Farewell DD and may God Bless you, rest in peace! Where you are LSU will never lose another game, the fish all weigh 8 lb's plus, only the best recruits, and most of all reunited with your life long love!
RIP Dandy, a great Tiger Fan.....he will be missed. Don and I sat in the Press Box together for an LSU Spring Game, after, we made an LSU Baseball game. The guy was the best.
A famous quote often retold in moments of profound loss -- be it of words or emotional composure -- is that every man dies but not every man truly lives. The reality of this can be argued, but what cannot is that Donald Long touched countless lives with the way he lived his own. With his passing comes that profound sense of loss, but with it recollections of everything that he stood for and all that he gave. And he gave so much. In fact, each of us when we in our own way heard the news of his passing suffered some sense of loss reflected in the manner in which he was a voice in our lives daily or otherwise. Most will know Donald Long as Dandy Don the online blogger for anything and everything related to LSU athletics. In fact, he was a blogger before it even was a term. In that sense, Dandy Don predates so much of what is popular culture today. There was substance to the man easily gleamed by even the casual reader in that it was not about the headline but rather the moment. Consider that each second of every day offered him and in turn us through the window he opened and invited us to look inside so many strung together Purple and Gold colored moments that he made prizes regardless of the tenor of the headline. Dandy Don was a treasure that way. He was able to uniquely convey his same intense level of enthusiasm and excitement for the team and university that brings us all here together be it in Trophy-hoisting euphoria or tear-inducing devastation. Every moment I ever spent reading his words was signified by his passion which I feel is what quietly enabled him to truly become the voice for a nation of Tiger faithful. Jim Hawthorne calls the action on the field or the court, but I'd like to think if Mike the Tiger spoke it would be with Donald Long's voice. One I have never personally heard. That is what it is to leave a mark so indelible. That is what it is to have within you a burning desire for something that becomes more than mere hobby rather a way of life. That is passion. Dandy Don was so very much that and to many so much more than the words he used to describe the action or any you will read or hear describing him. There is life right now in Death Valley. Donald Long will be there not just every Saturday night home game in the Fall, but rather every moment of every day in that Purple and Gold string he beaded together in a life touching us all with his passion for LSU, a passion that was a mirror for the man. A passion that, like his voice for the fan that actually heard him as he wrote, is forever undying.
Amazing how many people seem to have read DD on a daily basis. I am glad his site will continue, and I will continue to read it every morning.
