Abby McCloskey, Dallas Morning News, June 21, 2026

“I met him the day we moved in 11 years ago. I had a baby on my hip, my parents were painting the house from top to bottom and my husband was on nonstop business calls standing in the driveway because the house was chaos. The moving truck was unloading everything from our apartment, which only filled a room or two. We'd only lived in condos before. Now, we were in a real house in a real neighborhood. And I was about to meet my first real neighbor.

In my imagination he appeared unannounced in our foyer, but I’m sure he rang the doorbell. He presented me with a business card despite having no business. The background on the card was the American flag and his name was emblazoned across the center with his AOL address and phone number. "

Not that I’d ever need to call. Every day for the next decade, sometimes multiple times a day, he was outside walking two small dogs (later only one) on leashes so long that the dogs were always wandering into the road risking being run over. “