Walter Richard Trim

He grew up in Echo Park with his siblings, Charles, Ruth, Millie and Robert.

On September 27, 1953 he married his childhood friend, Lillian Jean Kirkness. Walt worked as a

machinist, and continued to use those skills when he transitioned his career to specialty printing after

buying Little Giant Specialty Printing Co. in partnership with his brother Robert. (Little Giant Specialty

Printing Co. was established 1946 by his Uncle Russell Tuck, and was closed in 2020 after 74 years in

operation.)

Walt and Jean took countless road trips across the country. In recent years, Walt enjoyed revisiting

these trips with an atlas and a pen, noting that he had been across every major interstate and several

routes that predated the interstate system and had visited every state except Alaska and Florida.

Walt was a man of prayer. To the end he prayed for friends in need of any help, and never failed to ask

for updates on how they were doing. And even if all of his children and grandchildren know his

before-meal prayer by heart (“Our God and Father, we turn to Thee and thank Thee for Thy care and

mercies over us. . . ”) we may never know the full extent of blessings we have received from his more

extemporaneous, daily prayers for his family.

More than anything, Walt was a family man. He took great pride and found much pleasure in his

children, grandchildren, and 27 great-grandchildren. Anyone who spent time with Walt in recent

years knew that they were his greatest pleasure and any sort of compliment about any one of them

was bound to evoke his added reflection “but then, which of them isn’t?”

Those who knew Walt knew that he could be relied on for whatever help was necessary - a ride to the

airport, a place to spend the night, rescue from a breakdown, an extra hand on a home project. For

Walt, love was a verb, and nowhere was this love more evident than in his faithful care for his wife

during the last eight years of her life.

Walt is survived by his 5 children and their spouses, 14 grandchildren and their spouses, and 28 great-grandchildren

(the youngest of these arriving any day now). Besides his “immediate” family of more

than 60 people, Walt’s extended and adopted family includes countless nieces, nephews, cousins,

neighbors, and friends.