Monday, May 26, 2008

Gary would have turned 80 today


As I typed the date for Nate's weekly e-mail, I realized that today was my father's birthday. Then I realized that it would have been his 80th. If he hadn't already been gone from us for 30 years, we could have had a wonderful 80th birthday celebration. Janae and Andrew did honor him by visiting his grave in Provo (along with my mother's) today on Memorial Day. I love the above picture. Gary (wearing the sailor hat) is holding the hand of his great grandfather, John Lloyd Roberts, on his maternal side. This ancestor joined the church in Wales and eventually settled in Idaho. He looks like such a lovely man and I understand that he had a beautiful singing voice.

My father loved farming the land originally settled by the Roberts family. You will find him in the third row up, third from the right in this picture of the Sugar Salem High School Future Farmers of America photo. He went on to study agriculture at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho.

2 comments:

Vagabond Mother said...

What nice, scanned pictures. I like hearing more about him. Thanks for writing this.

Cire said...

Since I read this a few days ago I've been comparing '80' years to alot of things and realizing just how young he was - I look forward to meeting him again someday!