Lyle Fallang – June 13, 2022

I was born in Big Timber, Montana on June 22^nd, 1937.  My ancestors were mostly second-generation Norwegians all lured by the Northern Pacific Railroad with a promise of cheap or free land.  It was said that these early Norwegian settlers could raise a band of sheep on a flat rock, these were the settlers who spelled the end of the cattle barons.

I spent my early years on ranches in the river valleys and stalking the wild game that abounded.  As a child of the Great Depression, we simply learned to do without material things.  Warm shoes and coats had simply not been invented yet.  Snow shovels were plentiful.

I attended some little one-room country grade schools and graduated from high school in 1955.  With no land to inherit and nobody hiring I decided to join the U.S. Air Force.  I was trained to maintain electronic radio equipment and later television systems and did my thing for the next 27 years.  I had a variety of stateside and foreign assignments, some accompanied by family and some without.  I was married the day after I turned 21 in Ohio and saw that good woman to her grave 53 years later.  We have adjoining plots and a common stone in a local cemetery.

We had two sons to carry on the family military tradition. The older saw service in the Navy during the first Gulf War and the younger is a retired Army Major.  We also have a grandson and a granddaughter living in Colorado.  Thus, endeth the tale…..