Lester Raymond Kistler

01-13-2025

I am Raymond Kistler, son of Lester Kistler. Thank you for attending this service for my father who passed away on December 20th.

Lester was born a twin along with his brother Chester, to a dustbowl family who recently moved from Temple/ Belton, TX in 1937. All of his mother Cleo’s family had arrived in the San Joaquin Valley 2- 3 years earlier. Uncle Mayo returned to Temple/ Belton for Christmas and saw how the family was struggling to survive and told them to pack what they could fit in the jalopy along with their kids and to follow his to California. It took them weeks to get across the AZ/ CA border due to border guards that demanded proof of employment before they could enter. They also had to leave their mattresses beside the road, but were finally allowed to enter California and start working at the Lindsay olive fields and canning plant.

We are like many in this Valley, a “Grapes of Wrath Family.” Lester’s mother Cleo Barrett Fritz and father Raymond Fritz were the last of the family members to abandon their farms in Texas at the end of the depression. Lester’s father passed away soon after arriving in Lindsay, CA just before the twins (Les and Chet) were born. Two of the middle children, Harold Dean and Dorris Nell, died soon thereafter. Grandma Cleo lived to be 104 and is buried right here in the Visalia Cemetery. Older sister Billie Katherine, 92, recently moved from Visalia to Tennessee with twin brothers & Chet’s Family and Sister Rosa- Dawn has already passed away. Our family (dozens of aunts/ uncles/ cousins) settled in the Visalia area and until very recently, we used to have annual family reunions with close to 100 local relatives.

Cleo had to raise 4 surviving children as a single mother before the days of government aid and she worked at many stores here in Lindsay and Visalia. Money was very tight and the kids couldn’t do a few school activities where they were told to bring a dime to attend. Les enjoyed Agriculture classes in high school the most. At 15 he built a ’29 roadster pickup like the one James Dean drove in the 50’s movies, “The Giant”. He won awards for horsemanship and rode Junior Rodeo. At 16 he entered the Navy. Prior to reporting for duty in San Francisco, he’d never been further from Visalia than a one day trip to Fresno. Entering boot-camp, he was carrying his horse saddle, but was told that he had to send it home on a Greyhound Bus. He also saw his first poodle dog on a leash at Golden Gate Park. At age 20 in 1960, right before being honorably discharged from the Navy, Lester’s last name was legally changed to “Kistler” because Grandma Cleo remarried. That same year Les met and married my mother in LA in their 3rd date. Les and my mother returned to Visalia, and he continued with bare bronc & bull riding in local rodeos, building and riding Harley motorcycles, working and starting a family. I was born in 1961 and my brother Richard followed in 1963. A couple of years later, my mother returned to LA and divorced my father, who stayed in Visalia working for Coca- Cola.

Just a few years ago Les learned for the first time he had a daughter, between marriages, named Stacy Shefield who had 2 children Selah and Quest who are all with us here today, so I hope everyone meets them.

In 1968, Lester spotted Judi Groh working at the Fox Theater on Main Street. He hopped out of his car and asked her out on a date. Soon they were married. He fondly referred to her as, “My Judi”. She took very good care of my father for 57 years- A shout out to her- she did 100% of all grocery shopping, housekeeping, cooking, cleaning and household management and she has been a wonderful grandmother to all the grandchildren. Together during their retirement Dad and Judi built a cabin without power tools, on land that Judi's family homesteaded in the 1800’s called Weston Meadows, inside what is now Sequoia National Park. As soon as the snow melted, they were at the cabin almost every free moment for the last 40 years. Les also built a ’46 Ford Street Rod and a '29 Ford Roadster, the way they were customized in the 1950's. Despite his love of hot rods and motorcycles, he preferred the view from horseback and he took care of a race horse breeding operation as well, during his retirement years.

I thought it was pretty cool to have such a young father - all of us hanging out on Main Street, The Belmont and Mooney Blvd. on our motorcycles; meeting up at Merle’s (the Slop-n-Trough) with Dad picking up the tab. It was still like “American Graffiti” during the mid 1970’s. We also built a couple of “custom choppers”. When we went off to college, I knew Dad loved us and how much he missed us, and for the next 40 years he reminded us that “According to the Good Book, a son and his children shall never live further than a 30 minute horseback ride from their Father” (Book of Les, Ch. 1 vs. 1).

Being of modest means, Les didn’t take vacations, travel, or buy RV's or boats. He taught us to be proud of what he called our working-stock background. He was Blue Collar and pro-Union. I think he travelled two hours to the coast, only a few times after serving in the Navy where he spent 4 long years staring at grey water, grey skies, on the grey USS Breckenridge and USS Hull. He would say, “I don't care to even smell salt water again!" The ships he served on felt like floating prisons. Yet the Navy taught him discipline and we grew up hearing our Father calling, "Revelry, Revelry, Revelry, All Hands on Deck; This is Theee U.S. Navy, with Wooden Ships and Iron Men”. To be clear, he was proud of his years of service in the Military.

Life Lesson#1: My father gave us our work ethic. You do what you got to do, no matter how you “feel” about it. “Feel” was not a word when it came to work. For about 25 years he loaded and unloaded wooden crates of glass bottled Coca-Cola onto trucks- by hand, with no forklifts. He would report on the daily tonnage he lifted and moved. He was strong and his hands looked like bear paws. He asked my brother and me why we wanted to go spend all the time and money to attend college. We answered because, “we want a career we enjoy". My father responded, “I never enjoyed a day of work in my life, but a man goes to work to provide for his family - period.” Enjoying oneself is saved for retirement which he diligently saved for. At about age 50, he took classes to pass his GED, so that he could finish his working career with the Tulare Co. Sheriff’s Department at the Wiley Jail. He observed that the fellow guards inside were more criminal than the inmates themselves. He retired early at 62, always claiming, “...but I never had a bad day of retirement".

Life Lesson #2: Dad was selling our 1964 Ford Fairlane 500 in the mid 70’s. It drank as much motor oil as gas. The engine mounts were rusted and the 289 motor was shot. Dad advertised it for $500. A couple came to buy it and Dad pointed out additional numerous problems with that dog of a car. The couple said it was all they could afford and handed him $500 in cash. Dad gave it back and told them, "This just isn’t how it works". He told them to “offer” him $300 because it will be in the junk yard in a year- and to finally settle on $350." The Kistler family needed the money as much as they did, but I was so proud of Dad at that moment; realizing that this is how a man carries himself with integrity and fairness.

Life Lesson #3: A neighbor was having a family room added onto their house with a big bar, and an in-ground pool; quite an extravagance in our neighborhood. Dad remarked that he couldn’t understand how the heck they had that much money? Within a year, they filed bankruptcy but they got to keep it all and Dad saw it as theft because they were able to keep everything legally without paying for it. He said, “Just because something is legal, doesn’t make it right; the legality of something is no measuring stick of one’s actions being either right or wrong”.

Les was a devout Christian, but not a "church-goer". Though never a ’'gossip'’, we talked once or twice weekly for all these years, about work, grandkids and classic cars, but mostly about examples of “integrity” that he experienced during his week. Every few months he would snail mail me and the grandkids, 3x5 note-cards with quotes and personal observations as well as newspaper clippings. He never had a computer, internet, or cell phone. He read his news instead of listening to it. I never saw him turn on a radio in the car. In fact he disconnected it from our turquoise '69 F100. He would rather hear the engine than listen to any news or music. He did have a few musical quips however: Hank Williams "Why does She Treat Me Like a Worn-Out Shoe", but he sang, ’'Why does She Treat Me like a Worn-Out..... Boooot'’, or "Throw another Log on the Fire". One of his funniest lines was, when a nurse attempted to draw blood, he told her, "They are just trying to take all my natural Viagra out and give it to Lesser Men".

I wanted to learn much more about his life and family history, so that I could write down a more extensive life story. His death happened sooner than expected. I wish I just had another year with him - but more importantly, I am grateful that Dad did not have to lie in bed and suffer a long protracted illness.

I am truly grateful for all of you that came out this morning; some traveling great distances, to support Les' family.

Prayer of St. Francis

St. Francis of Assisi

“Lord, make me a channel of thy peace, that- where there is doubt… I may bring faith; that where there is despair, I may bring hope; that where there are shadows, I may bring light; that where there is sadness, I may bring joy… For it is by self- forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.”