Wednesday, November 26, 2008
My Dad
Lawrence M. Webb
My dad died November 9, 2008. He was 96 years old.
He was born July 25, 1912, near Odessa to Fred and Elsie (Hanley) Webb. On Dec. 31, 1934, he married Ardella Thomas. She died Nov. 20, 2005. Survivors include his sons, Lawrence "Lonnie" Webb and his wife, Charlotte (Wilken), of Mandeville, La., and Tom Webb and his wife, Martha (Painter), of Lincoln; daughter, Ardienne McNulty of Dayton, Ohio.
Dad was the last of the Prairie Pioneers. He was born in the north bedroom of a small farmhouse near Odessa. The land he and my grandpa farmed was the Homestead great grandma claimed in 1872. Farm life was hard, farming with horses, milking cows by hand, battling locusts and storms. A survivor of the "dirty thirties" and the Great Depression. Dad was a crack shot with a rifle but even better with a slingshot. I witnessed him picking of birds on a wire with a slingshot and steel ball bearings.
Dad survived many life threatening experiences including rolling a tractor on more than one occasion. He received a sever head concussion and inner ear damage that left him incapacitated for half a year. Our neighbors were gracious to bring in our crops and tend to our livestock.
He graduated from Odessa High School in 1929 and attended classes at Kearney State Normal School. He and his wife were married 71 years, separated by her death and reunited in Christ on Sunday morning, Nov. 9. He left college to farm with his father and continued farming well into his 80s. He and his father farmed a homestead established by Lawrence's grandmother in 1872.
For a short while in the 1940s, he owned and operated a J.I. Case dealership, but he sold that business to devote all his time to farming. In that regard, he was an innovator, being one of the first in the local area to use a diesel tractor for row crops. He was an early advocate of minimal tillage farming having retired the plow in favor of the disc, and then used that only once before planting. He was an early user of irrigation wells and a firm believer in crop rotation, late-spring calves and no work on Sunday.
When he retired, he owned the homestead and other farms in the Odessa and Kearney area.
At age 8, he became a member of the Odessa Evangelical Church. When he was 18, he transferred his membership to the Kearney church and supported it all his life. He taught Sunday school classes, served as Sunday school librarian, helped in youth fellowship activities, acted in church plays, served as head church usher and was on the board of trustees. His community activities included three children in 4-H, membership on the local Farmers Union Co-op Board and for a time was its president. He was on the Collins Township Board and served as justice of the peace.
He was a fabulous storyteller who regaled his children with bedtime stories with no repeats except those that were requested. My first remembrance of dad "bed time story" was from a book of Bible Stories. He was an avid reader, a whistler and singer. He was a decent man who through hard work and faith in God provided his family with comfort, joy and the profound certainty that death is another beginning.
A loving husband, a devoted father, an excellent neighbor and a good friend to all who knew him, he will be missed.
This is only a glimpse into the life of the man that gave me physical life. But it was he who gave an understanding of my Heavenly Father who gave me spiritual life. Both of my father's are now eternal and forever with me.
~webb~
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