Merle "Red" Hewitt (2015)

HEWITT, FIELD, ABBOTT, WITH, WOODS, CROCKETT, BAKER

Posted By: Shirley Keating (email)
Date: 9/23/2015 at 22:05:04

Yorgensen-Meloan-Londeen Funeral Home
Manhattan, Kansas

Merle Hewitt, Manhattan, Kansas

Merle “Red” Hewitt, 91, passed away on 20 September 2015 in Manhattan, Kansas. Merle was born on 12 November 1923 in Creston, Iowa, the second of five children. His family moved to a farm near Orient, Iowa when he was 4 years old, and much of his youth was spent roaming the fields and hills near the farm, hunting and fishing, often in the company of his favorite dog or older brother, Maurice. As a boy and young man, he had a shock of bright red hair that earned him his life-long nickname, “Red.” In high school, he was a star football player, playing left end for Orient (#22) before moving and playing for Winterset, Iowa during his final two years of high school. There, he met Sara Field, who became his high-school sweetheart, and later, his wife.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard, which he entered on 2 June 1942. He was initially based at Alameda in California, and then in Bolinas Bay north of the Golden Gate. Sara, his bride-to-be, travelled out to California by train to be with him, and they were married in Carson City, Nevada on 16 October 1942. When he was stationed out on the Farallon Islands, a group of small islands some 30 miles off the San Francisco coast, she actually lived with him there for part of a year, as was permitted then for the wives of the servicemen stationed on those desolate rocks. Among his duties on the Farallones was the care of the lighthouse, where he once saved a small aircraft carrier from running aground on the rocks by blasting the foghorn just in time to alert the ship’s captain that he was off-course. Perhaps just as importantly, he may have saved his fellow servicemen from starvation, taking over the job of mess cook, in addition to his other duties (and without compensation or promotion in rank, as he grumbled often in later years), when the isolated crew were marooned without a cook and had to fend for themselves. Very few man of that generation knew how to cook for themselves, let alone a large group of hungry young men.

After being honorably discharged from the USCG as a Seaman First Class on 25 September 1945, he and Sara made San Francisco their home, where they raised their daughter, Catherine, and eventually, two grandchildren, Kimberly and Gary. For much of his working life, Merle was an electrotyper for different printing companies in San Francisco, and then worked in real estate for a few years before Sara retired from her position with the U.S. General Services Administration. They travelled a bit, going to Europe, Hawaii, and on cruises to the Caribbean and Alaska. They were active in the lives of their grandchildren, attending their various school events and graduations; their grandchildren were extremely fortunate to have had the love and support of their grandparents in their lives. Merle was an avid fisherman and had shared his passion with his granddaughter, Kimberly. Together, they would go flyfishing in the Rocky Mountains each Fall while Kimberly was attending graduate school in Colorado, and even made several trips together there in later years.

After 57 years together, his beloved wife Sara passed away in November 1999, following a long illness during which he lovingly cared for her. Although he continued on, he never really got over her absence from his life. After the sudden loss of his only daughter, Catherine, in July 2004, he left San Francisco and returned to his Midwestern roots by moving out to Manhattan, Kansas to be closer to his granddaughter and her family, most especially his great-grandson, Johnathan, who was the apple of his eye. He was thus able to enthrall a new generation with his tales of rural life and sporting prowess from his boyhood days in Iowa. Although he spent much of his life in San Francisco, he always considered Iowa to be his true home and carried it in his heart until the end. As the saying goes, you can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy.

Merle was preceded in death by his parents, Ben and Florence (Abbott) Hewitt; siblings (Maurice, Rex, Ruth, and Donald); wife, Sara (Field) Hewitt; and daughter, Catherine (Hewitt) With. He is survived by his granddaughter, Kimberly With and her husband, Gray Woods; great-grandson, Johnathan Woods; a grandson, Gary (With) Crockett; and his sister-in-laws, Wilma (Field) Baker of Des Moines, Iowa, and Virginia Hewitt of Centennial, Colorado.

Cremation is planned with private family services to be held at a later date.

The Yorgensen-Meloan-Londeen Funeral Home, 1616 Poyntz Avenue, Manhattan, KS 66502, is handling arrangements.