BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Don Pijanowski was not surrounded by loved ones when he died. Instead, the 87-year-old father of four, the blue-collar guy from Buffalo, New York, died in a hospital with only a nurse who stood near him and passed on his sons’ final message. “We asked that the nurse who was going to be by his side whisper into his ears that his boys loved him,” said his son, John Pijanowski.
It wasn’t a fitting end for the man whose family remembered him as a hard worker who never cut corners, a genuinely kind person who kept his late wife’s greeting on his telephone answering machine so her voice would fill the house each time the phone rang.