Donald Dimmock, who died in March at 79, ran the electric department at The New York Times, wherein he worked for greater than three many years.
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A Polaroid of Donald Dimmock sitting at a desk and carrying a tie. A New York Times calendar is tacked to the wall.
Donald Dimmock at his table at The New York Times.Credit...Through Jessica Dimmock
Sam Dolnick
By Sam Dolnick
Sam Dolnick is a deputy coping with editor.
April eleven, 2024
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers in the back of-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes collectively.
Readers of The New York Times know the names of our White House reporters and our overseas correspondents. Our podcast hosts, newsletter writers and Opinion columnists grow to be as acquainted as family.
But few readers know the names of the human beings behind the scenes who make The Times feasible. One of them died closing month. His call changed into Donald Dimmock, and he worked for The Times for 33 years, an awful lot of that time as the general foreman for the electrical department. Mr. Dimmock kept the lighting fixtures on — at the side of the whole lot else electric — for the production branch, the newsroom and the rest of The Times’s constructing in Manhattan.
The most important part of Mr. Dimmock’s activity was making sure the manufacturing system that published the newspaper ran smoothly at some stage in the complete system, from the steel plate room to the loading docks. If some thing went wrong with one of the large machines that printed the newspaper, Mr. Dimmock and his group of electricians had to fix it, and speedy. The paintings spanned day and night, weeks and weekends. Mailroom stackers, strapping machines, metal plate stamps, flickering bulbs — if it was plugged in, it required his interest.
Mr. Dimmock became there when The Times went digital in 1996, and he helped oversee the print newspaper’s transition to colour in 1997. He saw the printing presses roll out front pages heralding historical moments: “Men Walk on Moon,” “Nixon Resigns,” “The Shuttle Explodes” and “Clinton Impeached.”
Through it all, he carried greater device parts, just in case, and wore a crisp blouse and tie. Natasza Dimmock, his wife of forty eight years, have become so adept at cleansing ink-stained clothing that she opened a dry cleansing enterprise.
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A black-and-white strip of 5 terrible snap shots, showing Mr. Dimmock with diverse facial expressions.
A strip of negatives of Donald Dimmock, taken via his daughter, Jessica, the use of New York Times device while she was a teenager.Credit...Jessica Dimmock
Mr. Dimmock retired from The Times in 2001, but over the next many years he often visited The Times’s printing plant in College Point, Queens, to test in on his friends and the machines he knew so well.
He lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a third-era New Yorker and fundamental town dweller. He changed into a ordinary on the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Lincoln Center; he walked throughout Central Park as if it have been his backyard, and in some methods, it became.
After the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Mr. Dimmock’s union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. Three, assigned him to work at floor zero, where he climbed thru the rubble and the smoldering ash to assist deliver the Verizon Building again on-line. The ruins were so hot that the rubber from his shoes melted. His docs suspect that the publicity may additionally have brought about the cancer that killed him at 79. The September 11 Victim Compensation Fund paid for his care.
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Mr. Dimmock was the father of one among my closest pals, Jessica Dimmock. His love for the power of the broadcast image became hers; Jessica discovered photography with her father’s antique gadget, and she or he grew as much as turn out to be a photographer and filmmaker. When her first pix were published in The Times, Mr. Dimmock’s colleagues don't forget the satisfaction he took in understanding that her snap shots had run via his machines.
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Donald Dimmock, in a healthy and crimson tie, along with his daughter, Jessica, when she changed into a baby. She is sporting a blue bucket hat and face paint.
Mr. Dimmock and his daughter, Jessica.
Credit...Through Jessica Dimmock
Mr. Dimmock changed into a person of deep and eclectic tastes; his passions included — and this is real! — seventeenth-century furniture and 18th-century French ceramics. The Dimmocks’ apartment became packed with rows and piles of cautiously sourced chairs and tables that had been older than America itself. He knew the records of each piece, every one painstakingly researched and bought from auction houses and estate income.
In 2022, Mr. Dimmock was recognized with pancreatic cancer. In his very last days, when he become no longer able to get away from bed, Jessica study him a list of the matters that he taught her to love: “A love of strolling. A love of cycling. A love of politics and displaying up for every election, even the small ones. A love of doing things the proper way. A love of really paying attention to my daughter and absolutely laughing with my daughter and also being quiet with my daughter.”
Mr. Dimmock have been decreased to a wisp, however he controlled to listing a few things that he loved, too. They included his union, Gothic iron and brass, the song of Tina Turner and The New York Times.
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Mr. Dimmock died a few hours after that conversation. Jessica and Natasza were with him.
Despite Mr. Dimmock’s long profession at The Times, his call has in no way before appeared in its pages.
By the exacting requirements of the newspaper, his demise wouldn’t warrant an obituary. But if it did, it might have began like this:
Donald Dimmock, a retired foreman at the New York Times printing plant who added his information as a pro electrician to the smoldering ruins of floor 0, died on March 20 in a health center in New York City. He turned into seventy nine.
He is survived by means of his wife, Natasza; his daughter, Jessica, and her partner, Zackary Canepari; and his granddaughter, Roxanne.
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