Ray A. Twidwell

  Ray Albert Twidwell, age 101, died on August 8, 2024, in Frankfort, Kansas.

  He was born April 2, 1923, to Claud and Anna Twidwell at the family farmhouse southeast of Winifred, Kansas. At birth, he had two sisters, Frances Twidwell Hills (age 15) and Thelma Twidwell (Hartman) (age 14), and one brother, Don Twidwell (age 8), to welcome him into the family. Ray's parents and siblings predeceased him.

  From an early age, Ray enjoyed doing his share of the family farm chores: tending livestock, working field crops, milking cows, and gathering eggs. He became a skilled hunter and trapper, selling fur pelts to supplement farm income and provide spending money. Ray became the family acrobat several times each year, scaling the family's windmill tower to grease the gear box. Atop the windmill platform he claimed that the small community of Winifred (a full mile away) would come into view. Ray was a daring ice skater, using frozen over farm ponds and area creeks as his rinks.

   Ray had a sweet tooth for watermelon and homemade ice cream. Ray and his older brother, Don, annually seeded in the spring a sandy nine-acre patch at their farm, so that the melons would be harvested near Labor Day. The boys charged one dollar for as many melons that could be stuffed into a car. Their marketing strategy yielded a profit of several hundred dollars each fall, coming at a time when grain prices were extremely low. One of the favorite photos the boys have of their Dad is of Ray, seated on a well curb, dressed in full winter clothing, turning the crank on an ice cream freezer with ice and snow on the ground. He was fond of good music and played a 'mean saxophone' in the high school jazz band. 

  Ray became a skilled woodsman at an early age handling saws, axes, wedges, and sledges. His goal was to provide wood of exacting dimensions to feed his Mother's wood burning stove. The woodsman skills Ray developed as a young boy would serve him well, when working for the Kansas Power and Light Company, he was tasked to keep the power lines free of brush and trees. Ray was also a good gardener, raising and selling watermelons, strawberries, and sweet corn for public sale. In his lifetime, Ray witnessed dramatic changes in agricultural equipment from horse-drawn implements to modern mechanized machinery.

  He attended elementary school in Winifred, often riding his pinto horse or walking along the railroad tracks that cut through the family farm. He was taught grades one through eight in one and the same room. He attended Frankfort High School, graduating in the class of 1941. 

  He met the love of his life, Stella Mae Warren, as she had a locker near his. He recalls seeing her for the first time as he was going in to see a movie at the Royal Theater as she was being escorted out of the same theater for trying to sneak in a box of popcorn! Their dating became more serious when they both had key roles in the production of their senior class play entitled "June Mad". They were married on September 8, 1941 at Eudora, Kansas.

  Ray attended one semester at Kansas University while working as a clerk for the Union Pacific Railroad. His academic interests were engineering and drafting. Ray's college schooling was cut short when he was drafted into the Navy in 1941. He served three years during WWII, primarily in the Pacific Theater. He trained as a motor mechanic mate at Columbia, Missouri, and Norfolk, Virginia. He was deployed on the island of Guam, where he worked to repair diesel engines and transmissions on troop and equipment amphibious landing craft. His interest in diesel engines never waned, as he farmed with diesel powered tractors and he was the first in the region to own a diesel-powered automobile (1979 Oldsmobile). 

  After the war, Ray was hired as a lineman for the Kansas Power and Light Company. He supervised a 5-member team that maintained gas flow and electric power to a region, including Centralia, Wetmore, Goff, Corning, and Frankfort. Ray never lost the desire to farm, and began renting and purchasing small tracts of land around Frankfort. Eventually, these tracts amounted to a sizable acreage. Most of his early farming was conducted with a Farmall (B) tractor and makeshift implements. Following his early retirement from the KP&L at age 55 in 1979, Ray began farming fulltime, and eventually acquired the family farm. He was a progressive farmer and often tried new practices. For example, he planted entire fields to sunflowers and popcorn. He was a prominent pork producer, handling several thousand feeder pigs at a time. He was an active cattleman feeding out around 50 steers each fall and winter at his self-built confined feeding operation. Ray was the kind of farmer that could remove all the things from his pockets on washday and still would have overlooked five washers, a rusty bolt, three feed pellets, the stub of a lead pencil, and an old receipt. 

  He was an exceptional baker, his specialties included fresh fruit pies and crescent dinner rolls, both made from scratch at festive times. After retirement, he furthered his education, taking cooking classes at K-State and Spanish classes sponsored by Highland Jr. College in Frankfort. Unlike most nonagenarians, Ray remained active in his 90s. He walked around his neighborhood for daily exercise, he measured, ordered, and installed every window in his house on Walnut Street, he took delivery of a new model car, equipped with the latest technology available to get around the Frankfort area. He retired from farming when he turned 95, he dismantled a corrugated steel pole barn at the back of his property, and he planted and harvested a watermelon crop when he was 97.

  Ray lost his Stella in November of 2006. Ray and Stella raised four sons: William and Kenneth (Diane) of Frankfort, Stephen (Mary) of Elgin, Texas, and Edward (Nancy) of Prairieville, Louisiana. All four of Ray's and Stella's boys obtained college degrees. Ray has eight grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. 

  Ray liked: A cold slice of watermelon, peanut brittle, turning a crank on an ice cream freezer, hearing the clank of a diesel engine, straight crop rows, Civil War history, a good book, a friendly dog, a full grain bin, pie baking. saxophone music, KU basketball, the Sidney Iowa Rodeo, having coffee with his buddies, and ice skating.

A graveside service will be held on Saturday, September 7, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. at the Frankfort City Cemetery where military honors will be performed.