Apr 23, 2016_ Pop is Laid to Rest

On Saturday, at 12:00 O’clock, we laid my father to rest next to Bea, his wife and our mother. The cemetery is located inside the city of Ball, just outside the city of Pineville, La, where his parents were laid to rest.

I am taking the time now to thank everyone for being there. Especially my sister and her family who drove up from Lake Worth, Fl.  It was her and dad’s sister (Joy Atwood), who helped arrange the services and the luncheon. And a special thanks to all of the Atwoods who attended and helped with dinner.

One special note, I wish to thank the US Navy for the Burial Honor Guard.

You see my dad spent 3 tours in the US Navy, WW II and the Korea War. 

I want to give a special thanks to Bill and Mary Nelson, dad’s long time friend and co-worker, who created a memory book for Carolann and me. Thanks to him I got photos of him retired from work

Bill is Second from the Right (Minus 90 lbs)

Dad is the one in the center standing, hat on

A few words about my dad from a friend of his:
“His electronics career began while he was in the Navy during WWII, when he worked on and later trained others on the early radar systems. He worked for Philco which was later purchased by Ford, for quite a while before going to work for Sentrol, an early competitor of Industrial Nucleonics/AccuRay/CE/ABB.

They didn't have a very large service organization, so his area ranged from Eastern Canada to Florida. He'd bought the Blue Runner with a Ford discount and ran up the first 600,000-miles while working for Sentrol. He had a spare parts van and would rebuild transmissions, engines, etc. as needed. While he worked with us, he was based in Camden, AR and Bastrop, LA. His wife, Bea, was unable to get around very well unless she was in a wheel chair. He made a seat lift out of a tractor seat, a Johnson outboard starting motor, and a slew of AccuRay parts.

It worked and I was the first to try it. (He didn't want to risk her falling off, if it didn't work. He'd swing it into the side door and transfer her to a rearward facing bucket seat. Bea died before he left Bastrop. He's stayed in touch with a group of guys in the Bastrop area since his retirement. While they still lived there, they'd meet at the restaurant of the Bastrop motel every Saturday. We sat in on a couple of those meetings and those guys could lie as well as any ABB guy!

The last time we saw Errett, was at the home of one of those guys during the time he was moving from AZ to FL. He already looked pretty frail, but still insisted on doing his own driving most of the time. He was sounding pretty frail the last couple of times we talked on the phone. He said he couldn't get around very well anymore and had to get into a "three-point stance" to feel secure. I can only imagine how that went, but have balance issues myself, so know about hanging onto stuff to stay upright. He's had  skin cancer problems as a result of too much FL sun earlier in his life and has been having numerous small surgeries to remove elisions for the past several years. He had a heart attack several years ago and drove himself in the Blue Runner to and from the VA Hospital in Little Rock. We think his body just wore out. Hope he's comfortable now.”

At the time of this writing I did not have all the photos that were taken. I will be updating it with additional photos and the names of everyone who attended at a later date.