John Patrick Gillespie

GILLESPIE, GRASSMAN, CARMICHAEL, WHITE, MELROY, WRIGHT, SENENG

Posted By: Mary Welty Hart (email)
Date: 3/1/2006 at 20:29:29

Winterset Madisonian, Winterset, Iowa
March 9, 2005

JOHN GILLESPIE, Lancaster, Calif.

John Patrick Gillespie died February 11, 2005, in Lancaster, California. He was a fine Irish Lad.

John was born on a farm North of Bevington, Iowa, on May 20, 1918. He grew up in Madison County and graduated from Winterset High School. During World War II he served in Europe with the 9th Air Force as a C-46 Crew-Chief and participated in the D-Day invasion. After the War he lived in Guthrie Center and Fort Dodge, Iowa, before moving to Southern California in 1957 where he worked as a mechanic for the County of Los Angeles. He was retired and was a member of the VFW and the Moose Lodge.

His Funeral Mass was held at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lancaster on February 18. His, and the ashes of his beloved wife, Nell, will be interred sometime this summer in Churchville, Iowa. Nell passed away in 2001.

Besides his wife, Nell Carmichael from Guthrie Center, John was preceeded in death by his father and mother, Tom and Elizabeth Grassman Gillespie; his four sisters, Marie White of Winterset, Dorothy Melroy and Irene Wright, both of Davenport, Iowa, and Helen Gillespie (died at 2 months of age); and his two brothers, Frank and Leo Gillespie, both of Winterset.

John is survived by his daughter, Patty Bruington of Fresno, California; grandson Michael Bruington of Yosemite, California; grandaughter, Leah Seneng of Fresno; and great-grandaughter, Kiera Seneng.