Ling-Dolan brothers just fine 12 years later
Grandparents stepped up
It’s the time of year for graduations in the Classified section.
There was an interesting one the other day, congratulating Connor Ling-Dolan for earning an honours degree in sport management from Brock.
The notice said, “His parents Shawn and Colleen Ling, deceased in 2005, would have been overjoyed with their son’s accomplishments.” It was signed “Grandma, Gramps and Spencer.”
It turns out The Spectator told the beginning of this story on June 3, 2005.
Shawn Ling died of a heart attack early that year. Less than four months later, his wife Colleen died at St. Joe’s from an infection related to a skin disease. She was 35. The couple left two sons, Connor, 10, and Spencer, 6.
There was no will stating where the parents wanted the boys to go, little insurance money and no legal guardianship in place. But grandparents Diane and Geoff Dolan knew what they had to do.
And just after the boys moved in, former Spec writer Dana Borcea paid a visit.
“I loved my daughter and I need time to grieve her,” Diane said that day. “But these boys need me too.” Twelve years later, an update. The new graduate has one condition. It needs to be clear we reached out for this story. That is, Connor didn’t come knocking on our door looking for some publicity. “This is not, ‘Oh, look what I’ve done,’” he says. Grandma smiles and says he’s always been the humble sort.
So here we are, at the kitchen table on Loneoak Crescent, Stoney Creek Mountain. It’s the same house the boys moved into when their lives took that terrible turn.
Gramps Geoff is 73 now. Grandma Diane is 70. Back then, a dozen years ago, eyebrows were raised.
“Many people our age told us, ‘I wouldn’t do it,’” Diane says.
She says some family and friends outright told them it was a mistake. “They thought we were too old.” That led to rifts that did not heal quickly. Maybe some worried the boys would be coddled. And for the first year or so, maybe they were. Not after that.
“Too many kids feel entitled,” Diane says. “Not these two.” But it was common to lend a shoulder. “We cried many times,” Diane says. Parents gone, teen heartache, anything. Connor nods a little sheepishly that it’s true.
Geoff and Diane may have been 30 years older than everyone else, but they attended every parentteacher night. And later, part-time work was encouraged.
Connor wore the red shirt for five years in housewares at Canadian Tire, Upper James and Mohawk. He was in a leadership program at Tim Hortons camps for five years, and more leadership work at Medeba, a Haliburton-area camp.
Spencer, doing a high school victory lap, is involved with that camp too.
Along the way, Geoff and Diane found they were
shifting a generation.
“Friends said, ‘Come out to our seniors group,” Geoff says. “But we had nothing to discuss with them.”
They related more to neighbours in their forties, raising kids like theirs.
“These boys kept us young,” Diane says.
Geoff, who worked as an accountant from home, had planned to retire at 65. However, that didn’t happen until just this year. Raising kids takes money.
But they didn’t have to pay a dime for Connor’s new degree. He was a good saver, plus there were scholarships from Tim Hortons and the Oddfellows, and an RESP from McMaster, where his father had worked in clerical jobs.
For the past five months, Connor has been a Brock intern at the Ontario Basketball Association in Whitby. He’d love a career in that field.
Just last week, he moved his things back home. There’s a fresh grad photo for the wall in the family room. There are pictures there, too, of the lost parents.
“We talk about them,” Diane says. “They gave the boys their first years. They were good parents.”
Despite great tragedy, those boys now enter adulthood knowing they’ve always been loved.
Many people our age told us, ‘I wouldn’t do it.’ DIANE DOLAN