Milton Devro Sealy
(Feb. 8, 1956 - July 2, 2007)
As a mother, these are the special things I noticed about my only son, Devro.
Dev had some special musical talents. He liked singing. He didn’t like to sing with the Primary but he’d sing with the family and for special things. He was in preschool when he sang a special song that Janeen Brady wrote as the fill in act for our ward roadshow. He sang it with Janeen’s daughter, Diane, in the roadshow we were doing, going from ward to ward. The song was
“Wash Up the Dishes Daddy, Momma’s Going to Town.” They were a big hit with the audiences, but toward the end of the evening when we got back to our own ward to perform, he was pretty tired. So when we turned up the front curtain lights, there he was with his eyes half closed . . . picking his nose!
When Dev decided he wanted to play the guitar in grade school, we bought him a little five-string guitar. He and his neighborhood friends practiced some songs and set up our basement like a concert hall. They made some tickets and passed them out to the neighbor kids. When it was time to begin the program, nobody came. So they did the whole program anyway, in a very professional way. Later they found out they had put the wrong date on the tickets! However word got around they had a group and they were asked to be on a ward variety show. They did it! I arrived late and they were already performing . . . singing cowboy songs Dev had learned from his dad, Milt, much to my embarrassment!
“There was blood on the saddle, and blood all around . . .”Again . . . they were a big hit, but that night Dev had watched another older kid play the drums and he decided he wanted to play the drums too. We had a piano and we had previously paid for his sisters, Vicki and Linda, to take piano lessons. I felt the piano was a good basic instrument to learn, so I told him we’d get him a drum pad when he got through the beginners piano book. Linda, five years older, was assigned to be his teacher. He didn’t complain . . . he just took the lessons. As Linda demonstrated each song, Dev would look at the book and ask her to play it once more. Unbeknownst to us, that was all it took for him to memorize and play each song to perfection! He went through the whole book quickly, to say the least.
We got him a practice drum pad and he learned to play the drums on that pad. Then we got him a drum set. He did really well on that and his first performance was on stage at Sherman Elementary School. He handled it like a pro and the kids went wild over him!
Later when Dev took piano lessons from his oldest sister, Vicki, she discovered he’d gone through his entire beginning piano book completely by rote. He couldn’t read a single note of music!
However, Dev did very well with his drums. I loved to hear him practice. He could roll the drums beautifully. He didn’t ever just beat on them . . . he made good music. He went quite a ways with his drums. In Junior High he was fortunate to have a good teacher that taught him how to read drum music. He learned how to play every kind of drum, Snare drums, Kettledrums . . . he was in the concert orchestra and the jazz group. When I took him to a concert in the tabernacle down town, he fell in love with the big Kettle Drum!
The rhythm Dev learned with his drums seemed to help him in everything else he did. In football he handled the team as he called signals and had the guys moving together in perfect rhythm.
While Dev was playing the drums in junior high, I was singing with a woman’s chorus, with Burt Keddington as the director. Burt found out Dev could play the drums and he asked him to play with us. Burt didn’t have any music for Dev, he just told him what he wanted and Dev played it. I bought Dev a dark blue velvet top to go with our dark blue choir dresses. One night in the middle of a song I saw Dev throw up one stick, reach out and get it and go right on playing without missing a beat! It was impressive! Afterward, while we drove home I said,
“You’re getting pretty fancy with those sticks aren’t you?” He laughed and replied,
”What do you mean fancy? I dropped that stick and had to get it back!”Dev played the drums all through high school and he could do things that a lot of professionals couldn’t do. I loved his drum playing. Dev sold his drums when he went on his mission, thinking he would get a new set when he came home . . . but his life took on a big change after his mission.
Much later, after he was married and had moved to Atlanta, Georgia with his family, he came home to visit at Christmas. So our ward choir director asked him to play with us when we sang the
“Little Drummer Boy” Christmas song. He didn’t have a drum so the director borrowed one for him. When our Bishop announced his name on the program he joked that they were sparing no expense to make our Christmas program the very best . . . even importing a special drummer from Georgia to play for us! The congregation was Dev’s old ward from his teenage years and they got a big kick out of the announcement. Dev hadn’t forgotten anything. He played the drums like he’d never been away.
Growing to manhood, Dev did a lot of construction work. He didn’t learn how, he just did it. One morning he told me he was going to pick up a Backhoe and asked me if I would go with him and follow him home with the car, as he needed to take the back roads . . . and somehow we did it. Later he told me that Stan, his father-in-law who had run a Backhoe for years, told him it would take a long time to be able to handle a Backhoe. However, amazingly enough, when Dev purchased his Backhoe and the salesman handed him the key, showing him briefly how to turn it on, Dev got right on it, driving it home like he’d been doing it his whole life! When we got home I went in the house to fix some food and Dev stayed on the Backhoe in the field by our house running it back and forth. He seemed to handle it as well as anybody I had ever watched. Later when he came in the house to eat I said,
“Dev how did you learn to do that?” And Dev said nonchalantly,
“Oh, I don’t know Mom. I guess it’s one of those talents my Patriarchal Blessing says I have that will be there when I need it.”I watched many of his talents come forth. He seemed to have been born with a “computer mind.” He just seemed to understand all about computers when they became popular for home and business use. He built his first one, buying the parts as fast as they were invented.
When Dev lived in Georgia, he had a friend that had a master’s degree in computers. He went to his house one day and found the friend struggling with a computer problem. Dev watched him labor for a while and then he walked over to the computer and hit a few keys and worked out the problem! His friend looked at him and said,
“Do you know you born with a computer mind?” Dev smiled and said he hadn’t thought about that.
“Oh yes,” his friend said.
“A few people are actually born with a computer mind!”
That was Dev. He just seemed to think he could do anything he tried.
Our young, nineteen year old son was getting ready to serve a mission for the Mormon Church. It was something he’d prepared for and looked forward to all his life. During the days of preparation, as he worked to make the money he’d need, there were times he was tempted by the adversary. One temptation seemed to come in the form of him being more argumentative than he’d ever been in his life. As his mother I was confused and I began to be very prayerful about the situation.
