Genealogical Interview: Dave’s Legacy – The Original

Where were you born?

Exeter, New Hampshire in a taxi cab.

What are some of your earliest memories?

Living in foster homes. Good memories were camping, skipping school to go fishing by myself at five-years-old. I didn’t know what I was doing was wrong. I didn’t know how to swim.

I had a father who was in the Navy in the Vietnam era who was a professional WWF wrestler. His name was, “Rolling Thunderbolt Meeker.” When he came home on leave, he would do different things with us kids. I remember big poles in the trees the size of old telephone poles for rope swings, four across.

I remember having twenty six kids (brothers and sisters) in that foster home. I remember all of us, all twenty six of us, sitting on the stairs taking a black and white photo. I was growing up thinking that this was my real family and my last name was Meeker. I didn’t learn that I was in foster care until I was nine-years-old. Around that time, I was taken out of that home and put in a different foster home because of something I did, like it was my fault.

I also remember saving a boy’s life from drowning. He was about seven-years-old. We both didn’t know how to swim but I jumped in and pulled him out and brought him home to his parents. We both got b*tched out because we were wet.  When I got home, I got a beating.

What mistakes taught you the most important lessons in your life? 

Are we practicing karate?

Being an alcoholic. Not having family to turn to.

Can you name three of the happiest moments in your life so far?

• My first child Jessica! I should have started with getting off the State foster care then I should have had Jessica.
• Getting married and having my first child Jessica.
• And getting married and starting a family of my own. I wanted her to have it better than I did when I was growing up.
• The births of all my children were the happiest days of my life!

Are there any life experiences that you haven’t had yet but would like to have?

To travel to places that I’ve never been to before. I want to go to Alaska, the Grand Canyon – just places that are naturally glorious. I would have liked to have met family members on the Page side that I don’t know or never knew.

What are the best and worst parts about being a dad?

Worrying all the time of what’s going on with my children – what is tomorrow going to bring? What’s the best part, what’s good about being a dad? To see your kids grow-up and have children of their own and be better at things that you never were.

If you had to say one is more important than the other, which would you pick: Being a father or being a husband?

Being a father. Anyone can be a husband, but it takes a lot to be a father. That’s something I’ve learned through the years even though I never had a dad. I met my real dad at age 32. He came to stay with my first wife Jamie and me for two weeks. Then he went back to Arizona and died in 1999. He apologized to me for things he put me through like growing up in the foster homes without him.

Why did you marry my mom?

We fell in love, neck brace and all!

When you and Mom were thinking about marriage, what did you think of marrying a woman with adult kids?

That’s part of the package. I married her but they came along with it, that’s part of the package. I also wondered if they would accept me. I thought, “They’re adult children and if you can’t talk something out then something is wrong.”

Now tell me, did you really propose to a “midget” prostitute? Tell me about that.

No I didn’t propose to her. She was 17 and I was 31. The midget lived in Sanford but she was not a prostitute. The hooker lived in Portland and her street name was Cookie. She was 15 or 16-years-old and I was 18 or 19. I asked her to marry me, but she said no so I left to go to New Jersey and met the other lady. She was married to my good friend, they got a divorce, and she moved back to New Jersey where she was from. I met her through my mother, who sold Avon in Portland. I hung out with my friend for a while in Portland. That’s where I was stabbed and mugged. I woke up in the hospital.

[Trying to hide uncontrollable laughter] And who is the woman called, “Sasquatch?” Was she a friend?

She was a 6 foot 8 inch woman that I lived with when I moved back to Sanford, Maine. She weighed 370 lbs. and was an old CB radio friend. That was when I moved back from New Hampshire and I was dating three women at the same time and wasn’t that a mess!

I was still an alcoholic and would go from one woman’s house to the next and it was a mess. I was single and I wasn’t married to anyone, just played. That’s it.