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Pretty women, fast cars and a good tomato brightened life for Lower Township dad
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An occasional series about southern New Jersey residents who recently died, leaving lasting marks on their community, their neighborhood, their friends or families.
LOWER TOWNSHIP - "There are two things you don't smoke around," Donald Vanaman Sr. told his daughter, Danielle, "and that's children and tomato plants."
Like his offbeat clothing choices of Hawaiian shirts and cowboy boots, Vanaman was quirky and unconventional with a touch of deep-down insight.
He converted an old van into a hot rod. While not necessarily street legal, the van was extraordinarily fast, with custom pipes, racing rims, shag carpets, a bed and a bar.
Vanaman, fisherman/carpenter/house painter/landscaper, would travel on a moment's notice to Florida, California or Colorado.
His long blond hair flowed past his neck, and his mustache stretched across his cheeks in the style of Sam Elliott or Hulk Hogan.
"He lived his life the way he wanted to," said his father, Bob Vanaman, of Lower Township.
Family said Vanaman appreciated the small things: a good tomato, a souped-up car with custom rims or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at midnight with one for the dog.
Vanaman died Oct. 27 at the age of 54 from cancer. Family said years of drinking caught up to him, too.
His family called him a free spirit who would jump in a car at a moment's notice - like when Colorado Springs police told his father they found his 15-year-old son, who had taken a road trip with friends.
His punishment was a trip to the barber.
Yet as much of a free-spirited life he led, he could be firm at times with his children: No soda. Take your vitamins. He was adamant they did not get tattoos - although he had several, including "One Life To Live" on his forearm.
"He was one of those guys. I'd get so busy in the world … going from point A to point B," his son Donald Vanaman Jr. said. "He was the kind of guy who would stop you and say, 'Look at that.'"
One of seven children, Vanaman grew up on his family's farm in Lower Township, where you learned not to name the piglets that would later become dinner.
Like his brothers, Vanaman dropped out of school to become a fisherman.
He married and divorced twice - his first marriage was at age 17. He had three children.
"He liked to go and do what he wanted to do, but he was always into letting the kids experience things for themselves," said his youngest sister, Alice DiCola.
Once he took his children out in the woods and gave them a lesson on how not to get lost. He then fell to the ground, pretending he was hurt and telling them to go to the house for help.
When the children found their way to the house, they saw their father sitting on the porch. They passed the test, he said.
They went camping with a new tent.
He had a knack for gardening and growing tomatoes, which he said grew faster if you talked to them, his daughter said.
"I was surprised about how good he was in the garden," his mother, Joan Vanaman said.
He went to NASCAR races in Dover, Del., the Poconos in Pennsylvania and in Daytona.
Family pictures abound of him posing with the Budweiser girls.
"He loved women. I don't know how to word that any other way," his son Donald said.
Vanaman's life began to change in 1997, when a marine construction accident involving heavy machinery sliced his forearm from palm to inner elbow.
The words on his "One Life to Live" tattoo did not line up anymore.
The man who made his living by his hands lost much of the strength needed to hold a hammer.
His family plans to scatter some of his ashes in Australia, which he and his daughter Danielle and niece Jacquelyn DiCola often talked of seeing.
As for the Hawaiian shirts he wore, it may have been a "Miami Vice" or a Tom Selleck thing, his son Donald said.
At Donald's sixth-grade graduation from the Charles Sandman Consolidated School in Lower Township in 1985, Vanaman wanted his son to wear a Hawaiian-style suit.
Not surprisingly, he could not find one and there was not enough time to make one.
Instead, he got his son a tuxedo - the only tuxedo at the elementary school's sixth-grade graduation.
His son loves that memory.
"He just lived free, and he did things the way he wanted," he said.
Contact Brian Ianieri:
609-463-6713
Posted in Cape_may, Legacies on Saturday, November 7, 2009 12:00 am Updated: 12:34 pm.
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