 year old father and thought, We have to keep this in perspective. DUTCH HAS LIVED A GOOD LIFE.

That said, let's talk about him for a moment. You don't get to be his age by just living one life. He has lived several. As a young boy he was raised in a small Nebraska farming community. He did the typical things of the times like walking miles through snow to a one room schoolhouse that had one teacher teaching eight grades. He sometimes tried to stay home but his father worked his little butt so hard he figured out school was easier. He was a child of the depression and that shaped his views forever. Before school every day he and his brother milked the cows and delivered milk to the town. Work was the essence of that generation and made them special.

When he was 14 he had been riding a horse for some years. One Sunday he was riding down the main street of Cozad Nebraska on what one day would be Interstate 80. That would have been 1934. A big black car with New York license plates pulled up next to his horse. A woman rolled down the window, told him what a good looking horse he had and offered to buy it. He had been wanting a car so that night he talked it over with his dad. He sold the horse for $100 and bought a 1929 Model T Ford for $100. I asked him once if he didn't miss that horse. He said, "Yeah I did but it was hard to get laid on a horse."

He had his World war II years serving aboard 4 Navy ships. We have a picture on display of Dutch in Japan in 1944 on Christmas day with Mount Fuji in the background. 13 months after he was discharged I was born and my brother 18 months after that. We moved west to Los Angeles where my dad attended barber college and we began our Eisenhower years. These were his father years and what I remember best and love best about him. Hitting us ground balls until dark. Putting up the basket on the garage so we could shoot hoops. Taking us to our first baseball game at the old Seal stadium and getting to watch Willie Mays. Taking us on our first airplane ride. Taking us to Disneyland the day it opened in 1954. Taking us to see the Harlem Globetrotters. Working as shoeshine boys in his barber shop.

In 1958 he planned a trip across country to visit relatives and friends. He did it with a road map in one hand and a baseball schedule in the other. In St Louis we saw Stan Musial. In Chicago the Yankees were playing. There was Mickey Mantle and Nellie Fox. In Cleveland the Red Sox and Ted Williams were in town. In Pittsburgh the Dodgers, The Boys Of Summer were playing. My dad's favorite color was red......his favorite football team was the Nebraska Cornhuskers,,,, his favorite baseball team the San Francisco Giants. His favorite sayings were," I haven't seen you since the 4th grade picnic" and "If you're going to New York don't get off in Chicago." His favorite songs were Glenn Miller's In The Mood and Willie Nelson's All The Girls I've Loved Before.

Dutch Myers was born in Cozad Nebraska on August 31,1920 to Alvia and Bernace French Myer. He graduated from Cozad High School on May 26, 1938, then from Lincoln Aeronautical Institute on St. Patrick's Day 1941. In the early days of World War II Myers was a war production foreman at Curtiss Wright Aircraft in Buffalo New York, principally on the p-40 fighter plane. It was during this period while playing on a company baseball team, that he acquired the nickname of "Dutch" (after a major league player of the time named Dutch Myers) Later in the war he entered the US Navy, serving on the U.S.S Sable, U.S.S. Charger, U.S.S. Shangri-La and finally on the first crew of the new aircraft carrier U.S.S. Antietam.

He was discharged on May 25, 1946 (During his military service, the Navy discovered his name was misspelled on his birth certificate and required him to add an "s" to his name to conform to the misspelling) After barber college in Southern California and several years of barbering there, Myers arrived in Reno Nevada in 1950 and eventually opened the State Barber Shop at 112 North Center Street. The shop was across the street from the 1950's location of city hall and offices of the Reno Evening Gazette and Nevada State Journal. (now the Reno Gazette Journal) It was also next door to the 116 Club which attracted city officials, leading lawyers, police officers, reporters and other downtown cognoscenti. Reno Gazette Journal columnist Rollan Melton once observed, "For 35 years, Dutch has been barber and chief philosopher, political pundit, sports expert and friend at the same location. Dutch knew the news before it got into print. Smart reporters went to him for the inside scoop."

On Monday's from 1964 to 1975, he also had a barber shop in the historic mining community of Virginia City, Nevada, first at Pat Hart's Brass Rail Saloon, then at Bonanza Saloon and finally at the Crystal Bar. He retired to the Philippines where his so had a business, in 1983. Myers' career was profiled in William Henley's Book, My Father the Bank Robber and Other Tales of the Comstock Lode. Myers was a member of the Story County Jeep Posse, as well as Masonic Lodge 13, the Scottish Rite Body and Kerak Shrine of Reno, where he performed with the patrol. He was a member of VFW Post 9211 of Reno and American Legion 0004 of Olongapo City, the Philippines.

He is survived by his brother, retired mines inspector Fred Myer, and three sons: Leon, a Cozad concrete company foreman; Tom, an Olongapo City businessman; and Dennis, a Reno television reporter. He also leaves eight grandchildren (Annie, Joe, John, Mary, Ellen, David, Carla and Corina) and six great grandchildren (Carl Leigh, Jacob, Jordan Leigh, Alynne, Madison John, and Bianca Elizabeth.)

"Don't wait for a funeral to pay a compliment. You May not make it in time. (Harvey Mackey)

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know when too soon will be too late. (Emerson)