David Reissig was born in St. Albans in 1938 and spent his formative years in Proctor, where his father was a vice president at the Vermont Marble Company. There, he met Ione Baccei, who came from a line of stone carvers. Kris Owens, Reissig’s daughter, described the union as “Two very different families on two very opposite sides of the bridge.”
David and Ione married in 1960. They lived in Burlington and St. Albans, and David’s work as a special agent for the U.S. Customs Agency took him across the globe. But the pair stayed rooted in Proctor, Owens said.
Kris Owens: He would always say, when he refers to home, for him it always goes back to Proctor. My dad was so nostalgic about it. To this day, he would travel back and forth. He would drive by his house, drive by the baseball field. He loved going to the gym. He could walk up the sledding hill that was there. He would skate on the rink once a year.
My mom was a cheerleader; my dad was the big basketball player. The Rutland Herald did a thing on my dad, and they referred to him as a legend. I never thought of him as a big deal growing up. But apparently, he was kind of the talk of the town, the local hero.
Based on what everyone has said to me, they would say that even given all of that, he was probably the most sincere and unassuming person you could meet. You would never know it from talking to him. It never went to his head. Which is my dad in a nutshell.
He was a sky marshal back in the ‘70s. That was his job: to travel on planes, making sure there weren’t hijackers on board. [He was] in charge of a drug task force in Florida. They had crazy boat chases. They’re dropping bales of marijuana in the water, and he would be tracking these guys down.
It’s hard to look at my dad and think that he did any of that stuff. If you were to meet him on the street, he’d sit down and have a great conversation with you — very friendly guy, but so unassuming that you would never guess in a million years that he’s done anything like that in his life. My kids always laugh. I have three daughters, and they’re like, “Who knew grandpa was such a badass?”
Ken Reissig (David’s son): I think a lot of people were really surprised when they read the obituary, about what his life was like and how exciting it sounded, because he really didn’t talk a whole lot about work when we were growing up. We knew that he would drive an unmarked police car for work. I knew what the car was, but I think most people didn’t understand that. Occasionally he’d come home with a, like, “Mission: Impossible” van that was used for surveillance.
He was pretty unassuming. I don’t think anyone would have known the extent of his work, and the times that he was in these positions where there may have been danger. It could be the way he was. I always just say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: His father was an engineer, was pretty reserved. And I think part of it was just being humble.
Kris Owens: He started getting sick right around March 13. He had a cold and ended up with laryngitis. That’s what he and my mom thought he had, was just a bad cold. And then, as the week progressed, he became physically tired. Then he started getting a fever.
There was no contact with him from the time the ambulance came. My mom wasn’t allowed to go to the hospital, and we weren’t allowed to go to the hospital to see him. The unfortunate piece of that is my dad was not the most technological guy. He had an old flip phone, and didn’t have that with him when he went into the hospital. We had a regular phone in his room, and that was our only means of communication.
One of the things one of the nurses shared with me was that, when my dad seemed a little bit anxious and upset, he was concerned when he found out he was Covid-positive about who he could have exposed without knowing that he was a carrier. He was concerned about my mom first, and then he was trying to think of anyone else he could have come in contact with in the meantime.
My father’s always been the guy who took care of me, and everybody, in a very quiet sort of way. He had an aunt who didn’t have any children, and my father was the one who took care of everything for her. He was kind of a quiet do-gooder.
He was a firm dad growing up, but he got pretty soft as he aged. He just had a way about him. The minute my dad came in and told us to knock it off, we whipped up into shape really quick. As I got older in high school and college, I realized that there was a real soft side to my dad — to this point, where I had the joy of seeing him with his grandchildren, and saw a totally different side to my dad. My kids could joke with him, make fun of him. He would just laugh along with them. I think those are the things I’m going to miss the most.
Ken Reissig: I think part of it was after retiring. And also as grandchildren came into the picture — as all the kids started developing relationships, and he started developing relationships with our spouses, as the family expanded.
Just like anyone, you mellow when you get older. He certainly was able to laugh at himself more. I think it’s typical of any relationship, any parent with high expectations for their kids. I would say not high expectations, but high aspirations for them to be happy. That’s all he wanted from us — just to be happy.
David Reissig died at Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans on March 30, 2020. He was 82 years old.
—As told to Mike Dougherty
Read more remembrances of Vermonters lost to the coronavirus.
