Final Salute

Leland Clarence Lunderville Obituary

Leland Clarence Lunderville, the engaging, fun-loving, story and joke telling, hardworking, willing to lend a hand, handsome, adventuresome, honorable son of Alvin Lunderville and Lucelia (Craker) Lunderville, was gathered into the loving arms of his Heavenly Father on May 23, 2020.

Lee was reunited with his beloved wife, Janet (Konle) Lunderville; daughter, Kathy; and a multitude of family and friends who had gone before him. He died of natural causes from isolation due to Covid-19 lockdown.

He was born June 28, 1927, in Mondovi, Wisconsin, shortly after his twin sister, Elaine (Lunderville) Desgranges, (living). Other siblings are oldest sister, Leona (Lunderville) Monpas, younger brother, Merle and youngest sister, Sharon (Lunderville) Fuller (all deceased).

Lee spent his childhood working and playing on the family farm. At the age of five, he would sit on the horse to help guide it while his dad cultivated the fields. He arose early to milk cows before attending school. Those early days on the farm instilled in him an awareness and appreciation for God and nature, hard work, early rising, working alongside neighbors and hired hands while listening to their stories and sayings, and his mother’s and sisters’ hard work in the kitchen and around the house. He enjoyed working with his hands and farming, following the rhythm of the seasons for working the land. Later in life he would say, “If they would just work with mother nature.”

He attended Chestnut Elementary School and Chestnut Junior High in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. He graduated from Roosevelt High School in Port Angeles.

In 1944, at age 17, he left Wisconsin and traveled by train to Port Angeles, with the intent to work for Carnation Creamery milking cows. Instead he worked at Crown Zellerbach and attended Roosevelt High School.

He left school at age 17 to fight in WWII, joining the Navy on April 19, 1945. He was assigned to Parry Island, in the Marshall Islands Group, to prepare for the invasion of Japan. His unit was attached to the Seabees. As there was no fresh water on the island, he was one of the men assigned to distill water for all personnel. In a freak industrial accident while operating the desalinization plant, he received second degree burns over 30% of his body. He received an Honorable Discharge with disability on May 22, 1946.

While still a teenager, Lee was part owner in Grandview Grocery and Gas Station on C Street in Port Angeles. In 1946 while working in the store, Janet Konle, a new teacher at Lincoln Elementary School across the street, came in to buy groceries. He asked her if he could help carry her groceries home. They were married June 10, 1947, in Queen of Angels Church in Port Angeles. They enjoyed 71 years of marriage bliss before her passing in 2018. Throughout their marriage they were blessed with six children, Thomas (Diane), Terry Ann (Jeffrey) Norberg, Jon (Kathy), Margaret Baker, Kathryn (deceased) and Ronald (Erica), 15 grandchildren, 39 great-grandchildren and 5 great-great-grandchildren.

Granddaughter, Renee Lunderville and great-grandson, John Lunderville preceded him in death.

Longing to farm, Lee showed Janet 40 acres on O’Brien road he hoped they would purchase. Janet saw the property and said, “Keep going.” However, when driving around the corner she saw the view of the Straits of Juan de Fuca and said, “Let’s go back and have a look.” In April of 1954, Lee and Janet purchased the 40 acres with Janet’s stipulation that the little house have a bathroom put in. Not shying away from hard work and while working a full-time job, he began to carve and create a life for his expanding family. He worked on the house and put in a septic system, digging it by hand. Lee moved a roof to use for the barn he was building, took a welding class to weld the corner brace brackets for the barn, spent a vacation, evenings and weekends fencing, acquired cattle, hogs and chickens, had a milk cow for fresh cream, milk and butter, butchered various farm animals for sale, cut pulpwood for a little extra cash and cut firewood for the wood furnace in the house using a huge buzz saw attached to the front side of his 1941 Model B John Deere (Poppin Johnny) tractor that was his father’s first tractor. (And it hasn’t been overhauled yet.)

His father brought from Wisconsin a windmill on the top of his 1954 Ford. The windmill was reconstructed and put up over the well by Lee, his father, Alvin, and the men in the neighborhood. Upon its resurrection, a bottle of whisky was passed all around. The windmill is still standing. Lee and Janet purchased another 40 acres across the road. Lee had a large pond dug for field irrigation, that also provided great recreation for his and the neighborhood children. For many years the sounds of his tractors echoed throughout the area while working the fields, cutting firewood, yarding logs, giving hayrides and sleigh rides, processing many fields of hay for friends and neighbors or pulling someone’s car out of the ditch. Many in the neighborhood sought out Lee for seasonal farming advice. Around the neighborhood, the Lunderville farm was nicknamed “Production Hill” courtesy of pioneer and neighbor, Fritz Sutter.

Lee, crowned with a gorgeous head of white hair and usually a toothpick in his mouth, had a humble, caring and expansive loving soul that touched so many lives that he will be truly missed. He was a major source of fun, stories and jokes. It gave him great pleasure to hear the sound of the children’s voices while they swam in the pond, played in the fields, woods or in his barn. He even joined in a few of the children’s baseball games out in the cow pasture, along with other neighborhood fathers. Lee enjoyed watching his grandsons play baseball.

His children’s first driving experiences were on the tractors while picking rock or hauling hay. Many grandchildren, also, had their first driving lessons out in the fields hauling hay bales. A number of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren had rides with Lee on his ‘Poppin Johnny’ or 620 John Deere. With a laugh and twinkle in his eye, Lee loved relaying the story of Janet, a ‘city girl,’ helping to get hay to the barn during their early days on the farm. When finished loading the back of a vehicle with hay, Lee said, “I think it is going to rain. Head for the barn.” Janet hit the gas pedal and sped to the barn as fast as she could go, not wanting the hay to get wet, leaving behind a trail of hay. By the time she arrived at the barn, very little hay was left on the back of the vehicle.

He worked at Crown Zellerbach, Allan Distributing (Mobil) and Del Hur Construction. In 1975, he and his sons, Tom and Jon, formed LTJ Lunderville, Inc. The business began hauling export logs to the ships. LTJ expanded into two more trucks and hauled for many local loggers. Lee drove a logging truck until retiring in 1983.

Throughout the years, Lee delighted in talking with the pioneers in the area to learn the history. He and Janet enjoyed many years dancing square dances, round dances, polkas, schottisches, two-step and waltzes, traveling throughout the US and into Canada, crab feeds, fishing, playing cards, good times and laughing with friends and family. They spent 30 plus years snowbirding to Yuma, Arizona, where Lee enjoyed the company of numerous friends, cooked for various fundraisers, participated in hilarious skits and practical jokes, played cards, loved to dig and pan for gold, and played Santa Claus for an orphanage in Mexico.

For his 92nd birthday and Father’s Day in 2019, his family sent Lee up in the Colling’s Foundation’s B-25 Tondelayo when their Wings of Freedom Tour visited Port Angeles. He chose this aircraft because it was the aircraft of choice of Colonel Jimmy Doolittle for his April 1942 raid on Japan.

Lee was a Lifetime Member of VFW Post 1024. He was also a member of Queen of Angels Church, Fairview Grange, Elks, Eagles and Wagon Wheel Square Dance Club. When his children were in school, he served on the Fairview Elementary School Board and assisted with Boy Scouts.

Special heartfelt thank you’s to Lee’s granddaughters, Annette Lunderville and Colleen Lunderville for their extraordinary loving care given to their grandpa. Special heartfelt thank you’s to granddaughter, Tera Baver; her weekly phone conversations and letters, along with visits when possible, meant so much to Lee. And to his niece, Susan Mancera, for the handwritten letters, jokes, country and cowboy stories and poems to bring a chuckle to her Uncle Lee while he had to shelter in place in assisted living. Thank you to his daughter-in-law, Diane Lunderville, for her acts of kindness, and many delicious salads, homemade bread, soups and cookies and bringing his mail to him. Thank you to Dr. Mary Frances Lowdermilk, Primary Care Physician. And to Diana, Kelly, Sophia and Theresa of Park View Villas, nurses, Trish, Jennifer, Lynn, Haley and all the staff at Volunteer Hospice and Mike Perry of Linde-Price Funeral Home for their exceptional care and dedication.

Thank you to Ken and Sandi Billings for the neighborly visits, having a beer, sharing the bounty from their garden and homemade Christmas cookies and fudge. Thank you to Dena Wheeler, for always waving whenever she was out for her walks. Lee would wave and say, ‘There goes my girl.” And for the delicious applesauce Dena made Lee to enjoy in the winter months. Thank you to John (deceased) and JoAnn Pritchard for always being willing to lend a hand or tool, along with stories, quick wit and laughter. He valued their friendship.

Lee Lunderville, Celebrator of Life, WELL LIVED and MUCH LOVED !

Memorial contributions may be made to Volunteer Hospice of Clallam County, Queen of Angeles School or Fairview Grange.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions, services are unknown.

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