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Dill worked for 30 years at the A.C. Lawrence Tannery in Hazelwood, rising long before dawn to ride the Trailways bus to work from their North Fork home. When he retired from there, he went to work at the lumber company, now T&S Hardwood.
"Dill was a special man. He bonded with all of us really well,"said T&S manager Sandy Johnson. "He was always talking Christian values with the men and was a good influence on them. He had a great sense of humor, too. If you'd get down, he'd pick you up.
"You couldn't find a harder worker, a more honest man or a more giving person,"said Johnson. "Dill was always giving us stuff, like at Christmas he gave everyone a 50-cent piece."
And no matter how many hours he put on the job each week, he still found time to pastor at area churches.
Meanwhile, back at the North Fork homeplace, Minnie took care of the house, raising their five children: MayBelle, Norma Jean, Frank, Lee and Cecil with strict Christian principles - no dancing, no television; honesty was the best policy; and your good name meant everything.
"When I was a teenager, I thought they were way too strict. But as I grew older, I realized they just wanted what's right for us kids,"said MayBelle Mathis Stephens, who lives in Dillardtown with her husband, Ted. "The two of them were always there for us kids, no matter what."
They might have been strict, but Dill and Minnie were known far and wide for their "giving"nature.
"Soon as anybody would come in the house, Daddy would say, 'Minnie, fix them something to eat.' And after you visited, you always left with something, like a pack of strawberries or a can of beans,"said Stephens, whose mother always had a pot of beans cooking and cornbread ready on the stove.
"Daddy was real old-fashioned and I remember when this family's house burned down and they didn't have anything. Daddy said he wasn't worried about the husband or the little kids, but he said, 'I don't want that woman to have to go to bed without a nightgown on,' so he gave them $100 - $100 that wasn't easy to come by - so they could buy clothes,"said Stephens.
When her children were grown, Minnie decided she wanted to work outside the home. At age 55 she got her first driver's license.
"In later years, Daddy especially liked that because he was a nervous driver, and Mamma would drive them wherever he was going to preach or wherever there was a revival. When Daddy preached, he always called on Mamma to sing a song. If she got caught up in the spirit, Daddy would tell the congregation to just let her be, that the Lord was taking care of her,"Stephens said.
Minnie drove them to Harold's, too, and while she shopped for groceries, Dill talked and visited with whomever was in the grocery store at the time.
Whether it was church or the grocery store, Dill generally prodded his wife, "Come on now, Minnie, let's go."
"Daddy's goal in life, other than serving the Lord, was to take care of Mamma, and he always looked after her. When she got so sick, he quit work so he could take care of her."
The couple loved to work in the garden, but when Minnie developed Alzheimer's disease, she had to give up the outside work. Dill would still make his bed of lettuce and plant sweet corn, hickory cane corn, rows of tomatoes and beans and lots of potatoes - plenty to share with everybody. Minnie still managed to can and freeze, though.
When Dill and Minnie's conditions worsened, and he could no longer care for her, the family placed them in Ensley Adult Care Center.
"I remember the day we took them to Ensley's. Daddy had tears in his eyes when he said, 'I'm going with her over yonder,'"Stephens said. "At the time I didn't know what he meant, but he knew.²
At Ensley's the couple endeared themselves to everyone. Minnie would get out of her bed at night and crawl in bed with Dill; or it might be Dill who got out of his bed and crawled in with Minnie.
"It got to where we just had to tie their beds together so they could sleep together,"said Stephens.
If the staff took Minnie to the dining room without Dill, he would call May, saying, "May, come down here; they're trying to divorce us."
"Like Mamma, Daddy got a touch of Alzheimer's, and I remember once he called me to bring the truck down to Ensley's and load up some of the furniture in the dining room. 'Laurel Branch Baptist Church doesn't have any furniture; they could use this,' he told me,"she said.
Minnie had to go on full-time oxygen and soon Dill did, too.
Then, in February, Stephens sensed something was wrong. "It was like Mamma and Daddy were agitated. One would sit down and the other would stand up and vice versa."
On Feb. 5, Minnie went into the hospital with viral pneumonia. Back at Ensley's Dill laid on their joined-together bed, unmoving, the beginnings of the same disease forming in his lungs. Both began to get strangled and aspirate their food.
"I think Daddy knew how sick Mamma was. He told the others in the family, 'May will be back to tell me how she is.' Nobody much wanted to tell him, but I did, because I told him I would."
Doctors moved Minnie from intensive care into a private room at Skyland. Meanwhile, Dill was rushed to the hospital.
"Even though they weren't together, it was like they were still communicating with each other,"Stephens said.
At 2 a.m. Sunday morning, Feb. 25, Dill died. "I think he knew in his heart that he had to go first, to prepare the way for Mamma. I can just hear him saying to her, 'Come on now, Minnie, let's go.'
"That day we kids were worried about telling Mamma that he died... what it might do to her frail condition, but we knew she'd want it straight, so after supper my brother Cecil said, 'Mamma, you may already know this, but Daddy's gone over to the other side; he's got his hands outstretched for you.' She smiled and died two hours later, at 8:30 p.m."
Following a joint funeral service on Feb. 28, this inseparable couple was laid to rest, side by side, in Addie Cemetery.
"Now I knew what Daddy meant when he told me, 'I'm going with her over yonder.' He meant heaven. And if those two didn't make it over yonder,"Stephens said of her parents who lived a most exemplary life, "there's no sense in any of the rest of us even trying."
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