Dewey Duane Farmer

A true American Patriot died on January 15, 2016 in Yakima, Washington. Dewey died of natural causes after complications from aspiration pneumonia. He was 93. Born in Berryville, Arkansas April 26th 1922, to Dewey Farmer and Sue Garver Farmer. He moved to Nampa, Idaho with his parents who were seeking work during the Great Depression. At the young age of 9 he lost his father to a train accident, which was a loss he remembered his entire life. Each summer, while growing up, he was sent back to Arkansas to stay with Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins; working, hunting, fishing and otherwise enjoying the beauty of the Ozarks. At the age of 17 he enlisted in the Navy and soon found himself as a naval aviator in Hawaii where he survived a suicide mission in the attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941. He was in many of the WWII battles in the Pacific including 3 sorties during the destruction of the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway. After the war he returned to Pocatello, Idaho where his mother, Sue ‘Garver Farmer’ King, and stepfather lived. After a few ‘test the water’ jobs he settled into a career in Law Enforcement. It was at this time that he met and married Helen Pearl Hansen Lewis and later adopted her two children, Bob and Ann, who were left without a father after the untimely death of their father Weldon Lewis. Dewey’s law enforcement career started with the Pocatello Police Department where he walked a beat and later became a motorcycle cop riding an ‘awesome’ Harley (making his future grandchildren jealous). He left the Pocatello City Police to work as a Highway Patrolman for the Idaho State Patrol where he was assigned to south eastern Idaho. Dewey’s opportunities in law enforcement continued as he left the Idaho State Patrol to become a Deputy US Marshal requiring the family to move to Boise, Idaho. The family now included two more children, Craig and Nyle. After several years in Boise he took a transfer to Reno, Nevada where he was the Supervisory Deputy US Marshal in the Reno office for northern Nevada. For his last few years with the Marshal Service he took a transfer to Yakima, Washington where he retired. During his service with the Marshal’s office he was on body guard details guarding some of the most recognized names in the country. He also spent many months in the southern states during the political and racial unrest of the sixties doing his part to protect both high profile people and individual people’s rights. After retiring in the early eighties, and getting restless not even a year later, he went to work in the Regional Claims Office of Peoples National Bank in Yakima. He was good at finding people for the bank and assisting them with their financial workout needs. When the bank closed the Yakima office he went back into retirement and moved to their summer home in Island Park, Idaho which they had purchased back in 1956. While in Island Park he went back to work as a security guard for the gated community in which he lived on I. P. Bills Island. After several years of being a security guard he finally retired for good spending his summers in Island Park and his winters in Yuma, Arizona until he moved into Assisted Living a few years ago in Draper, Utah. In November 2014, after a short stay in the VA hospital in Salt Lake City, he was discharged to a full skilled nursing home in American Fork, Utah. In February 2015, he was moved from American Fork to the Landmark Care Center in Yakima, Washington. Dewey was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, having joined the church in his mid-thirties, and served in various callings in the Church over his lifetime. Dewey Duane Farmer was a good man, and as honest and hardworking a person as you could find. He was preceded in death by his mother, Sue Garver Farmer King, and his Father, Dewey Farmer, and his adopted daughter Ann Lewis (Pocatello, Idaho). Dewey was an only child. He is survived by his wife of 68 years Helen Pearl Hansen Farmer of Island Park, Idaho and South Jordan, Utah; three children, Bob (Veronika) Farmer of Redmond, Washington, Craig Farmer of Eagle, Idaho, and Nyle (Terri) Farmer of Selah, Washington; 24 grandchildren (one grandchild, Shad Farmer proceeding him in death); 79 great grandchildren; and 17 great great grandchildren. Funeral memorial services will be held on Saturday January 30, 2016 at 12:00 noon at the Creekside L.D.S. Chapel (10580 S. 5060 W Dock Street South Jordan, Utah). Interment will be in the spring in the Island Park Cemetery. Arrangements are being handled by Eckersell Funeral Home Rigby Idaho and by Brookside Funeral Home Moxee, Washington.