Wayne Blackburn

Jan. 10, 1926 – July 20, 2015

My Dad was a good man. He was a man of the “Greatest Generation.” He took care of his family and was responsible. He did his duty to his country and his family.

He was an innocent, who became insulated because many did not respond to his generosity. He was scrupulously honest to his own detriment. He was charming and had a wicked sense of humor.

[caption id="attachment_10071" align="alignright" width="222"] Wayne Blackburn[/caption]

He and I tickled each other, not in a physical sense, but in a sense of the absurdity of truth and of life in general. I will so miss talking to him and tickling each other.

To me, he was a hero, who quietly did heroic things. He was very creative not in an artistic sense but in many other ways. He was always learning and studying and coming up with ideas to make the world better and enrich himself. He had patents and thousands of ideas. I am proud to say that I helped him make some of his ideas come to life.

He never got into trouble and he tried to do the right thing. His  life is one worth remembering. It was not all good and it wasn’t all bad but it was a life worth remembering. He was, after all, a human being, as we all are.

He went away to fight the “Great War” and ended up in the bowels of a warship, a small town farm boy away from home for the first time. He almost died from homesickness and loneliness, but he made it through VJ Day and the signing of Japan’s surrender. He came home a changed man because of what he saw in Japan. He was one tough bird who at heart was still very tender.

He loved birds and his poodle and all my dad wanted to do his whole life was return home to Lovell. He did bring us back to Lovell, but he found no home there. You can never go home again in this life, but I know he is home in the next one.

Written by his son Steve Blackburn