Willard Luther Meek

submitted by: Willard Meek

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The person I did was my great grandpa Willard Luther Meek. He was born December 22nd 1931 in Tuttle, Oklahoma. His parents were Annabelle and Alvie Meek. He had two younger sisters LaVonne and Joyce. When he was young his family moved to Lamont, California to find work. His mother would bring him and his sister to work on a farm picking cotton and grapes or whatever needed to be picked. He had a mule.

In high school he did classes for Mechanics. When he did well in school he got a scholarship for veterinarian school but he didn’t take it and joined the Navy instead. Before leaving for bootcamp he married Joyce Ann Saunders on January 6th 1951 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

During bootcamp they had a ship made of concrete for them to train on. He learned more mechanics when he did bootcamp. His ship was parked in San Diego, California. He was in the Korean War when he was 18. He was a mechanic on the ship and he had to make sure the engine worked. They had a technique where they had some small ships that would make the enemies shoot. Then the big ship would see the fire and be able to shoot the enemies. He was on one of the smaller ships and was in charge of getting the ship out of harm's way.

When he came back he had a daughter that was 3 months old, her name was Gwynn. She is my Grandma. He moved the family to Bishop California and worked as a mechanic in a tungsten mine. After that he had another daughter, named Becky. He went to a police academy to train to be a police officer. After 6 months he became a motor police officer for Los Angeles City. He was an officer for 25 years. He raised his kids and they went to the lake a lot. They bought a boat and liked to fish and water ski. He called his ski the barge, because it was so big.

Then he retired in 1979 and they moved to Lawrence, Utah. He got his own farm. In 1991 they moved to St. George to help raise two of their grandkids. Which was my dad and aunt. This is where they lived for the rest of their lives. He died at 85 years old on August 16th 2017, which was when I was three. He liked camping, fishing, boating, shooting, and hanging out with family. He liked eating snow crab, tacos, and tempura. He traveled to Japan, Korea, and all over the West coast.

He was a good man he is dearly missed. He worked really hard in everything. I wish I could have seen him longer and known him longer. Even when things were hard he kept on going.