Dionisio Puzon Sr. was the first editorial director for UniMinds . He was very instrumental inside the formation of the Driftless Area Magazine. This is a little excerpt of his life story. He will be missed.
We’re here today not only to grieve, but to celebrate — to honor a man who arrived on these shores with little more than a dream tucked inside his chest and a flame in his eyes that never, not once, went out.
My Dad came to the United States in 1961, a young man from the Philippines chasing the kind of life he had glimpsed in the pages of magazines and heard whispered through radio static — a life of possibility, of promise, of light. He believed in that light completely. And he spent every year that followed proving it was real.
His journey to America was not the one he had originally charted. Before the dream of the United States, there was another calling — a sacred one. Dad had begun walking the path toward the priesthood, ordained into a life of devotion and service in the Philippines. But destiny, it seems, had a different ministry in mind for him.
It was at the university where he first saw her — the woman who would become his partner, his compass, his home, his light. He fell in love immediately, completely, and without reservation. That love was not a detour from his purpose. It was his purpose.
Eventually, they both came to America with hardly anything in their pockets— but rich in courage, rich in faith, and rich in one another. He worked as an actor, a bartender, a student, wearing each role with curiosity and dignity. But it was teaching that ultimately claimed him, because teaching was not something Dad did — it was something he was.
He walked into the classrooms of Richland Center High School — a small, tight-knit farm community — as something many of his students had simply never encountered before: a Filipino teacher. There was hesitation. There was tension. There was apprehension in the hallways and behind the eyes of parents and students alike. But Dad did not flinch. He met every room with the same irresistible combination of charm, warmth, energy, and an extraordinary ability to truly see the young people in front of him. One by one, then in waves, he won them over — not by demanding their acceptance, but by giving them something they didn’t know they needed. He gave them himself…a testament to my dad, the educator.
After those first years finding his footing in Richland Center, my parents made a decision that would define our family forever. They chose to put down roots — real roots — in the small neighboring town of Lone Rock. They found something there that no magazine ad had ever promised but that my father recognized immediately: community. Purpose. Belonging. In 1975, Dad and Mom built their home in Lone Rock with their own hands — and they were not alone in doing it. Many of the very farmers and neighbors of that community picked up tools and worked alongside them. That home still stands today. That, too, is a testament.
And it is no small thing that we stand in this church today to celebrate him— because my mother and father were active in this very congregation, these very walls. My brother and I received our first communion on this very stage, more than 40-50 years ago. To stand at this podium now, where my father once stood and lifted his voice in song for the people of this church — I cannot fully describe what that means. These walls absorbed his voice. They hold it still. His voice carries through this room. It always will.
At home, he was the same teacher. He raised my brother and me with his hands and his example — teaching us grit, humility, the sacred dignity of hard work. He taught us how to persevere when things were difficult, how to dig in when we wanted to give up, how to get the job done. There was never a lesson my father delivered from a distance. He lived every value he ever spoke aloud.
He was a devoted father. A devoted friend. A mentor and a teacher to hundreds of young people whose lives are better, fuller, brighter for having known him. He was, above all else, our father — and there are no words large enough to hold what that means.
He left this world on Christmas morning — and we choose to see the grace in that. He is our Christmas angel now, and always will be. It feels right, somehow, that the man who spent his life turning toward light would step into eternity on the morning the world celebrates new birth. We are entering the spring season — a time of light returning, of revival, of rebirth — and we celebrate him in it. We send him into those lengthening days, into that warmth, into that promise.
He came to the United States chasing a light he had only ever heard described. Now, at last, he has returned to the source of all light. He is in it fully. He is home.
Forever missed. Never forgotten. We love you, Dad.
By Dean Puzon
Photos sourced from Stephanie Campbell