Donald DeCamp,85, may not be who you’d expect to find at Sammy’s Lounge on Center Point Road late on Friday nights. But for one thousand nights in a row, DeCamp has ordered a soda at Sammy’s, and several other karaoke bars in the area, and waited for his turn at the microphone.

“How empty are the people who can't get out and make friends like he's made? Or touch people's live by just singing a song to them?” said Carolyn Trinkle, a friend of DeCamp. “He could be at home vegetating and waiting to die. Who wants to do that? Who wants to wait at home to die?”

DeCamp goes by the alias Don Juan once he’s inside a karaoke bar, but he doesn’t sing to the entire room.

“He would see girls sitting by themselves, kind of wallflowers,” Trinkle said. “ He'd put them up on a chair and sing to them.”

It’s a serenade Trinkle knows well – she’s been the girl in the chair many times. But Trinkle also knows the woman who inspired so many songs.

“She was right straight ahead of me, looking my way and had a table by herself,” DeCamp said. “The band started playing in the next room, I asked her to dance, and the rest is history.”

DeCamp met a German woman named Lore when he was in his early 20’s and stationed in France. He worked odd jobs, like cutting fellow soldiers’ hair, to earn money to visit Lore on weekends.

Eventually, the two married, moved back to the U.S., settled in Mount Vernon, and had three sons.

“She was never bored, let’s put it that way,” DeCamp said.

But Alzheimer’s ultimately stole decades of memories away.

“She started losing her ability to walk, and all of a sudden she couldn't talk,” DeCamp said. “For over two and a half years there was no communication. But I fed her every lunch and every supper.”

It was a routine Trinkle watched, as a worker at the nursing home where Lore later died. DeCamp spent his days with Lore and nights singing.

“Karaoke saved me,” DeCamp said. “At night I could forget all of it until the next day.”

Now, Don Juan is well known at several bars, where regular patrons have become life-long friends and have involved Don in their own love stories.

On March 25 he serenaded a woman whose boyfriend then walked up and proposed. Other women he’s sang to have invited him to their weddings. Weekly lunches are traditions with some he’s serenaded.

They're relationships DeCamp attributes to the thousands of songs he's sung, all inspired by the love of his life.

“This was a one in a billion chance of meeting her," DeCamp said. "She was perfection."