Joe Dalton, a longtime figure in the Kansas City construction community, died Tuesday, August 7, 2007 surrounded by his family at his home in Lake Annette, Missouri. He was two days shy of his 67th birthday. A visitation will be held 6:00-8:00pm Friday, August 10, 2007 at the Atkinson Funeral Home, Harrisonville, MO.

A bear of a man with a hearty laugh and a dry sense of humor, he will be remembered as a man who lived life to the fullest, and as a man of quiet strength and integrity who led by example. A born storyteller, and an accomplished BS artist, he enriched the lives of those around him. He was admired and loved by all who knew him. Outside his family, his passions ran to movies, fishing, cooking, reading, travel, poker and the Chiefs.

He was born Jackie Joe Dalton, August 9, 1940, the second child of Emma Jane (Houseman) Dalton and William Henry Dalton. He was delivered in a doctor's office above a drugstore on Main Street in the small town of Anderson, MO, in the Ozark foothills.

While the family settled into a life in Kansas City, where his father worked for General Motors and his mother for Kanatzer Insurance, it was his youth in McDonald county, "down home" as he would call it, surrounded by family on both the Dalton and Houseman sides that shaped his life. It instilled in him a love of family and a passion for the outdoors. He was never more at home than wading the streams and rivers of McDonald County fishing for bass. He spent as much time as he could afford in the Ozarks, and always made time to "go visiting" the elders of the family.

Shortly after his sixteenth birthday, he met the love of his life in the form of Miss Nora Fenning, then a student at St. Teresa's Academy. Joe graduated from Paseo High School in 1958 and married Nora on September 29 of the same year. They would be inseparable for the next 49 years. Both were movie fanatics. Date night meant dinner and a movie, a tradition they would continue almost every weekend to the last. The young couple quickly started a family, leading eventually to the birth of six kids: two girls then four boys, in less than ten years.

With a growing family to support, Joe put aside his dream of being a writer to enter the construction trade. In 1965, he formed D&G Construction with Owen Glover of Altoon, Iowa. Later, he formed D&L Construction in partnership with Jerry Lockard of Warrensburg, MO, after Glover moved to Iowa. Working under the motto "you call we haul, no job too small" for 30 years, these companies would produce the platform on which much of the Kansas City metro area is built. Whether it was a small sidewalk patch for a little old lady on the Paseo or a Gazebo foundation for a Japanophile in Prairie Village, he went where the work took him and always treated every job with the same commitment to professionalism and quality. While doing countless small jobs, driveways, sidewalks and patios for homeowners, he also sometimes committed years of work to the construction of apartment complexes, shopping centers and housing developments, Pinegate and Willow Creek Apartments and housing developments such as Hallbrook, just to name a few. There are few corners of the metro that don't have some work of which Joe had a hand.

In 1995, D&L was purchased by KC Gunite, owned by longtime friend, Jack Banks, a company specializing in sprayed concrete and the construction of commercial swimming pools. He spent the last 12 years managing the construction of municipal pools and water parks such as the Bonner Springs YMCA in midtown and the rehabilitation pool at North Kansas City Hospital, as well as many others. Other gunite jobs of note include the water features at Lock Lloyd and even a small part in the construction of the Sprint Center.

Also in that time, Joe and Nora pursued a lifelong dream of traveling the United States by car, visiting more than 30 states and logging 10 thousand miles alone on two long trips through the west.

He is survived by his beloved wife Nora Dalton, of the home; his children Jane and Donnie Hamerle (Liberty, MO), Kate and Doug Cox (East Lynne, MO), Joey Dalton and Brian Garretson (Independence, MO), Jim Dalton (Freeman, MO), Tom and Shirley Dalton (Kansas City, MO), and Chris Dalton (Kansas City, MO); a sister Margie and husband Don Cornelius (Independence, MO); a brother-in-law, Vince "Shatto" Brocato (Blue Springs, MO); grandchildren, Sarah and Andy Schneider, Wes Hamerle, Jordan Dalton and Kenny Cox; great grandchildren Aubrey and Brock Schneider; five step-grandchildren and seven step-great-grandchildren, including Jeremy and Morgan Rinehart, Lauren Gonzales and Haley Carver; aunts, uncles, family and friends.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Kansas City Hospice.

(Arrangements: Atkinson Funeral Home, Harrisonville, MO, 816-380-3268)