Three Times Blessed

Few of us, as we live our daily lives, think of eventually writing a memoir, believing probably that what we are doing, or how we are living, is not worth recording for posterity or for those around us. So it was with Dieter Dubberke, who scoffed at the idea when it was first presented to him by his wife and one or two others. Only reluctantly did he begin the project, and even then it was with the intention that it would be only for his children and their families, and maybe--just maybe--for a very few others. However as his focus sharpened, and as he remembered an increasing number of details, he began to see a greater value in recounting his life--how he had conducted himself and what he had learned, and how he came to honor and to embrace certain principles which might be worth passing on to others who could benefit from what he had seen and experienced and done. As a little boy, he and his mother dodged bullets while escaping from the easternmost part of Germany just ahead of the advancing Russians in the closing days of World War II. With his mother and brother he finally made it to the West, before the Iron Curtain would have trapped them permanently behind its impenetrable barrier. Even so, life wasn't easy there after the war, and survival was a matter of day-to-day, hand-to-mouth existence. Food was scarce, and fuel for heat during the bitter winters was something which had to be scrambled for, a few stray lumps of coal dropped in the road and fished from icy potholes with frozen hands. The lessons learned in how to survive were hard ones, the kind which were burned indelibly into him but which served him well in later years. He was blessed just to survive the war and its aftermath. However he received another stroke of that same good fortune which had followed him when he had a chance at age thirteen to come to America, where he was adopted by his maternal uncle, who had emigrated to the US years before. A whole new life opened up for him, and from the beginning he was determined to appreciate it and make the best of it. Education in an American high school and service in the US Army thoroughly Americanized him and gave him a deep and abiding love for this country and for the opportunities it offers to those who recognize them and seize them. Seize them he did. The same work ethic which helped him survive the rigors of post-war Germany was now put to use in establishing a family and building a career. He learned the retail food industry in the Safeway organization. His love of the outdoors and a rural way of life led him to the small and artsy town of Ojai, California, where he became a store manager, catering to the tastes of the creative avant-garde while never neglecting the needs of the everyday ordinary shopper. However it was when he ventured out on his own, in Mariposa, California, that he found the chance to become completely his own man and to develop to the fullest his true entrepreneurial talents and abilities. Starting with one small store, he opened a major supermarket which utilized the newest in marketing techniques and provided to the small community a much wider range of choice than it had previously known. Then came another business, and another. However simply to make this a tale of some inevitable expansion would be all too familiar and mundane. This kind of growth has remained but a part of the story of his success, one which can only be told and fully appreciated in light of his accomplishment as a person. Everything he learned in those early days of hardship and deprivation somehow gradually came together over the years to elevate both his mind and his spirit, to produce in him a broader and higher way of thinking, and a more expansive outlook. He quickly but quietly became a respected leader within his community. Clear thinking, dispassionate reasoning and the ability to rise above personal feelings all combined to make him the kind of person whom people sought