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Bobby Dozier, Dozier Masonry
In just three weeks, your whole life can change. I never thought it’d be dust that got me.
I’ve lived my whole life in Lebanon. My dad was a brick mason. He started in ‘85, so I would’ve been three years old when he started. I grew up around it. I was a little kid, hauling bricks, playing in the sand piles, thinking my dad was the coolest guy in the world when he worked downtown.
In high school, I helped him on jobs – spring breaks, summers, whenever I could. I tried doing other things. I went to school for automotive work. I worked at Missouri Eagle, MFA, Ron Hewlett Chevrolet. But one day, Dad was working on Craig Curry’s house, and I stopped by. He put me to work, and that was it.
I tried my hardest not to do it. I really did. It’s hard work. No retirement. No guarantees. My dad always said he’d work till he died, and I guess I figured I would too.
But it’s in my blood. And I’m good at it.
I’ve worked on almost every building downtown.
Boat Town – That one meant a lot. We designed the outside, me and Dad, and Danny True gave us free range. He said, “Make it look old,” so we did. It was a slow job, took forever, but when you go inside, there’s a brick in there with my name on it. My dad’s name, too. A hundred years from now, maybe someone will see it and know we were here.
The base of the arches – That was us too. My dad and I donated the bases and tops, the precast. I said, “Well, at least I can do that.” I wanted it to look right. I wanted it to last. That was the last job my dad and I did together before he retired.
I love seeing these buildings come back to life. I always said I wanted to touch every building downtown before I retire. And I have, almost.
When I walk through downtown, I see my work everywhere. I can look at a building and know I had a hand in it, that I made it better. That’s a good feeling. Not everybody gets to say that.
I was supposed to be doing this for another 20, 30 years. I was supposed to finish what I started.
In August, I just got to feeling bad. I thought, I’m 42 years old, maybe I’m just worn out. My body ached, I was tired all the time. I honestly thought I was having a heart attack.
I went to the doctor, took antibiotics for ten days. Went back, still didn’t feel good. They put me on a higher dose for five more days. Took another X-ray. Still worse. They sent me to a pulmonologist.
Three weeks. That’s all it took to go from thinking I was having a heart attack to them telling me, “You have silicosis, and it’s going to kill you.”
Silicosis is from breathing in silica dust. That’s in everything I’ve worked around – mortar, concrete, fake rock, real rock. Some guys get it, some don’t. I’ve been around bricklayers my whole life, guys who’ve done this for 40, 50 years, and yeah, they’ve got a bad cough, they can’t breathe – but not like this. Not like me.
They told me it’s chronic, which means I’ve had it for a long time. But for some reason, it just kicked into overdrive.
There’s no cure.
The hardest part is not working. I’m still trying to finish the projects I have, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m booked out over a year, and I still get phone calls every day. I don’t know what to tell people.
You work your whole life, and in a month, you can lose everything.
And then there’s my family. My wife, Dana, my kids. That’s what I think about.
Dana’s a kindergarten teacher. She works with little kids all day, every day. We’ve got four kids: 17, 15, and 5-year-old twin girls. I was done with the baby phase, and then Dana wanted one of her own. And we got blessed with twins. They’re the best thing that ever happened to us.
I don’t want them to see me sick.
It’s just hard.
I come home and the whole house just feels different. And I tell Dana, “Let’s go. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go eat.” Because I can’t sit in my own house and feel like I’m already gone.
I struggle to go to sleep at night. Some nights, I can’t breathe, and then I get scared to go to bed, because what if I don’t wake up?
I think about my dad. I still talk to him all the time. I go out and see him, and I just want to keep seeing him. He worked his whole life. He taught me everything I know. And I got to work with him every day. Not everybody gets that. That was a privilege.
And now I just hope I get to see him a little longer.
We’re going to Mayo Clinic soon. They’ll do more tests, see how bad it really is. Maybe they can slow it down. Maybe they’ll say there’s nothing they can do. I don’t know.
I wanted to keep building. I wanted to keep fixing things, making downtown better. I had plans.
Now, I don’t know what happens next.
I just wake up every day and try to follow where God leads and take one breath at a time.
