Iowa community gifts widow her husband’s dream
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ALTOONA, Iowa (KCCI) — At the Hy-Vee store in Altoona, you could count on two things. There would be a smile in every aisle and one of those smiles would be Ed Doty.
“He loved working at Hy-Vee because he got to talk to so many people and this is all where it began,” said Rita Doty, Ed’s wife.
Rita was his wife of eight years. She said her husband would tell everyone his dream.
“He had told me how he wanted a fire pit in the patio and he kept saying he was going to contact me, but things happened unfortunately,” said Michael Tapp, with X-scape Extreme Hard and Landscape.
Ed died from a stroke last week.
“It really hit me hard because he was a good guy. He’s a veteran and I honor veterans very highly,” Tapp said.
And so the people who always saw Ed’s smile, who always heard his dream, didn’t even need to be asked.
Tapp contacted Rita to build the fire pit in their backyard.
“We came in and we tore out the little patio and then we graded it,” Tapp said. “We framed it into what Rita’s vision was. We built the fire pit to where she wanted it. She chose the coral bluff color concrete and then we will take the stamps after it dries a little bit.”
Just the way Ed wanted it.
“He’d be crying (if he were here),” Rita said. “He was very sentimental and soft-hearted.”
As they lay down the concrete, with family members and neighbors watching a dream come true, Rita said there’s no doubt Ed is smiling from above.
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