Readers of The New York Times know the names of our White House reporters and our foreign correspondents. Our podcast hosts, newsletter writers and Opinion columnists become as familiar as relatives.
But few readers know the names of the people behind the scenes who make The Times possible. One of them died last month. His name was Donald Dimmock, and he worked for The Times for 33 years, much of that time as the general foreman for the electric department. Mr. Dimmock kept the lights on — along with everything else electric — for the production department, the newsroom and the rest of The Times’s building in Manhattan.
The most important part of Mr. Dimmock’s job was making sure the production equipment that printed the newspaper ran smoothly during the entire process, from the metal plate room to the loading docks. If something went wrong with one of the huge machines that printed the newspaper, Mr. Dimmock and his team of electricians had to fix it, and fast. The work spanned day and night, weeks and weekends. Mailroom stackers, strapping machines, metal plate stamps, flickering bulbs — if it was plugged in, it required his attention.
Mr. Dimmock was there when The Times went digital in 1996, and he helped oversee the print newspaper’s transition to color in 1997. He saw the printing presses roll out front pages heralding historic moments: “Men Walk on Moon,” “Nixon Resigns,” “The Shuttle Explodes” and “Clinton Impeached.”
Through it all, he carried extra machine parts, just in case, and wore a crisp shirt and tie. Natasza Dimmock, his wife of 48 years, became so adept at cleaning ink-stained clothing that she opened a dry cleaning business.
Mr. Dimmock retired from The Times in 2001, but over the next two decades he regularly visited The Times’s printing plant in College Point, Queens, to check in on his friends and the machines he knew so well.
He lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a third-generation New Yorker and quintessential city dweller. He was a regular at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Lincoln Center; he walked across Central Park as if it were his backyard, and in some ways, it was.
After the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Mr. Dimmock’s union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 3, assigned him to work at ground zero, where he climbed through the rubble and the smoldering ash to help bring the Verizon Building back online. The ruins were so hot that the rubber from his shoes melted. His doctors suspect that the exposure may have led to the cancer that killed him at 79. The 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund paid for his care.
Mr. Dimmock was the father of one of my closest friends, Jessica Dimmock. His love for the power of the printed image became hers; Jessica learned photography with her father’s old equipment, and she grew up to become a photographer and filmmaker. When her first photos were published in The Times, Mr. Dimmock’s colleagues remember the pride he took in knowing that her images had run through his machines.
Mr. Dimmock was a man of deep and eclectic tastes; his passions included — and this is true! — 17th-century furniture and 18th-century French ceramics. The Dimmocks’ apartment was packed with rows and piles of carefully sourced chairs and tables that were older than America itself. He knew the history of every piece, each one painstakingly researched and acquired from auction houses and estate sales.
In 2022, Mr. Dimmock was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In his final days, when he was no longer able to get out of bed, Jessica read him a list of the things that he taught her to love: “A love of walking. A love of biking. A love of politics and showing up for every election, even the small ones. A love of doing things the right way. A love of really listening to my daughter and really laughing with my daughter and also being quiet with my daughter.”
Mr. Dimmock had been reduced to a wisp, but he managed to list a few things that he loved, too. They included his union, Gothic iron and brass, the music of Tina Turner and The New York Times.
Mr. Dimmock died a few hours after that conversation. Jessica and Natasza were with him.
Despite Mr. Dimmock’s long career at The Times, his name has never before appeared in its pages.
By the exacting standards of the newspaper, his death wouldn’t warrant an obituary. But if it did, it might have begun like this:
Donald Dimmock, a retired foreman at the New York Times printing plant who brought his expertise as a seasoned electrician to the smoldering ruins of ground zero, died on March 20 in a hospital in New York City. He was 79.
He is survived by his wife, Natasza; his daughter, Jessica, and her partner, Zackary Canepari; and his granddaughter, Roxanne.
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