Troyer, Don

Retired

A Father-in-Law that gives his all for you is a blessing.

When I started dating the beautiful daughter of Don Troyer I barely made enough money to pay the bills.

I had left my employment  in billboards and hired out to help paint houses. In the evenings I began to pick up sign lettering jobs.

Living in a mobile home, I painted the signs on site. Don asked me one day, "Why don't you start your own sign company full time?" He added, "You can bring 4'x8' plywood into my house basement to letter." When I hesitated, Don with a big grin said, "Dan, what do you have to lose? If you go broke, you can always live with us!" I did start bringing plywood into their home and opened quite a few cans of oil base paint in the basement. Later, Don convinced his father to let me move the operation to an old wooden hog barn.

I was excited to recieve a agreement to paint as a sub-contractor for 3M National lettering their billboards onsite. Don worked full time as a supervisor at a local plant. Every Saturday and Sunday Don would ask me where we were going to paint. He never charged me for his help on the tall billboards we lettered. We didn't miss a weekend for years painting together on my swingstage rig. On a Saturday in Indiana prior to cell phones we ventured out during a winter storm emergency. While we were in the air on a billboard, a state trooper pulled behind our old truck. No one but the trooper was on I-69 due to the cold. The trooper bellowed on a megaphone and we grudgingly roped back down and I trudged through the snow to the officer who informed me we couldn't be parked on the side of the interstate without flashers turned on. I complied and we went back to work. Once it got darker towards evening, we called it a day and with both of us frozen, we left the swing stage to go home only to find our battery dead from the cold. There we stood along an empty interstate, cold, without modern cell service, and miles from an interchange. I was less than happy but Don always had a great way of staying optimistic. Finally another state trooper pulled up alongside and asked what we were doing in a blizzard. He then arranged to get our battery jump started. One of the photos below is when Don put on his Santa suit a day before Christmas and painted in it on a Fort Wayne, Indiana 3M 14'x48'. Parents were driving their kids in the parking lot below and waving at Santa. It was a fun day albeit distracting for our lettering work.