Donald Graham Dyer

Donald Graham Dyer, beloved husband, father, grandfather and friend, passed away on July 20, 2023 after several months of declining health.

Don was born in Carluke, Scotland in 1933 and emigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of 17. After serving in the U.S. Army for two years, he attended General Motors Institute (now Kettering University.) While on an outing with a local hiking club he met the love of his life, Fran, and they were married for nearly 64 years. After a long and successful career in the automobile industry which included positions at General Motors, British Leyland, owning a Cadillac dealership, and working as a management consultant for BMW dealers, Don and Fran had a long and fulfilling retirement, focused on family, friends and travel.

Don was active for many years in the Kansas City St. Andrew Society, the Korean War Veterans local chapter, and treated Thursday morning coffee with the McGeezers as a sacred commitment. He had a wide range of interests from history, to writing, music and studying Scottish Gaelic. He was a great reader and particularly enjoyed history. Don had a great knowledge of WWII, which had impacted him and his family when he was a child in Scotland. In his later years, he wrote hundreds of “one pagers,” relating experiences and lessons from his life and enjoyed sharing his work with his writing club. Don was a natural musician who played by ear. He was accomplished on the accordion and played the snare drum with the Boys Brigade as a boy in Scotland and later with the Caledonian Pipe Band in Kansas City.

Family was the center of his life and Don was enormously proud of his three children and eight grandsons. He loved nothing better than sharing stories of his life and experiences with his grandsons and hearing about their activities and ideas. Over the years he and Fran loved attending their grandsons’ events and Don was their biggest supporter through many soccer and basketball games, orchestra concerts and bagpipe performances.

Don was proud of his Scottish roots, but profoundly grateful to the United States, for the many opportunities this country gave him. He said recently that he could never have imagined as a young boy during WWII the amazing life, family and friends he would go on to enjoy.

A memorial service will be held for Don at Amos Family Funeral Home on Saturday, September 23rd at 1:00 p.m. He will be laid to rest at Leavenworth National Cemetery.

For those of you that cannot attend Donald's memorial service you may watch the livestream by CLICKING HERE .