William (Bill) Rickard Jr
May 15, 1926 – February 14, 2021
Richland, Washington – William (Bill) Howard Rickard Jr passed away peacefully of natural causes at the age of 94 on Sunday, February 14, 2021 at Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland, Washington. William leaves a legacy of a caring husband, father, and grandfather to his family. His career as an environmental scientist includes six decades of research in the fields of botany, wildlife biology, and radioecology (the movement of radioactive isotopes in the environment). In 1971 he was instrumental in designation of the 77,000-acre Arid Lands Ecology Reserve (now known as the Fitzner Eberhardt Arid Land Ecology Reserve) as a federal Research Natural Area – the Rattlesnake Hills RNA. This is the only RNA that the Department of Energy has ever designated and is currently managed as a wildlife refuge by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as an important part of the Hanford National Monument.
William was born at the community hospital of Walsenburg, Colorado in May of 1926 to William Howard Rickard Sr and Emile Victoria Zalesny Rickard. His father worked in the local coal mine and his mother ran a boarding house. Several small communities were built around the coal mines in the area and the family resided in Alamo, Colorado where William and his younger sister, Victoria Jean Rickard, started school. Summer months the family spent on the Rio Grande River and up in the mountains fishing the streams and lakes of the Colorado Rockies. At age 5 William had his first pair of hip boots and the love of fly fishing began, soon catching a trout too big for his creel.
The Great Depression took its toll and the coal mines shut down. William’s parents combined talents of his dad’s expertise at fishing and hunting with his mom’s expertise at running boarding houses as a means for making a living. Creating a place where his dad could take guests on guided hunting and fishing excursions and his mother could care for the guests at a mountain lodge, they started the Shamrock Ranch located in Jackson County (North Park) Colorado. Soon the more well-to-do people looking for mountain adventure became regular customers and William at a young age learned the fishing and hunting guide trade allowing him to work at what he loved in the mountains of Colorado.
Because the Shamrock Ranch was not operable during the winter, the family established residence in Boulder, Colorado very close to the University of Colorado campus. William and his sister completed public school in Boulder with William graduating from Boulder High School in 1944. World War II was at its height and William would enter the Army immediately after graduation. His experience as an outdoorsman skilled in hunting and horsemanship would soon become valuable.
William was assigned to the Cavalry Replacement Training Center at Fort Riley, Kansas. He was assigned a horse to care for and was one of the last Cavalry “Pony Soldiers” in the US Army. Trained in army rifle, machine guns, hand grenades, bazookas, and mortars; William was specially trained to handle horse and pack mules packing weapons and materials in support of long-range penetrations in central Burma. At Fort Ord, California, William completed training in beach landings and boarded the troop ship General George Randall at San Pedro, California bound for India. The first stop was Hobart, Tasmania where William quickly bought fishing line and hooks and caught several fish off the dock beside the ship.
The trip across the Indian Ocean was stormy with massive waves and they arrived at Bombay, India the day after Thanksgiving. There they boarded a train to cross India to Calcutta which took several days. Train travel continued from Calcutta to the town of Ledo in Burma. Ledo was where William joined the 475th Infantry regiment which was organized from the famed Merrill’s Marauders and was part of the American Mars Task Force. As a replacement for soldiers killed in action a few days earlier, William was assigned to “L” Company and quickly trained for quick fire rifle shooting at close range in jungle terrain and dense forest and then flown to the village of Muse on the China/Burma border along the “Burma Road”. Sleeping in fox holes until the replacement company commander arrived, the 475th moved out of the valley with several hundred pack mules on a silent two-day march (no talking, only hand signals) to the town of Kutkai. William would never say what happened on that march. In later years while visiting the War memorial of the Pacific in Oahu, Hawaii, upon finding his company’s names on the wall the pain was evident.
From Kutkai “L” company was assigned to travel to Kunming, China, to drive trucks supplying Chinese forces trying to prevent Japanese capture of a remote airbase in Chichiang over a narrow road over steep mountains with numerous switchbacks. In Kunming it was learned that President Roosevelt had passed away. Taking ammunition to Chichiang and returning with wounded Chinese was a three-day mission repeated over and over. Everyone in the company had chronic diarrhea and malaria. This setting was William’s most engrained memory of the war which he shared. There were several types of malaria of which “blackwater” malaria was fatal in a manner of days. William’s fellow driver who sat by his side on one of those trips contracted blackwater malaria. When they arrived in camp his partner said he was feeling a little ill and went to the field hospital and William turned around for another supply trip. When William returned to camp his partner had passed away. William always wondered how it was, with all the flies in the cab of that truck, that he did not get bitten.
The Japanese Army in China surrendered to the Allies at the Chichiang air strip a few days after the atomic bomb was dropped. The war was over, “L” company and the 475th Infantry regiment was assigned the duty of Military Police (MP) in Shanghai. Among MP duties William had was guard duty in the jury room at the Ward Road Prison where Japanese prisoners were held for atrocities to the pilots accompanying General Doolittle. William left Shainghai on the troop ship General Blanchard sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge on his birthday, May 15, 1946. Reflecting on this day many years later William would say that he had no idea what a research scientist was while sitting there in San Francisco waiting for the train home to Colorado. The GI Bill for college education and the Atomic Bomb were about to change all of that.
Returning to Boulder, Colorado to work once again at the Shamrock Ranch in summers, William took the opportunity afforded by military service to enroll at the University of Colorado which was within walking distance of his Boulder home. It was an opportunity to learn the science behind the things he knew and loved which were the plants and animals of the Colorado Rockies. He walked to and from class daily with his friend from Boulder, Scott Carpenter, who would become one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts. With Botany his selected major, William entered a course of study to graduate in 1953. He played football and ran track at the University but what he did not expect was the entrance into his life by a Biological Sciences major, laboratory assistant, and accomplished ballroom dancer, Barbara Jane Hudson from Iowa. While looking for his faculty advisor one day William entered the lab and there was Barbara working on lab samples. Barbara said of the meeting “he was pretty nice” so decided to ask him if he would like to go over to a popular food and gathering place across the street from the campus called “The Sink”. The Sink was too crowded to get in so they went to a nearby basement coffee shop that had famous cinnamon rolls and William asked Barbara if she would go on a date. She said yes.
The first date William could think of was to take her to his favorite fishing spot on a mountain stream near campus. Barbara also had a love for the outdoors and it began a series of dates where they would hop in William’s red Willies Jeep and explore the nearby mountains. As for ballroom dancing Barbara later said “he was a klutz”, so her evenings at the “Top of the Mark” in Denver came to a close. Barbara said it was hard to find good dance partners and reminded him that the ballroom women not only could dance but had to do all the steps backwards and in heels. Even Fred Astaire could not do that. They both loved Big Band music with “In the Mood” being a mutual favorite. William preferred Johnny Cash and Barbara preferred Buddy Holly.
Dancing aside, William sealed the deal with of all things a missed date. William was working for the head of the Botany Department and on short notice been assigned to a plant survey team at a remote mountain University of Colorado facility known as Science Lodge. William could not keep their date so had delivered to Barbara’s campus apartment a huge bouquet of fresh tulips in a cut-glass vase with an apology letter. Barbara would later say “it was a very impressive letter” and it foretold of William’s prolific writing which resulted in over 80 scientific articles and papers and the prestigious Crystal Award from the Ohio Edison Technologies Centers for technical writing.
Barbara remembers one particular date to the best local Italian restaurant in Lafayette, Colorado. She was introduced to spaghetti and had her first glass of good wine thanks to William. An engagement ring followed and the whirlwind events of 1953 ensued. William and Barbara were both graduating from the University and were engaged to be married. They planned to go to Barbara’s home town of Charles City, Iowa to meet the family and make wedding arrangements. William’s mother made it very clear that William was not going to drive his bride-to-be in a rag-top Jeep to Iowa and sent him down to the Chevrolet dealer. William traded in his beloved Jeep for a brand-new forest green 1953 Chevy. After a quickly arranged wedding shower with fellow graduate students and professors, William and Barbara’s set out in the new Chevy on a life journey that would eventually end up in Richland, Washington.
William and Barbara were married on June 14, 1953 at the Congregational Church in Charles City. William and Barbara took a quick trip to the Black Hills on the way back to Boulder where William concluded post graduate work at the University of Colorado’s Science Lodge, Arctic Alpine Institute of Plant Ecology. Work at the institute included study of plant ecosystems from the base of the mountains to the tundra regions of high arctic elevation. The National Weather Service had weather stations collecting data at various elevations and the US Army had contracts to evaluate performance of vehicles and clothing for alpine use. One such vehicle was known as the “Weasel”, a tracked personnel carrier designed to go on top of snow. The Weasel was a dud and William became expert at putting tracks back on the thing at high elevation. The weather station data however became a basis for atmospheric movement and modeling of fallout. Combining weather data and effects on plant and animal life was the start of William’s career in radioecology. A cabin at Science Lodge was William and Barbara’s first home but William had been accepted for a teaching position at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington where he could finish his doctorate in botany. Barbara took a position at the University working in the Veterinary School as a lab technician. Together they would become dedicated WSU Cougars and two generations of Cougars would follow in their footsteps. Go Cougs!
In Pullman William and Barbara moved into graduate student housing and in 1956 their son Howard was born. Completing his doctorate in 1957, William and Barbara’s journey then went to Las Vegas, New Mexico where William split time between teaching at the New Mexico Highlands University and working for the Atomic Energy Commission at the Nevada Test Site studying radiation and fallout effects on wildlife and vegetation. William would later remark while remembering going into the ground zero surface test sites after the blast:
“I walked across the freshly created circle of bare ground leaving footprints in the gray dust. A desert breeze bounced a tumbleweed across the bare ground dispersing a few seeds at every bounce and finally lodging itself against a scrap of metal. As I walk away the desert breeze begins to erase my footprints. Somewhere in Kazakhstan I thought, a kin of this plant bounded across a similar circle of bare ground.”
Work at the Nevada Test Site created a new job opportunity at the Hanford site in Washington State for a first of its kind position “Environmental Scientist”. In 1960 the Rickard family moved to Richland to start a new life chapter as William took a position with the then Hanford contractor, General Electric, and then transitioned to Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as the original environmental scientist in the organization. Working for Battelle for 40 years he never really retired as he then took on teaching at what is now Washington State University Tri-Cities as well as time as a senior research scientist with the Environmental Assessment Services. William’s areas of interest included vegetation and wildlife of the Hanford site to include the uptake of nutrients and radionuclides by plants and animals. His research covered an amazing range: from Canada goose nesting performance; use of radioactive isotopes to mark individual coyote home ranges; movement and persistence of radioactive isotopes at abandoned production sites, vascular plant inventories; and aspects of shrub-steppe restoration. Often sent on special assignments, William was immediately dispatched to Sweden upon invite from that country prior to the Soviets admitting that there was a problem at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant as high radiation levels were being detected. Indeed, there was a “problem”.
The Tri-Cities was the home that allowed William and Barbara to see their son and two grandkids grow up in the same town and then all go on to attend Washington State University, each graduating in a different field. All family members came back to live in the Tri-Cities as well. William and Barbara kept closely involved with the “kids” and never missed a scouting, music, or sporting event they were involved in. William of course loved the fishing and hunting the area offered and could most readily be found at his favorite stretch of the Columbia River at Ringold with his fly rod and waders. His expertise in fly fishing resulted in quite a following among local anglers who often compared fly tying designs in pursuit of Steelhead. William and Barbara were among the founders of the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society in 1965 and for decades went on club field trips which included the annual Christmas Bird Count. As part of the National Audubon Society these counts provided critical data to the health of migratory bird populations and preserving endangered species.
William and Barbara traveled the world together attending scientific conferences where William was frequently a featured presenter. They traveled through Europe, Russia, Australia, and the South Pacific.
Domestic travel took them to many college towns as William was often asked to meet with graduate students and faculty in administration of doctoral programs associated with environmental sciences. Of course, there were always places to try fishing along the way.
On a snowy night in February William was getting ready to go to sleep. Always the Dad, he asked if Barbara was OK and checked off the status of all the kids. Assured that everyone was fine, he then cautioned that the roads were slick and to drive very carefully. Do not slip and fall he said. Then he said “I’m going to go to the house in Boulder, Colorado”. He laid back on the pillow and closed his eyes and that was that. I’m sure he stepped into the mountain stream and is fishing right now.
Currently, there are no services planned. William leaves his wife Barbara; son Howard and wife Michelle; grandson Gregory, and granddaughter Nicole and husband Garrett Garretson. Donations in memory of William can be sent to the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society at https://lowercolumbiabasinaudubon.org .
May 15, 1926 – February 14, 2021
Richland, Washington – William (Bill) Howard Rickard Jr passed away peacefully of natural causes at the age of 94 on Sunday, February 14, 2021 at Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland, Washington. William leaves a legacy of a caring husband, father, and grandfather to his family. His career as an environmental scientist includes six decades of research in the fields of botany, wildlife biology, and radioecology (the movement of radioactive isotopes in the environment). In 1971 he was instrumental in designation of the 77,000-acre Arid Lands Ecology Reserve (now known as the Fitzner Eberhardt Arid Land Ecology Reserve) as a federal Research Natural Area – the Rattlesnake Hills RNA. This is the only RNA that the Department of Energy has ever designated and is currently managed as a wildlife refuge by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as an important part of the Hanford National Monument.
William was born at the community hospital of Walsenburg, Colorado in May of 1926 to William Howard Rickard Sr and Emile Victoria Zalesny Rickard. His father worked in the local coal mine and his mother ran a boarding house. Several small communities were built around the coal mines in the area and the family resided in Alamo, Colorado where William and his younger sister, Victoria Jean Rickard, started school. Summer months the family spent on the Rio Grande River and up in the mountains fishing the streams and lakes of the Colorado Rockies. At age 5 William had his first pair of hip boots and the love of fly fishing began, soon catching a trout too big for his creel.
The Great Depression took its toll and the coal mines shut down. William’s parents combined talents of his dad’s expertise at fishing and hunting with his mom’s expertise at running boarding houses as a means for making a living. Creating a place where his dad could take guests on guided hunting and fishing excursions and his mother could care for the guests at a mountain lodge, they started the Shamrock Ranch located in Jackson County (North Park) Colorado. Soon the more well-to-do people looking for mountain adventure became regular customers and William at a young age learned the fishing and hunting guide trade allowing him to work at what he loved in the mountains of Colorado.
Because the Shamrock Ranch was not operable during the winter, the family established residence in Boulder, Colorado very close to the University of Colorado campus. William and his sister completed public school in Boulder with William graduating from Boulder High School in 1944. World War II was at its height and William would enter the Army immediately after graduation. His experience as an outdoorsman skilled in hunting and horsemanship would soon become valuable.
William was assigned to the Cavalry Replacement Training Center at Fort Riley, Kansas. He was assigned a horse to care for and was one of the last Cavalry “Pony Soldiers” in the US Army. Trained in army rifle, machine guns, hand grenades, bazookas, and mortars; William was specially trained to handle horse and pack mules packing weapons and materials in support of long-range penetrations in central Burma. At Fort Ord, California, William completed training in beach landings and boarded the troop ship General George Randall at San Pedro, California bound for India. The first stop was Hobart, Tasmania where William quickly bought fishing line and hooks and caught several fish off the dock beside the ship.
The trip across the Indian Ocean was stormy with massive waves and they arrived at Bombay, India the day after Thanksgiving. There they boarded a train to cross India to Calcutta which took several days. Train travel continued from Calcutta to the town of Ledo in Burma. Ledo was where William joined the 475th Infantry regiment which was organized from the famed Merrill’s Marauders and was part of the American Mars Task Force. As a replacement for soldiers killed in action a few days earlier, William was assigned to “L” Company and quickly trained for quick fire rifle shooting at close range in jungle terrain and dense forest and then flown to the village of Muse on the China/Burma border along the “Burma Road”. Sleeping in fox holes until the replacement company commander arrived, the 475th moved out of the valley with several hundred pack mules on a silent two-day march (no talking, only hand signals) to the town of Kutkai. William would never say what happened on that march. In later years while visiting the War memorial of the Pacific in Oahu, Hawaii, upon finding his company’s names on the wall the pain was evident.
From Kutkai “L” company was assigned to travel to Kunming, China, to drive trucks supplying Chinese forces trying to prevent Japanese capture of a remote airbase in Chichiang over a narrow road over steep mountains with numerous switchbacks. In Kunming it was learned that President Roosevelt had passed away. Taking ammunition to Chichiang and returning with wounded Chinese was a three-day mission repeated over and over. Everyone in the company had chronic diarrhea and malaria. This setting was William’s most engrained memory of the war which he shared. There were several types of malaria of which “blackwater” malaria was fatal in a manner of days. William’s fellow driver who sat by his side on one of those trips contracted blackwater malaria. When they arrived in camp his partner said he was feeling a little ill and went to the field hospital and William turned around for another supply trip. When William returned to camp his partner had passed away. William always wondered how it was, with all the flies in the cab of that truck, that he did not get bitten.
The Japanese Army in China surrendered to the Allies at the Chichiang air strip a few days after the atomic bomb was dropped. The war was over, “L” company and the 475th Infantry regiment was assigned the duty of Military Police (MP) in Shanghai. Among MP duties William had was guard duty in the jury room at the Ward Road Prison where Japanese prisoners were held for atrocities to the pilots accompanying General Doolittle. William left Shainghai on the troop ship General Blanchard sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge on his birthday, May 15, 1946. Reflecting on this day many years later William would say that he had no idea what a research scientist was while sitting there in San Francisco waiting for the train home to Colorado. The GI Bill for college education and the Atomic Bomb were about to change all of that.
Returning to Boulder, Colorado to work once again at the Shamrock Ranch in summers, William took the opportunity afforded by military service to enroll at the University of Colorado which was within walking distance of his Boulder home. It was an opportunity to learn the science behind the things he knew and loved which were the plants and animals of the Colorado Rockies. He walked to and from class daily with his friend from Boulder, Scott Carpenter, who would become one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts. With Botany his selected major, William entered a course of study to graduate in 1953. He played football and ran track at the University but what he did not expect was the entrance into his life by a Biological Sciences major, laboratory assistant, and accomplished ballroom dancer, Barbara Jane Hudson from Iowa. While looking for his faculty advisor one day William entered the lab and there was Barbara working on lab samples. Barbara said of the meeting “he was pretty nice” so decided to ask him if he would like to go over to a popular food and gathering place across the street from the campus called “The Sink”. The Sink was too crowded to get in so they went to a nearby basement coffee shop that had famous cinnamon rolls and William asked Barbara if she would go on a date. She said yes.
The first date William could think of was to take her to his favorite fishing spot on a mountain stream near campus. Barbara also had a love for the outdoors and it began a series of dates where they would hop in William’s red Willies Jeep and explore the nearby mountains. As for ballroom dancing Barbara later said “he was a klutz”, so her evenings at the “Top of the Mark” in Denver came to a close. Barbara said it was hard to find good dance partners and reminded him that the ballroom women not only could dance but had to do all the steps backwards and in heels. Even Fred Astaire could not do that. They both loved Big Band music with “In the Mood” being a mutual favorite. William preferred Johnny Cash and Barbara preferred Buddy Holly.
Dancing aside, William sealed the deal with of all things a missed date. William was working for the head of the Botany Department and on short notice been assigned to a plant survey team at a remote mountain University of Colorado facility known as Science Lodge. William could not keep their date so had delivered to Barbara’s campus apartment a huge bouquet of fresh tulips in a cut-glass vase with an apology letter. Barbara would later say “it was a very impressive letter” and it foretold of William’s prolific writing which resulted in over 80 scientific articles and papers and the prestigious Crystal Award from the Ohio Edison Technologies Centers for technical writing.
Barbara remembers one particular date to the best local Italian restaurant in Lafayette, Colorado. She was introduced to spaghetti and had her first glass of good wine thanks to William. An engagement ring followed and the whirlwind events of 1953 ensued. William and Barbara were both graduating from the University and were engaged to be married. They planned to go to Barbara’s home town of Charles City, Iowa to meet the family and make wedding arrangements. William’s mother made it very clear that William was not going to drive his bride-to-be in a rag-top Jeep to Iowa and sent him down to the Chevrolet dealer. William traded in his beloved Jeep for a brand-new forest green 1953 Chevy. After a quickly arranged wedding shower with fellow graduate students and professors, William and Barbara’s set out in the new Chevy on a life journey that would eventually end up in Richland, Washington.
William and Barbara were married on June 14, 1953 at the Congregational Church in Charles City. William and Barbara took a quick trip to the Black Hills on the way back to Boulder where William concluded post graduate work at the University of Colorado’s Science Lodge, Arctic Alpine Institute of Plant Ecology. Work at the institute included study of plant ecosystems from the base of the mountains to the tundra regions of high arctic elevation. The National Weather Service had weather stations collecting data at various elevations and the US Army had contracts to evaluate performance of vehicles and clothing for alpine use. One such vehicle was known as the “Weasel”, a tracked personnel carrier designed to go on top of snow. The Weasel was a dud and William became expert at putting tracks back on the thing at high elevation. The weather station data however became a basis for atmospheric movement and modeling of fallout. Combining weather data and effects on plant and animal life was the start of William’s career in radioecology. A cabin at Science Lodge was William and Barbara’s first home but William had been accepted for a teaching position at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington where he could finish his doctorate in botany. Barbara took a position at the University working in the Veterinary School as a lab technician. Together they would become dedicated WSU Cougars and two generations of Cougars would follow in their footsteps. Go Cougs!
In Pullman William and Barbara moved into graduate student housing and in 1956 their son Howard was born. Completing his doctorate in 1957, William and Barbara’s journey then went to Las Vegas, New Mexico where William split time between teaching at the New Mexico Highlands University and working for the Atomic Energy Commission at the Nevada Test Site studying radiation and fallout effects on wildlife and vegetation. William would later remark while remembering going into the ground zero surface test sites after the blast:
“I walked across the freshly created circle of bare ground leaving footprints in the gray dust. A desert breeze bounced a tumbleweed across the bare ground dispersing a few seeds at every bounce and finally lodging itself against a scrap of metal. As I walk away the desert breeze begins to erase my footprints. Somewhere in Kazakhstan I thought, a kin of this plant bounded across a similar circle of bare ground.”
Work at the Nevada Test Site created a new job opportunity at the Hanford site in Washington State for a first of its kind position “Environmental Scientist”. In 1960 the Rickard family moved to Richland to start a new life chapter as William took a position with the then Hanford contractor, General Electric, and then transitioned to Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as the original environmental scientist in the organization. Working for Battelle for 40 years he never really retired as he then took on teaching at what is now Washington State University Tri-Cities as well as time as a senior research scientist with the Environmental Assessment Services. William’s areas of interest included vegetation and wildlife of the Hanford site to include the uptake of nutrients and radionuclides by plants and animals. His research covered an amazing range: from Canada goose nesting performance; use of radioactive isotopes to mark individual coyote home ranges; movement and persistence of radioactive isotopes at abandoned production sites, vascular plant inventories; and aspects of shrub-steppe restoration. Often sent on special assignments, William was immediately dispatched to Sweden upon invite from that country prior to the Soviets admitting that there was a problem at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant as high radiation levels were being detected. Indeed, there was a “problem”.
The Tri-Cities was the home that allowed William and Barbara to see their son and two grandkids grow up in the same town and then all go on to attend Washington State University, each graduating in a different field. All family members came back to live in the Tri-Cities as well. William and Barbara kept closely involved with the “kids” and never missed a scouting, music, or sporting event they were involved in. William of course loved the fishing and hunting the area offered and could most readily be found at his favorite stretch of the Columbia River at Ringold with his fly rod and waders. His expertise in fly fishing resulted in quite a following among local anglers who often compared fly tying designs in pursuit of Steelhead. William and Barbara were among the founders of the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society in 1965 and for decades went on club field trips which included the annual Christmas Bird Count. As part of the National Audubon Society these counts provided critical data to the health of migratory bird populations and preserving endangered species.
William and Barbara traveled the world together attending scientific conferences where William was frequently a featured presenter. They traveled through Europe, Russia, Australia, and the South Pacific.
Domestic travel took them to many college towns as William was often asked to meet with graduate students and faculty in administration of doctoral programs associated with environmental sciences. Of course, there were always places to try fishing along the way.
On a snowy night in February William was getting ready to go to sleep. Always the Dad, he asked if Barbara was OK and checked off the status of all the kids. Assured that everyone was fine, he then cautioned that the roads were slick and to drive very carefully. Do not slip and fall he said. Then he said “I’m going to go to the house in Boulder, Colorado”. He laid back on the pillow and closed his eyes and that was that. I’m sure he stepped into the mountain stream and is fishing right now.
Currently, there are no services planned. William leaves his wife Barbara; son Howard and wife Michelle; grandson Gregory, and granddaughter Nicole and husband Garrett Garretson. Donations in memory of William can be sent to the Lower Columbia Basin Audubon Society at https://lowercolumbiabasinaudubon.org .
Published in Tri-City Herald on Feb. 28, 2021.
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