Elmon Eugene Rieck

Elmon Rieck was the second child of Wilhelm Amil Rieck and Mildred Lucille Cullen. He was born on 3 Nov 1926 in Primrose, Boone, Nebraska. He died on 13 Feb 1993 of a cardiac arrest in Grants Pass, Josephine, Oregon. During his life he served in the navy (during which he served in both the Korean and Vietnam wars). He was married to his wife (living) on 30 Oct 1952 in Ashland, Jackson, Oregon. Elmon and his wife had their first child, Andrea Sue Rieck Grant on 28 Apr 1956. Elmon would later divorce his wife and remarry her again on 4 Jul 1959 in Clark county, Nevada. The Riecks were blessed by the birth of another daughter (living). Elmon's wife and children are shown in the photo below. In recalling the life of her father, Elmon's youngest daughter has said the following. Anything in brackets is my own note: "He was a volunteer fireman in Klamath Falls. When he was younger he was in the rodeo and that is how he lost his teeth. He was helping to shoe a horse and it kicked him in the mouth. There used to be only one road between Klamath Falls and Medford or Ashland. It was a twisty road that everyone called "the green springs" . When daddy was a young man, and by the sound of it any time he wanted extra money, he would drive Klamath hay, the best in the valley, out over the green springs, to other cities. I always used to think that he didn't like me very well because of things like when we would drive over the green springs in our VW bug he would like to drive pretty fast and take the corners quickly. He would pretend to be a race driver. It would make me car sick and they would have to stop for me. Andrea would laugh at me and say, "do it again daddy do it again" She was the thrill seeker and I was afraid of heights and couldn't go on roller coasters, etc.

He always had some animal that he was raising once he got out of the Navy. He served in the navy for over 22 years. I remember once when he was home on leave I had a doctors apointment that I was going to have to leave school for. I was standing in the hall waiting for someone to come and pick me up when I heard the door at the end of the hall open and I could see someone stooping over a bit to get inside. My friend said, "my goodness! Who is that?" I smiled and said, "That's my dad." Daddy was always whistling some nonsense tune and chewing on a toothpick. After he retired he had a friend who had a field of alfalfa that said dad could cut it and use it for his cows. The man didn't want to be bothered with it. So every summer he would cut the hay and I would help him to put it in rows called "wind rows" so that it could dry. You had to come out every couple of days to turn the rows over so that it would dry evenly and not just get moldy. I don't know why or how but if it wasn't dry properly then the hay could start on fire in a barn and burn the whole thing down. Then when it was totally dry we would load in on the truck to take to the barn. Dad would throw the hay over the hay racks into the truck and I would walk back and forth over it whe whole time to try and pack it in a bit so we could get more in. Once the truck was loaded we would drive it to the barn, stopping along the way to get an RC cola. I would ride on the top of the pile in the back and sip my RC all the way. After unloading it we would start the whole process over again. It took a couple of weeks of working to get it done.Sometimes dad would have to get a little extra hay so he would order it and I would help him unload it and stack it in the barn. The bales were 75 pound bales. Can't do that anymore. Dad smoked all his life. His father came from Germany and he was on the Rodeo circuit so it was just something that happened. He was friendly and always had friends in the navy and out. His nick name was Slim. He was tall and slim and he hated being called Rieck (pronounced reek) he told people it was Rick because they called you by your last name in the Navy. He served in the Korean war and the Vietnam war. It was a blessing to be on the ships he was on because most of the action was on land but he had to work long and hard to keep things repaired and to help resupply ships etc. When he was home if I had a nightmare he was the first one to me. Always was. My dad really loved his brother and sisters. He also had a really good friend, Jack Neipp that we would go and visit all the time. They all lived in Klamath Falls so it was easy to see them all at once. Uncle Bud (Harold) and and his wife were a lot of fun. He died of a massive heart attack that literally ripped his heart in two. We used to make home made ice cream all the time with the Neipps. They had a boat and we would ride in in the river. One time Uncle Don told me and Andrea to get off of the edge of the boat because it wasn't safe and we were going to go under a bridge. Andrea refused to get down until the last minute and came close to getting smacked by the bridge. That was just her nature. She always wanted to see how close she could get to the edge. They had horses too and they were a lot of fun. (Elmon with his daughter, Andrea) My dad used to work on a farm when Stuart and Megan [her two eldest children and my brother and sister] were little. We called him grandpa with the cows and we would go and visit him and walk around to see all the cows. He helped to milk them and sometimes his hands would crack and bleed really bad from all the washing in the water and the cold wind blowing on them. He would always raise a cow for us to butcher for meat in the spring. It was good meat and it spoiled us for what we have to buy in the store today. One time though we were sitting at the table and daddy said, "boy tar baby sure tastes good!". That was the first time we realized we were eating our "pet" cow and after that we couldn't eat any of it. He was so mad. One time my mother made me something to eat and she wouldn't tell me what it was. Then she said, that was good wasn't it? I said ok so what was it? She said , " heart. I knew you wouldn't eat it if I told you." Since I'd had a heart operation I thought that was the cruelist thing to do to me [she had open heart surgery when she was 8]. Dad was always genrous and helped us out whenever we came to him in need. I loved him and he loved me too. It was just hard for us to show it. He was really devistated by Amanda's death [The Amanda mentioned here is Amanda Nicole Adams. She would have been the third child in my family but she was stillborn]. He couldn't understand why the doctors couldn't see anything wrong with an untrasound. What was wrong was not ultrasoundable. everything looked good when an ultrasound was done. Of course those are much clearer now than they were then. When his dad and his brother died he was really sad. I remember standing at the grave holding his hand. It was as if all the sadness of his soul was transferred over to me and I was so sad that I couldn't do anything about it. Dad had a cardiac arrest in October of 1992 which left him without oxygen to the brain for about 7 minutes. It caused blanks in his memory and he said and did some things that appeared strange to us as he had also suffured a stroke while on the resperator. Some of the things he told us were that he was planting ice cream, riding in rodeos with friends, or racing cars with friends. It bothered us that he didn't recognize us for awhile. But that soon went away. He appeared to be recovering and looked great. On the morning of February 13th he entered the bathroom of the foster home where he was staying to get ready to go to town with Amy, his grand daughter, and Pat, his ex-wife. While there he was taken quickly and quietly home to his Heavenly Father by suffering another cardiac arrest. In life he had many friends that he was close to. One of them was his cousin Forrest D. Cullen. They were almost like brothers and loved each other very much. Pat and Elmon divorced briefly and then remarried. They stayed married until 1975 although they continued to talk and attend family functions together. They remained friends and she even took care of him and helped him get to his doctor's appointments after his hospital stay." Elmon is buried in the Siskiyou Memorial Park in Medford, Jackson, Oregon.

A record of Elmon's death as well as his marriage to Pat the second time can be found on ancestry.com. To view them you must be a member of the site. He can also be found on findagrave.com

Post Edited: 10 Apr 2011