Dennis Wheeler was a wonderful member of our WikiTree community who has passed away. Dennis Wheeler made many contributions and will be missed.

Biography

Dennis Wheeler was born in Dallas, Texas the eldest of three children born to Tommy and Beth Wheeler. Both his siblings, Kathy and Gary were born in Port Lavaca, Texas. The family lived in Matador and Ropesville, Texas while Tommy completed his Masters degree at Texas Tech, before returning to Dallas. After Beth died, Tommy married Joyce Preston who already had an older son George and daughter Sandra and moved to DeSoto, Texas.

After completing High School in DeSoto, Dennis attended Abilene Christian University studying subjects ranging from Computer Science to Math to Spanish, including a summer trip to Torreón, Coahuila, México. Then he moved to the Bay area, Atherton and Menlo Park, California where he had spent a previous summer on a mission trip. He lived there for a couple of years until his grandfather Palmer Wheeler died. He moved back to Dallas to live with his grandmother Lena until shortly before she died a few years later.

Dennis lived with his older brother George and his family in DeSoto for a short time while saving money to buy a mobile home in Glenn Heights, Texas. He met his wife Vicki Trevathan at his grandparents church in Oak Cliff (a Dallas neighborhood), the Cliffwood church of Christ. Together, they have been blessed with three daughters, each born in Dallas, Sarah, Joanna and Lydia. They lived in Glenn Heights and Dallas, while working in and around the Dallas area and Waxahachie, Texas.

After 13 years as a printing press operator, and a couple more programming classes, Dennis got back into computers and transferred to Seattle, Washington working for a number of high tech companies. He and his family lived in Bellevue, Washington for a couple of years and currently live in Kent, Washington.

Hobbies have included bicycle riding, playing bass guitar, singing gospel music, watching movies, short sight-seeing trips, playing the Asian game of Go, and exploring his family history. He teaches beginning players at the Seattle Go Center.

Diagonosed with stage 4 colon cancer, Oct 2019.

DNA testing

I've recently (Nov 4th) ordered a FamilyFinder test (au) and results are in. I don't know what any of it means, other than I'm human and have lots of cousins. GEDMatch number is T551698, and FTDNA kit number is 570627.

I haven't yet done a Y-dna test yet, but based on other known relatives, I think my Haplogroup is R-M269 (R1b1); Common Ancestor group 2 for the Wheeler surname. But I don't know what any of that means yet.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Dennis Wheeler at registration.
• Maternal relationship is confirmed by a 99 cM Family Finder match between Dennis Wheeler and his maternal second cousin once removed, Rhitt Garrett. see Relationship Finder
• Paternal relationship is confirmed by a 150 cM Family Finder match between Dennis Wheeler and his paternal second cousin once removed, Joyce Lombardi. see Relationship Finder
• Paternal relationship is confirmed by a 99 cM Family Finder match between Dennis Wheeler and his paternal third cousin once removed, Neil Wheeler. see Relationship Finder