David C. Hamilton (my dad)
Hi. My name is Deanna Hamilton Ball and you found my dad. Yes, he is in the rock and I have made sure to cover every inch of this rock in multipule layers of resin so you aren't actually touching anything.
If you'd like to read more about my dad please scroll down towards the bottom.
My goal here is to have my dad travel the country and/or world and I'd like you and the others that find him to watch him move along. (Think Flat Stanley meeting all the rock painters out there so that people can hide and find in public spaces)
All I need from you is to fill out the form below, after you have rehomed him to a different location. The next person will find him and do the same. At some point I'd like to add a map so we can have a visual of where he's been.
If this seems like something you do not want to participate in, please return him to where he was found and thank you for helping my dad and myself move him around.
Deanna Ball
Location Found:
Galveston, TX (Where he has been)
Date Found:
March 27, 2026
Location Dropped Off:
Sedona, AZ
Date Dropped Off:
March 31, 2026
Where to begin?
I want to start off saying, I did not really know my dad. I saw him more as I got older at my grandpa's house when my granny was sick/dying in the late 1900's (around the mid 80s). We were not close, I wasn't a daddy's girl and I did not speak to him for 7 years before he died. The information I am going to present to you is stuff, I've just known, been told, or found online.
David Craig Hamilton
He was born on 8/17/1944 to Jack R Hamilton and Sammy Jo Willis Hamilton, in Fort Worth, Texas. I'm not sure the exact time when my grandparents moved to the coast. The 1950's census shows him to be in Galveston at least by 1950.
My dad not suer where he went to elementary school, but was sent to Culver Military Academy in Indiana in middle school, he graduated from high school there in 1963.
I know my parents met through mutual friends. The story of their wedding and their separation is all I know about their relationship. My grandma (mom's mom) went out of town and my grandpa was supposed to be watching the kids. My mom was an adult at this time. My parents left the island to go with friends to the Texas / OU game (Red River Shoot Out, I think is what it's called). While there friends dared them to get married. So they did. I don't know if they even liked each other before or what. Below is them standing at the county desk getting the marriage license (at least this is what I'm told) They were married 10/14/1967, in Montgomery, TX on the way to the State Fair/ TX/OU Weekend.
They divorced on 1/22/1970, I never lived with my father. To hear my dad tell it, she left him around Christmas time in 1968 to be with my grandma after the death of my mom's older sister. To hear her tell it, he didn't want kids. The photo below my granny wrote xmas 1968 so that tracks why they would be in Vegas and my mom isn't there. Pictured is my granny, my grandpa, and my dad
I am not sure when he did the Marine reserve thing. But that happened, I am guessing it was before he married my mom; again I don't know. I have his old trunk and marine sword with his name etched in it.
This last photo is just a random photo of him that I found.
So I am leaving for Az tomorrow, and I wanted to get something up there. I hope to find other pictures of him and add those to the page.
So after the divorce I lived with my mom and grandparents. I know that he took me to the Houston Livestock Show with his second wife Stephanie. We saw Sonny and Cher. I apparently didn't want to go, but they told me that their kid would be there and I went because I like (her) him. I don't know how long they were married, but they divorced and he never married again. My next memory with him was after my granny had died. I was at my grandpa's house and he was there. I left to go get movies and crunched my car and the passager side door wouldn't open and I was terrified that my step dad was going to kill me. My dad tried to help me pull out the door so it would atleast open and close. It didn't work. (Side note: I started parking on the other side of the house and my brother had to climb in the window dukes of hazzards style to get in and out.) I may had seen him 7-8 times after that.
After my grandpa died in 1990, my dad moved off to Florida to go the Harley Davidson School to learn how to work on bikes. He had been an accountant all of the time before. He came back to Texas, opened a bike shop in Houston and he worked with motorcycles the rest of his life.
Before he died I did something and was so disappointed that I did it that I just quit talking to him (for 7 years) and he never tried to contact me, as far as I know. The next thing I knew I was in Walmart and get a call from my mom telling me he died and I needed to come down to Houston (I was living in Austin, Tx at the time).
I have some interesting stories about him communicating with me since his death, I will share that in another post. If you got down to here. Thanks for reading about my dad (what little I know)