Richard F. Finn, age 94 of Sheldon, passed away on Friday, January 13, 2023, at Prairie View Retirement Home in Sanborn.
His service will be at 11:00 A.M. on Thursday, January 19, 2023 at St. Cecelia’s Catholic Church in Sanborn with Fr. Timothy Hogan officiating.
Burial will be in St. Patrick Catholic Cemetery in Sheldon.
Visitation will be 1 hour prior to the service at St. Cecelia’s Catholic Church in Sanborn.
Arrangements are under the care of the Vander Ploeg Funeral Home of Sheldon for Richard Finn of Sheldon.
Memorial gifts may be sent to Prairie View Campus (610 Eastern St., Sanborn, IA 51248) where they will be used for scholarships for employees seeking to further their education.
Karen can be reached at Box 222, Lake Park IA 51347.
Online condolences may be made to the Family at www.vanderploegfunerals.com
Richard Francis Finn, 94, died at Prairie View Nursing Home in Sanborn on January 13, 2023. Memorial Mass will be at 11:00 Thursday, January 19, 2023, at St. Cecilia’s (Sanborn) followed by burial at 1:30 in St. Patrick’s Cemetery (Sheldon).
Richard, the son of Nebraska natives Matthew Finn and Mary Ahern, was born at Carroll, Nebraska, on April 22, 1928. He started his life on his parents’ farm northeast of Carroll. When he was still quite young the family moved to a farm just west of Wayne, Nebraska and it was there that he learned the fine arts of picking corn by hand and milking cows. It was also where his lifelong fondness for horses took hold.
He attended Wayne High School, graduating with the class of 1945. After graduation he chanced to meet Edna Jensen, who turned out to be the love of his life. A student at Wayne State College at the time, she and some other coeds were on the way back to their dorm one night when one of the girls turned an ankle and were “rescued” by Richard and his buddies. They went on their first date the next evening and never looked back.
They were married on May 18, 1949. The wedding took place in Alexandria, Virginia, where Richard was stationed during his first stretch in the Army. After he was switched from active duty to reserve status they returned to Nebraska, living for a time at Norfolk, where their first son was born in 1950.
Not long after that he was called up for active duty during the early stages of the Korean conflict. The Army first sent him to Fort Lewis, Washington, but after going through combat training there the Army wouldn’t let him leave when the rest of his unit was boarding a ship for the war zone. In an odd twist of fate, the Army decided that he couldn’t leave until they could provide him with the right kind of boots for his B-width feet. While his fellow combat engineers set sail across the Pacific, he stayed at Fort Lewis.
It wasn’t long before they put him on another ship, however, expecting that he would catch up with his comrades overseas. When he arrived in Japan he found out that his unit had been nearly wiped out when they were sent into combat, so there was no unit there to catch up with. So, instead of having him serve with an engineers’ unit in Korea, the Army made him a clerk and kept him in Japan until he was released to go home.
When he got back to the States, he and Edna continued to live in Nebraska for a few years and then moved to Wichita, Kansas. He was a journeyman electrician by then, affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He was recently honored by the IBEW for being a member for more than 70 years.
By 1954 he and Edna had three more sons and in 1959, on the advice of their doctor, they moved to Prescott, Arizona, hoping that the climate there would improve the health of one of their sons (the doctor was right). During their stay in Prescott they added another son and a daughter to the family.
Richard worked for local contractors in Arizona until 1967, when he bought an appliance store in Prescott. At the same time he started his own contracting business. He ran Electric Supply & Contracting until 1973, when he took another doctor’s advice, after nearly getting electrocuted, and retired.
That opened a new chapter in their life as Richard and Edna decided to return to the Midwest. They bought a 200-acre farm north of Wausa, Nebraska, in the northeast part of the state, where Richard did a bit of farming and enjoyed the time with his family and his horses. He later went back to doing some electrical work and then took a position as a State of Nebraska electrical inspector for a few years.
When he eventually retired for good, Richard and Edna moved to Texas for a time and then decided to spend their remaining retirement years in Sheldon, Iowa, where they would be close to their daughter.
At their new home in Iowa Richard continued to spend time on his horses, but also kept busy working on lawnmowers and small engines. Things slowed down for him after Edna died in 2015. The horses were gone by then, but he kept working at his shop for at least a few hours almost every day. That stopped only when he was hospitalized following a serious fall in 2020. He eventually moved into the Prairie View Nursing Home, where he made new friends and took full advantage of the wonderful care provided by the staff there.
Richard is survived by his six children, Michael (Ava) of Frisco, Texas; James (Linda) of Onsted, Michigan; Richard (Guadalupe) of Tucson, Arizona; Brian of Williams, Arizona; Karen (Barry Sterk) of Lake Park, Iowa; and Stephen (Susan) of Salt Lake City, Utah. He is also survived by 10 grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, one step great-grandchild and one step great, great-grandchild and his sister Betty (Carney-Budler).
In addition to his wife, he was preceded in death by four brothers, Leo, John, Gene and Dean, daughter-in-law, Catherine Finn, and a sister, Ellen Lantaff.
