Wilford "Bill" Thor Ivie

Bill’s Life

Wilford Thor “Bill” Ivie was born 1 January 1926 in Provo, Utah.  He was the New Year’s Baby for Utah County.  He passed away quietly in his sleep 15 June 2019 at the Sunridge Assisted Living Facility in Layton, Utah.  He had only been there for two weeks.  He had lost the use of his legs years ago and was confined to a wheelchair and he had lost the will to go on as Darline, his wife of 72 years, had passed away on 26 April 2019.

Bill was the 4th of seven children born to Wilford Byron Ivie and Annie Lucille Peterson.  He was one of those people who can’t sit still and just had to know how things work.  When he was 15 he bought a service station.  He had someone run it while he was at school and he repaired cars at night.  He dropped out of school when he was 17 to join the Navy with some friends during World War II.

After finishing boot camp at Farragut Naval Training Station in Northern Idaho he was assigned to the ship LCIG-66.  He was a machinist unless they were firing the guns and then he was an assistant gunner. Two of his stories that he shared with his grandkids were exciting.  The first was when his ship went up the Mindanao River to shell an old castle that was held by the Japanese.  It was late in the season and on the way back down the river the water level had dropped.  They got stuck on a sandbar and remained there for almost three months till the rainy season started and they could continue going down stream.  Every day a Japanese patrol would come by and take a couple of shots at them.  They ran out of food and started trading the natives anything they could detach from the ship for chickens, bananas, etc.  His other story was when his ship was shelling a gun emplacement in a harbor in Borneo.  They went over a mine, but it didn’t explode immediately.  It bounced along the hull and was within feet of clearing the ship when it finally went off.  The explosion bent the propeller shaft, took out the engine and one of the generators.  It also separated the steel plating and water was leaking in.  They got one generator going and used that to run the bilge pump to keep the ship from flooding and sinking.  They had to be towed for a couple of days to a dry dock facility to make repairs.  While they were in dry dock the war ended, but they couldn’t go home till the ship was fixed.

He was sent back to Utah to the Marine Barracks, Clearfield Naval Supply Depot in Clearfield, Utah and served as a Shore Patrol officer till his could be discharged.  Bill grew up in Springville, Utah and before leaving for war he had met a young lady from Spanish Fork.  She happened to be working at the Depot when he got there.  She was released from her job and in April he was discharged from the Navy.  Eight months later they eloped to Las Vegas and were married on 30 December 1946.  To this union was born four children: Shirley Lanae, Janeil Ann, Ronald Jay and Kenneth Thor.

Bill tried his hand at a number of jobs including working at his father’s old job at the Geneva Steel Mill in Orem.  It only took two weeks to realize he didn’t want to do that.  He worked road construction in the summer and mined at the old Lark Mine above Herriman in the winter.

He liked to go hunting especially with his brother-in-law Loyal Runolfson.  One time they went hunting and were coming home in the dark.  They came upon a deer in the road and the deer looked into the headlights and didn’t move.  They both carefully got out of the car and retrieved their rifles from the trunk.  It was only when they drew a bead on the deer did they realize they had each other’s gun.  Without thinking they both walked across in front of the car to exchange rifles.  The trouble with that was that they broke the light beam shining on the deer.  Released from its hypnotic trance the deer scurried into the forest before they could shoot.

In 1958 he started working for the US Government at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.  He commuted the first couple of years including flying in each day with his brother-in-law.  There were four of them.  When they landed two would tie the plane down and two would get the car they bought started and warmed up.  Then they would drive the 10 miles from the main gate to where they worked. In 1960 he moved his family out to Dugway because he was tired of commuting.  He worked as a heavy duty mechanic until he retired in 1986.  However, not all things he did were heavy duty.  In the 60s when Inverters were first introduced the government bought a bunch of them at $125 a piece so their vehicles could have electricity out in the desert.  One of the inverters didn’t work and they gave it to Bill to see if he could fix it.  He did fix it and then went to Radio Shack, spent $25 and made his own inverter for his pickup.  After living at Dugway for 15 years he moved to Terra, Utah at the foot of the mountains leading to Dugway.  He moved to Tooele and commuted for his last two years of work.  On a fishing trip to Fish Lake they passed through Gunnison, Utah.  They went back the next day and bought a house and lived there for the next 20 years.  They were there 11 years before people quit referring to them as the “new people”.  After both of them were hospitalized in 2005 Lanae moved them to Harrisville in 2006 to be closer to family.  They spent their last 13 years there.

Preceding him in death were: his parents, his brothers Calvert, Hugh and Quinton, his sister Betty, his wife Darline and son Ron.  Surviving him is his brother Richard “Pete” Ivie of North Ogden, his sister Jane Edenfield of Spanish Fork, his daughters Lanae (Dennis) Baxter of Kaysville, Janeil (Al) Ivie-Hart of SLC, his son Ken (Shannon) Ivie of Mtn Home, Idaho; 11 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, and 3 great-great-grandchildren.

Graveside services will be held on Friday June 21, 2019 at Spanish Fork Cemetery.