Towering snowman tribute to beloved W’boro man

Children in Grottoes, near Waynesboro, have helped build a 13-foot snowman in honor of a neighborhood favorite — who they called “grand-daddy” and “papa” — following the 62-year-old man’s death last weekend.

“They loved him,” said Linda Roberson of her husband Donald “Don” Roberson.

Despite health problems — heart conditions, lung cancer, emphysema and diabetes — Linda Roberson said her husband was always in a good mood and spent a lot of time talking with neighborhood children.

“He’s soft-spoken. Easy-going, and he loved everybody,” Linda Roberson said. “He never met a stranger.”

On his deathbed Friday night, Don Roberson’s 21-year-old son, James Lee, promised his father he’d build him a 12-foot snowman.

“He laughed when my son told him he was going to build it. He said, ‘You’ll never get it built. You’ll never get a 12-foot snowman up there. It’s going to fall over,’ ” Linda Roberson said. “I think he’d be so proud that they did finish it.”

But it wasn’t easy, Roberson said, adding that as many as a dozen children at a time spent days trying to perfect the snowman, as a tribute.

Don Roberson had been a mechanic for 20 years before his body became too weak to work, his wife said, adding that he became a companion to neighborhood children who visited — Linda Roberson babysat many of them.

Roberson’s 38-year-old son, Jeff, said his father was “my hero.”

“He was happy go lucky and ready to help anybody he could,” said Jeff Roberson, who worked with his father as a mechanic. “He was a great teacher.”

Family members say Don Roberson would have been excited to see the children up late at night molding the snowman in his honor.

Linda Roberson said her son, James Lee, had been too choked up to talk about his father but he carved in the snowman: “‘I love you dad, and I do miss you, but I know you are in a better place now. I made you a snowman, just as I promised. Wish you could have seen it. You’d have laughed. We got it as tall as the house.”