Exploits such as amputating part of his own finger after an accident made Mr. Paulson a folk hero.
By CRAIG BASSE
Published April 1, 2004
PINELLAS PARK - What made Dewey Paulsen a legend among tree men was the story about his finger.
The son of a lumberjack, he was known as being ax-head hard. Well into his 90s, he enjoyed the role of folk figure in St. Petersburg along the lines of a Paul Bunyan.
A professional tree trimmer since Franklin Roosevelt was in the White House, his hands were evidence that he did not work at some soft, office job. His right hand was nicked and cut over the years as he worked in the trees without gloves.
On one occasion, the fingers on his left hand were crushed in a log-splitting accident. Mr. Paulsen, who hated to go to the hospital, walked into his back yard, clamped a damaged finger in a vise and amputated the dead part with a hack saw. "It didn't hurt," he said later. "It was dead, all right. It was blacker than a mummy's finger. It had to come off."
His son-in-law, John Nelson, recalled Wednesday that Mr. Paulsen actually lost the tips of three fingers in the accident and he helped him with the amputation.
It could have been worse. Doctors were able to reattach most of two of the fingers, said Mr. Paulsen's daughter, Marie Nelson.
Dewey C. Paulsen Sr., who came here in 1940 from Iron River, Mich., died Tuesday (March 23, 2004) at Crystal Oaks of Pinellas. He was 98.
He owned Dewey Paulsen's Tree Service for 40 years and was still trimming trees in the early 1990s. He was a Seventh-day Adventist.
"I still have that finger somewhere," he told a reporter for an account in the Times in 1984. "But I don't know whether I could lay my hands or it or not. I did show my hand to the doctor later, and he said he couldn't have done a better job himself.
"And what finger I got left is stronger than the good fingers," he said. "I get this nub under a log and it's mine."
His daughter said injuries to her father were commonplace.
On one job, she said, he was taking down a large tree when an 8-foot branch struck him in the face, cutting his cheek. He came home with one eye shut. The cut healed without a scar.
On another occasion, he cut the calf of one leg with a chain saw and came home "with a shoe full of blood," his daughter said.
"I wrapped it up and took him to the emergency room," she said.
Over the years, the tools of his dangerous trade changed.
"Back then, it was much different," Mr. Paulsen once said. "You didn't have a chain saw then. You had a cross-cut saw - the kind two lumberjacks would use in tandem to take down a big tree - and you had a hand saw, an ax and some rope.
"I always liked the ax. I could chop wood like a house afire. Sometimes I'd get a worker who was a little slow, and I'd keep up with him, chop just as much wood with an ax as he could with the chain saw."
Admired for his strength, Mr. Paulsen wrestled professionally as "The Iron Duke" in Tampa and St. Petersburg as a young man. Survivors include two daughters, Marie Nelson, St. Petersburg, and Nola Ellen Paulsen, Pinellas Park; a son, Dewey C. II, St. Petersburg; and a grandchild.
ALifeTribute FuneralCare is in charge of funeral arrangements.
- Information from Times files was used in this obituary.
