Blogocentric Formulations

My Grandfather

Born in Jerome, Idaho in 1919, Frederic Howard Varnum was the oldest of six children, and is survived by his brothers and sisters, his wife of more than 66 years, and his four daughters, seven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. Howard, as he liked to be called, received a BS in Civil Engineering from Montana State University at Bozeman, served in the U.S. Navy during the invasion of the Philippines at Lingayen Gulf in 1945, and was en route to Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He worked at the Bureau of Indian Affairs for more than thirty years, which included service on several Indian reservations in Montana, Utah, and Sacramento.

He and his wife Dorothy were avid RV'ers, and over the course of 30 years, put more than 500,000 miles on five different rigs, traveling to all fifty states and much of Canada and Mexico.

Since hearing that he passed away on February 27, 2011, I've struggled to figure out a way to say goodbye. So I thought I would express it in the only way I know how; I made an audio/video montage to commemorate his life. There were a lot of years with a lot of great memories; these are some of them: