Current owners of ‘Old Ocie’ enjoy the peace of the quiet hills

When local resident Al Sabatino worked his way through reading the May 22, 2024, edition of the Ozark County Times, an article on page 4, the local history page, caught his eye. 

The page featured a photo of a sign for “Old Ocie, Missouri” which listed the speed limit of 15 miles per hour, a population of 10 residents and a list of the “city mayor, city manager, aldermen and chief of police.” It was accompanied by the article, “The town of Ocie: Praised for its beauty, Prized for its location and Proud of its size,” which was reprinted from 50 years ago from the May 23, 1974, edition of the Times.

The page was of particular interest because Sabatino and longtime girlfriend Dian Sage now own a significant chunk of what was described as “Old Ocie” in that article, and just like the residents who lived there 50 years ago, they’re proud to call that tiny corner of the world home. 

Coming together

Both Al and Dian walked separate, but equally interesting, life paths that didn’t cross until the year 2002 when both were living in Colorado and had been left single after the loss of their spouses. 

Dian was born in Georgia but eventually made her way to the Rocky Mountains where she and her sister co-owned a mountain lodge and hot spring retreat. 

Meanwhile, Al was living about 100 miles away in the foothills of the Rockies, just west of Denver. He was originally from Wisconsin. He served as a submariner for the United States Navy in the 1960s, then went on to have a successful career as an electrician, engineer, equipment designer and entrepreneur in his own “one-man company” where he offered his services for industrial machine repair. Al is also a retired volunteer firefighter who served 20 years on a fire department west of Denver including three years as fire chief. 

Although Al and Dian didn’t know each other, they later discovered they had friends in common. But it wasn’t those friends who brought them together. 

“I tell everyone that I found him just like I found this property - on the internet,” Dian quipped with a smile in a recent interview this summer.

“She picked me up off of Match.com, and I guess it was a pretty good match - because here we are,” Al added with his own dry sense of humor. “I drove over on that Friday of Labor Day weekend in a MG Midget with the top down and asked for her. She came down, and we met - and we decided we liked each other.”

Dian ended up leaving her job at the lodge (a property that her sister still owns and runs) to enjoy life with Al in the foothills of the Rockies near a popular tourist attraction called Tiny Town. They built a life together at 7,500 feet above sea level but Dian began having issues with the high altitude of their mountain home. 

So, instead of setting roots, they stretched their wings. Al mentioned to Dian that he liked to travel, and she soon found out just how true that statement was. 

“Put it this way, when I met him, I’d been in five states. At this point I’ve been in all 50 and about 30 foreign countries,” she said. 

Al explained that in 2004, he told Dian they were going to take a trip to Boston.

“It took us three months to get there - by going west,” he said. “Our first stop was Denver, then California, then Hawaii, then Fiji. We took a month to drive across Australia. We went from there to Dubai, then Athens, back into Italy and Sicily, Spain then onto London and, finally, to Boston.” 

Finding home at Ocie, Missouri

After a couple of years together, Al and Dian decided they wanted to move away from their home in the mountains and onto someplace a little closer to sea level with a little slower pace.

They narrowed their search to five different places. One of those places was the property they live on now. Dian said it was added to the list as a high contender after she visited the Ozark County Chamber of Commerce’s website and read that there was not one four-lane highway or traffic light in the whole entire county. 

“We thought, you know… that could work,” Al said.

So Dian researched available properties in the area and printed off listings for a few places that appealed to them. She tucked the printed-off listings info a folder. Then, with the folder in hand, she and Al made the trip here to meet with a real estate agent from Ava and view the properties. 

When they walked in, they handed the agent the folder. She said before she looked at their listings, there was a special piece of property that she just had to show them. So, off they went. 

When they pulled up to the home that Vern and Kathleen Deatherage owned in Ocie, Al and Dian eyed each other and smiled. Little did the real estate agent know, but they were already quite familiar with the property because, inside the folder of listings that Dian had printed off, that specific Ocie property sat squarely at the top. 

“We were standing outside talking to Vern and Kathleen, and the real estate agent said ‘I’m going to call to see where your first choice is.’ She went inside to use the telephone and came out laughing,” Al told the Times in an interview. “Then she opened up the folder. I looked at her and said ‘We’re already here!’”  

The couple fell in love with the quiet hills and peace they felt at the property, which sits in a particularly scenic spot - even by Ozark County standards. They also fell in love with the view and a beautiful waterfall and creek that sat just outside the home. 

“We looked at the rest of them, but this one really caught our eye. We love it down here,” she said. 

So, they decided to purchase the property and 20 acres from the Deatherages. “We called our home in Colorado Rocky Top since it sat at 7,500 feet above sea level. And now we call this place Rocky Bottom,” Al said. 

They rented the house back to the former owners while the Deatherages finished building their own home in Ava. Vern had decided to keep an adjoining 80 acres in Ocie as a hunting property at first but later sold it to Al and Dian.

As part of that purchase, they had the property surveyed and found out that the original 20-acre piece they had purchased was actually only 15 acres. But that bad news was soon followed by the good news that the 80 acres they were purchasing was actually 86 acres. 

“So, it all came out OK,” Al said.

Making the home theirs

When Al and Dian moved into the home in 2007, they began a slow dance of retaining the home’s original charm while enhancing it to better fit their preferences. 

“We didn’t want to change it, we just wanted a little more space,” Dian said. They started by adding a 14-foot extension to the side of the home nearest to the creek and waterfall. The home addition is now edged by a beautiful wooden deck that sits just below the waterfall, providing the perfect place to sit and relax. 

The couple used the redwood from walls that were removed to have matching cabinetry made and installed in the kitchen. They took out a sliding glass door and reused several windows in the addition, which gave the couple more visibility of the property and the view that they love so much. 

A massive stone fireplace that sat near the center of the original floorplan remains a focal point of the house today, although it is no longer the sole heat source. Instead, Al and Dian installed a heat pump with propane backup in a forced-air heating and cooling system, along with redoing most of the wiring and plumbing throughout the home. 

The charming original accents of the home are intertwined with various new-fangled gadgetry which Al, with his engineering and machinery background, especially appreciates. Some of the interesting additions include range ventilation that retracts into a kitchen island, a smart water faucet at the kitchen sink and a TV that lowers into the cabinet “for when the preacher comes,” Dian said laughing, explaining that she grew up with a strict religious background that didn’t allow TV. 

Tucked into shelves, on stands and in other spaces throughout the home is an eclectic mix of interesting items that reflect each of their personalities. 

“We collect things from here there and everywhere,” Dian said. “For instance, we picked up two ducks in an antique shop because they were made the year his brother was born, then… I don’t know, they just multiply.” 

The collectibles include everything from turtles to glass buoys to submarine collectibles. Dian has a fascinating curated collection of Native American artifacts, medicinal resources for herbal healing and shelves full of cookbooks and other antique editions. Some of Al’s items relate to his Sicilian heritage, he said. His parents were first-generation Americans from a strong Italian lineage that included a grandfather and grandmother who immigrated here from Sicily. He noted that he has distant family ties to the Sicilian mafia, but that’s a branch of the family tree he’s happy to remain unacquainted with. 

Another chapter

The property includes one of the original buildings from when Ocie was founded in pre-Civil War times. It had been transitioned into a chicken coop before they bought the place and now sits in the original 20-acre parcel the couple bought in 2004. 

There are three other notable buildings just past the couple’s driveway, one made from metal, one from stone and one from wood.

“We refer to them as the three little pigs,” Al said. Two of the buildings are older including a wood sided building that has a spring running through it, which keeps the space cold. It was where dairy farmers in the area stored their milk for the milkman to pick up in past times. 

The pair doesn’t shy away from admitting that it takes quite a bit of work to maintain the large property, and they’d done so independently for 20 years. More recently though, they’ve hired some help to help ease the burden, especially while they are traveling. 

“I grew up on a small farm, and he actually grew up on land too; so we were both familiar with how much work it takes. But now we’re older. He just turned 80, and I just turned 77, and we have 100 acres instead of 20 acres. Sometimes we think… ‘Whew. OK. Did we really volunteer for this?’ It gets a little overbearing sometimes, so we have to get people to help us now.”

Despite the hard work, the pair say it’s worth it, and they love the life they’ve built there. They’d briefly discussed moving to Florida or somewhere else as they age and may need more frequent medical care. But, after leaving their quiet home to visit those locations, they quickly changed their minds. 

“We’re not going anywhere. I told him I want my ashes scattered right over there,” Dian said, pointing to a particularly beautiful section of a field across the county road from their home. 

Al and Dian say they’ll live out the remainder of their days in Ocie, and when they are gone, the house and property will pass on to Al’s nephews. 

As for the collections - those come as part of the deal.

“They’ve asked us, ‘What should we do with all of this stuff?’ We told them, ‘You don’t need to do anything with it. It’s all right where it belongs,’” Dian said, laughing. 

Another special item that comes with the inheritance is a folder filled with newspaper clippings, historical documents and scraps of other information Dian has been able to glean over the years about the property. Collectively, they tell the tale of that special piece of land she and Al have fallen in love with and the families who have built their lives upon it for more than 100 years, their stories tightly interwoven into the acreage. There’s no doubt that this article will be added to the pile, telling yet another chapter of the story of what was once “Old Ocie.”