Frederick O Pedrick

PEDRICK, Frederick Oliver, 96, of Leesburg passed away in Riverview May 7, 2011. He was born in Stark, Florida on March 13, 1915. He was a U.S. Army Korean War veteran and retired from the postal service. He lived in the area since 1939 coming from Leesburg where he was a member of the Masonic Lodge. He was preceded in death by his wife, Ruth; stepsons, Robert and Ronnie Wood; and sister, Hanna Roof. He is survived by his son, Denny Pedrick (Diane); two step-daughters, Dorothy Edwards (Wayne) and Shirley Blume (Jerry); step-daughters-in law , Betty Sue and Tonna Wood; and numerous loving grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. A funeral service will take place at 11:00 a.m., Friday, May 13, 2011 at Stowers Funeral Home. The family will receive friends one hour prior to the service. Those who wish may make memorial contributions to Shriners Hospitals for Children.

The “dash” between the dates of March 13, 1915 and May 7, 2011 represents my Dad’s life.A short story of a long life that could be a book with several volumes

My Dad Frederick Oliver Pedrick born March 13, 1915 in Starke, Florida to Frederick Shackelford Pedrick and Gwendolyn Jones Pedrick. He was accompanied in life by one sister - Hanna Mae Pedrick who later became Hanna Mae Roof of Dunnellon, Florida.

I always would ask him about the Pedrick genealogy as did a man trying to sell a search for the family crest one time. His answer to this question was always the same “we came over on a ship with Lord Oglethorpe who got us out of debtor’s jail and they dumped us out in Georgia to develop the land and keep the Indians off of the rich folks to our north. When people would ask why I was so much taller than he would respond we had a tall ice man.

The stories told by my Dad telling of the times during his childhood and living with his parents told of the family moving several time with his Dad and my Granddad seeking jobs as a mechanic. They moved over the state of Florida beginning in Starke, Florida leading to central Florida area towns such as Gainesville, Ocala, Dunnellon, Inverness, Leesburg, Bushnell and Brooksville after they left Starke. They moved so much it was difficult attending schools and finally his parents separated and he lived with his Granddad Pedrick and ole railroad man and he dearly loved this Granddad. I have heard stories that as a boy he learned to take care of himself and developed a reputation as being a mean little fellow of which I had others who knew him confirm this with stories they experience with him. Dad himself confirmed this with his own stories never admitting he was mean with a response when told he was mean – he say “Who me”! One story confirmed by my Mom (Kate Kelly) he was trying to get to know her somehow and came up with an idea to get her attention. He and some of his Brooksville buddies (leaving names out to protect the guilty) turned an opossum loose in Bacon’s Drug store in Brooksville which cleared everyone out of the store until someone captured the thing and removed it from the store. His same Brooksville buddies borrowed (pranks were not stealing then) someone’s outhouse and transported it to the courthouse square for display the next morning when the courthouse open. Never heard what the fellow did when he came out and his outhouse was gone. Dad truly grew up to be a tough guy just like the movies “Tough Guys” and “Second Hand Lion”. He played football for the Hernando High Leopards with guys like Guy Maze, Ben Cappleman, Buck Hope and others it had to be a rough game like in the movie “Leather Heads” they too wore leather helmets too and at time played barefooted. For fun on the weekends they would borrow some chickens at night from one of the guys’ kin folk’s chicken yards and take them to Pine Island and cook up chicken and rice got shot at many times most of the time with rock salt. Though he was mean he could charm a rattle snake out of his rattler as the girls always thought he was the stuff. He was loved by his wives but Ruth was the only that put up with him with her love and she made him the best home anyone would want. Ruth confirmed a story where a neighbor farther up the street would walk her dog down to Dad’s yard and for the dog to take a dump in his yard with one of those reel leashes allowing the dog to go well inside Dad’s yard. One day Dad caught her doing this and threw some rocks at her dog and as the dog was running pulling hard and causing the lady to run also with her yelled back at him don’t you throw rocks at “my” dog…..Dad replied if “you” take a dump in my yard I’ll throw rocks at you. She never came back.

I found some pictures of Dad as a little boy and his facial features looked the same most of his life he just got bigger and his face didn’t seem to change that much until he began reach the age where changes set in growing old. The happiest face I saw on him was a picture when he was with Ruth when they were young.

While going to school at Hernando High in Brooksville he met my Mom (Kate Kelly) and they were married not too long after high school. They were married approximately 15 years.

The first stories were in the beginning when he got a regular job starting with the Florida Department of Transportation (known then as SRD/State Road Department) driving a tractor with a mowing machine attachment. He and my Mom were living in Brooksville at the time and then Bushnell and maybe Leesburg moving around the area with SRD. After a period of time with SRD his boss found out Dad could draw freehand and paint signs. So he began working in the sign shop painting signs, traffic and information signs and he soon was their official sign painter. His boss later worked on the Florida Turnpike and he told me one day he saw Dad painting sign or touching it up on the side of the road. He pulled his car over and got out to speak to Dad and said “Ped” what are you doing, Dad reply digging taters what does it look like I am doing (one of the first here’s you sign jokes). His boss said he just shook his head and got back in his car and drove off. Later his boss was his Sunday school teacher at the Main Street Baptist Church and they became good friends

Then we skip to some things I can actually remember as a child. He was working for the rail road express and I can remember him getting up real early (later learned at 4 a.m.) to go to the depot to meet the train and help unload and prepare freight to be picked up an delivered to the town of Leesburg and surround areas. After he left the rail road he would often hear the train whistle and jump up and be getting dressed when he realized he was not working for the rail road any longer. From what he told me we first lived in a trailer park in Leesburg which I have no memory of and he and Mom purchased the property he owned until death at 1101 South Street. I have some early memories later of the house being built but very little memory other than that. Next I can remember something about him while working at the rail road depot. He had to go to the induction center in Jacksonville to be drafted into the Army. He just knew he was going to war; WWII was in progress at the time and for some reason they turned him down. He came back and the rail road would not reinstate him in his job position as the position had been filled. During this time after he lost this job because of the mix up at the draft board which turned out he was too old to be drafted.

So he acquired a job and we moved to Brunswick, Ga. where he worked as a welder in the Brunswick Ship Yard. While in Brunswick he had a motor cycle wreck laying his motor down and sliding under a train. Seem s then the railroads only had cross bucks and used flares to warn traffic when a train was on the track and crossings the road during the dark hours. It was reported the flare was not visible because the trainman threw the flare having a spike in the end of it to stick in the cross ties and missed the cross tie and the flare rolled in the ditch out of sight. Dad broke his neck in the crash and wore a plaster parish neck brace and took it off about a month before he should because it was making him itch. After the Brunswick job we moved back to Leesburg and he built the original part of the house at 1105 South Street in 1940. It has been added onto but he still lived in this house until he came to live with me in 2005.

After coming back from Brunswick he worked for Jungle Auto as a mechanic and had turns of driving the wreckers responding to service calls and accidents. He was working there when he and Mom separated. After their separation Dad joined the Army reserve in Leesburg he said for something to do and make a little money. While I was staying with him one Sunday morning actually while we were traveling to Jacksonville which he did often on special days like father’s days and birthdays and sometimes at Christmas. We were going to Jacksonville to visit his Dad-my Granddaddy Pedrick and an announcement came over the car radio listing the units that were to be activated and members were to report to their commanding officer for police duty in Korea.

After a short visit we returned to Leesburg and I went back to Mom in Brooksville. He was told again he was too old and he didn’t have to go to Korea if he didn’t want to. He chose to go and turns out he was the oldest man in his company and he was named “Pappy”. I wouldn’t be too sure but I think he has out lived those he got close to while in Korea all of which were much younger than he was as he was 35 and before he got out of service he was 38 years old and most of them were 18, 19 and 20. His military tour of duty began in 1949 and ended officially in 1953 including inactive reserve after a period of time after returning from Korea. He went back to work at the Jungle Auto for a while and then worked for Minute-Maid in Leesburg. He took the postal exam with the post office and passed taking the job as postman. At first his delivery route was a walking route, then a bike route and later a truck route delivering the mail door to door.

After Korea and batching (still single) for a few years he met a really nice lady named Ruth Wood and they were married for approximately 40 years and he just lost her in 2005. He stayed as long as he could stand at their home without Ruth and by himself and after being cared for by his step daughters for awhile he decided he would move to my house saying if he got to a point health wise that he would have to live in a facility for old folks to be care for as he got older he said he wanted to be closer to me than Leesburg. He said with my step-daughter for 4 years across the street from my house and I did everything for him daily and when he began to be in need of 24 hour care It turns out that he let me know and I took him with me shopping and we located a small assisted living facility with only 7 other residence staying there which was his choice of three places we visited and where he seemed to be more content than ever since he lost Ruth. He cut the distance from such a facility in Leesburg 99 miles one way to 8 miles one way staying in Brandon allowing me to see him and keep a check on him daily. Ruth was a loving person and she was a mom to me after my Mom died in 1967. Ruth made my day just before she died a couple of day later. I brought her something to eat as she was lying down and didn’t feel like sitting at the table and out of the blue she said I love you boy then she said I am worried what is going to happen to Papa. I kept my promise to her and my Mom to take care of him and love him.

Dad lived to be 96 years old and up until two days before he gave up the ghost he was eating and drinking well as all at the facility, members and staff, would tell you Dad loved three things at this point, eating and sleeping and being pampered by the women caretakers. He loved fried chicken and we all had fried chicken every other week and apple or cherry pie. He passed away being made comfortable by all involved in taking care of him. He just eased out of this life quietly without showing any signs of pain or discomfort at approximately 5:15 p.m. May 07, 2011, the day before Mother’s Day. I had visited him three times that day and was returning from getting something to eat and was a block from him when I got the call to come back.

In closing I will sum up Dad’s life as a charmed life and the luckiest thing that happened to him after my Mom died was Ruth who took care of him for 40 years and for 9 years she took care of this mother, my Grandmother Pedrick. Ruth had to straighten Dad out at times but he was still tough and could be mean at times more so as he grew older and Ruth was the only one I know that could keep him straight she passed away still loving him just like my Mom did and it amazed me. But after keeping the ornery, aggravating sometime mean person he was for the last five years I not only loved him more not just as a little boy loved him when I was little but as a grown man loves and I got to like him too and respect him for his true grit. I was proud of him as he showed us all how to die like a man without a whimper

When he first came to stay with me he would say I want to die. I talked with him and told him I didn’t mind him saying he was ready to die but stop saying he wanted to die. The subject never came up again.

As Dad got older he had a really hazardous habit of falling which was only an extension of his youthful days. I can remember when he was young he had several bad falls while working on scaffolding or ladders or while on roofs. He was just plain accident prone.

In his 80’s he fell from the roof of one of his garages. When I ask how him how he lived through this without hardly being sore from the fall or breaking anything, his response was I landed like a paratrooper and rolled.

Ruth was after him all the time about doing things he could get hurt or killed. She saved him once when he had a car fell on him after the jacks failed while working under the car; he was in his 80’s.

Near the end he fell trying to do something he should not do trying to get out of his wheel chair into the bed. He told me the only thing that he worried about was when he fell was getting hurt. He said if it killed him that was fine but he just didn’t like getting hurt. His last really bad injury was when he had a bicycle wreck at 88 years old and he never saw a doctor. He was aggravating a dog making the dog think he was going to run over him and the dog went the wrong way and when Dad fell he landed on the end of the handle bar striking him in the middle of his chest. Ruth said he took Tylenols like peanuts for a while and soon got over it. This would be a good advertisement for Tylenols.

After I got older and after all the years of have known Dad which is all my life , 71 years, I got to know him more caring for him and being with him every day. First I realized why Mom left him when she was young and couldn’t understand him and I admire Ruth for staying with him but Ruth was a patience woman.

About two years ago when I trying to be serious with Dad I about his faith he would as always say he was raised by Presbyterians and Methodists and his wives were Baptists and he was just a heathen.

Finally a little over a year ago Reverend Larry Cusick got him to admit and confessed he was a believer as a Christian in Jesus Christ the Son of God and I was proud of him as that was one subject he kept to himself but really lived a life not bothering too many folks about anything pertaining to religion. He pulled pranks having fun most of his life and having fun and being active without alcohol or cigarettes. Doctors were amazed at how healthy he was and Dad said there was nothing wrong with him except that he was old and that was enough to be wrong. When it came to religion the only ones he would talk to and loved to give his ideas was the Jehovah Witness team that he came to know who came to visit with him and Ruth. Dad became good friends with a “Mike” through these visits and Mike who learned Dad’s ways liked him too and both seemed to enjoy the talks and visits. Ruth was the great hostess for the women Dad was the entertainment for the men who came to visit.

A truly tough guy and above it all his families, the Kelly’s, the Roofs, the Woods, friends and neighbors some or most of which he has out lived loved him and put up with his ways or ignored him. We all had to love him to put up with him at times. And at times he would show he loved us without actually saying it but when he did say he loved you he meant it and it was not a term he used loosely.

• His passions were the Masons, American Legion, Florida Sheriff’s Boys Ranch, and the Post Office when he was young he love boating and later camping traveling in motor homes everywhere and Ruth was right there with him. And of course eating sleeping and being pampered by this women caretakers. Songs were Lawrence Welch and the Grand Ole Opera County Music.

• He was a 32 degree Mason in good standing for 50 years-Leesburg Lodge No. 58 F. &A.M.

• American Legion 50 for years.

• Florida Sheriff’s Supporter for 50 years

• He was a Korean War Veteran with two bronze stars and an honorable discharge serving time in a War zone and living to tell about it. The forgotten War.

• He admitted to being a Christian by his belief in Jesus Christ the Son of God.

• We all will miss him as we miss Ruth and together again. His enemies would miss him too but he said he out lived them he had no enemies.