CASPERS, Dale 1927 - 2017
CASPERS, ASHLAND, HICKMAN, OLSON, WREGHITT
Posted By: Pat Ludeke (email)
Date: 7/8/2018 at 22:59:42
Dale Caspers, 89, of Swaledale, passed away Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017, at Hospice of North Iowa in Mason City.
Funeral services were held 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thornton.
Interment will be at Pleasant Valley Cemetery, Swaledale. Visitation was 4-7 p.m. Tuesday at St. Paul Ev. Lutheran Church, 400 Larch St., Thornton.
Memorials may be directed to Hospice of North Iowa or St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Dale was born Oct. 9, 1927, on a farm near Swaledale to Deed and Freda (Wohler) Caspers. At age 5 he started country school to which he and Orville would either walk or ride a pony the 1˝ mile to get there. The family moved to Swaledale in 1934 and finished his home schooling from there on. His parents had a dairy operation and Dale helped delivering milk door to door for 5 cents a quart. Then a law was passed that the milk had to be pasteurized, so they quit selling and sent the milk that was left over after feeding the hogs to the Swaledale Creamery.
As a junior in high school Dale had to have a kidney removed at Mayo in Rochester. The doctors told him, “You better get a desk job for the rest of your life.” He tried to get in the service three times, like his father and brother but because of the lost kidney they would not take him. He graduated in 1946 from Swaledale HS as Valedictorian and went on to receive a BA degree from Iowa University. After graduating he went home and started farming and never left. That one kidney has served him well and those doctors don’t know what they were talking about.
He met Jeannette Ashland of Clear Lake at the Surf in 1952 and they married Feb. 14, 1954, to this union four children were born. Dale and Jeannette continued farming with cattle, hogs, sheep, chickens, corn, beans and hay, much of their equipment being homemade. They traveled over most states, Mexico, and Canada, fishing and sightseeing and were members of many organizations of the area. Dale claimed to have the largest collection of old outhouses anywhere.
At around 80 Dale started slowing down and eventually moved to assisted living in Mason City where he spent much time thanking God for many wonderful years with great family, wife, kids, grandkids and great-grandkids, also all his wonderful friends in the Swaledale area past and present.
Dale says when he gets to heaven he hopes God will explain to him why he took his grandson David, age 26, away from us at such an early age.
He is survived by his children: Jon (Carol); Mary; Bill (Deb), all of Swaledale; Lori of Mason City; grandchildren: Sarah (Jon) Hickman; Joni, Billy (Cacharel) and Brian (Carli); great-grandsons: Drew, Orion and a great-granddaughter due early April; brother: Orville (Bernice); sisters-in-law: Elaine Olson of Garner; Betty Ashland, Sequim, WA; and numerous cousins, nieces and nephews and his special friend Dolores McLaughlin.
Dale is preceded in death by his parents, his wife in 2004, and grandson David in 2014, nephew Jack Caspers, and niece Kim Lewis, brothers-in-law: Robert Ashland, Bill Wreghitt and Jim Olson.
Cerro Gordo Obituaries maintained by Lynn Diemer-Mathews.
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