John "Randy" Dick was born in Reeds, Mo. and grew up in Fallon. He was an Army veteran of World War II, serving as a medic in the Aleutian Islands Campaign and the hospital trains at the Presidio in San Francisco. He moved to Carson City in 1952 and built one of the first homes on Mary Street. He worked as a carpenter with Les Vannoy, Sture Svensson, Barney Pederson and other local contractors. He was a building inspector for the Highway Department for ten years. A man of many talents, he felt the calling of the sea and in 1975 built a 42-foot steel boat hull in the (then) outskirts of Carson City, had it trucked over the Sierras to the Sacramento River where he finished it with his new bride, Shirley Stevens, and then sailed it to the ocean to fish for salmon. When the boat sank off the Oregon Coast in a storm he built a bigger 54-foot boat and fished again. He retired to Sonora, Calif. and returned to the desert in 1999, residing in Dayton.
He is survived by wife Shirley of Dayton; daughters Helen Dick of Reno and Leslie Stevens of Virginia City; son Mark Stevens of Virginia City; six grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. No funeral is planned. A celebration of his life will be held at a later date.