Welcome and Thank You for being here today to honor my brother Dean. Welcome to those that are with us in spirit both living as is our mother Teresa Van Seters, adopted brother, A. Robert Chapman and departed as is our father Henry Van Seters.
For me there has always been a Dean. Being just shy of 2 yrs older than me he was always taller, always faster, always stronger & always braver. (notice I didn’t say always smarter…😊)
As a child he had a curious intellect & preferred hands on learning over book learning despite being a voracious reader from a young age. When he was 2 years old our Aunt Rose gave him a powder blue pedal car. One day when my mother was tending to me he slipped from her view and before long the telephone rang. A woman in town said “Teresa, I believe that is your son driving his car in the town square”. Little did we know that he would eventually drive for a living. In addition, I realize NOW that he was most at home in Cornwall-on-Hudson, the town that looked out for him starting back then. In addition to building snow forts & playing impromptu games with the kids in our neigborhood he spent hours playing in the woods & gorge behind our house on Jean Ct. If he built a model plane or ship he took it there to crash & burn inventing all sorts of scenarios with his vivid imagination. Later he would discover Storm King Mountain & his love affair with Black Rock Forest began.
Inspired by Jacque Cousteau films that our parents took us to see on a large screen at West Point Dean took up scuba diving before we were out of High School. He even dove under the ice in the middle of winter. He was a deep thinker & seemed to feel things deeper than most leading to his lifelong devotion to journaling and writing and telling stories.
Every year on Armistice Day our Dad took us to the airshow at Stewart Field Airforce Base. Dean just had to pursue a pilots license after that, he enjoyed the challenge and found a home at the Quad school at Orange County Airport for many years where he flew for none other than the pure enjoyment of being in the sky. His black lab Jazzman, a gift from my husband and I was part of the airport gang & was his companion for 17 yrs.
Dean loved and cared about each of you very much. He held you in his thoughts often. He mentioned in his final days that he had come to understand the depth of caring that you had for him as well. And isn’t that the way, how slow we often are to realize that we are vital guideposts for one another. If we want to carry Deans legacy forward, share stories with each other like he did, take a walk in the woods, write someone a letter, learn something new about our military history or the lives of indigenous people to your area, be kind to the animals and children that cross your path and in that way there will always be a Dean.
I love you Dean. Talk at ya later…..