Wilbur Dean White

Wilbur passed away on Friday, October 2nd. He was a retired Boeing aircraft machinist and Air Force veteran. He was born in Hugo Oklahoma on September 9, 1937 to Pauline Gladys Spring and Arnold Leighton White. Wilbur was named after the baseball player "Dizzy Dean", so he was nick named "Dizzy" by his family in earlier years.

His family moved to Washington State in 1941 and eventually settled in the Seattle community district of Ballard. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1954 at the age of 17. He married Ellen Graves on November 19, 1955. In 1958 he witnessed the atomic testing in the bikini islands called operation Hard Tack. In 1960 he was stationed in Hawaii just after it became the 50th state. He was sent to Vietnam in 1966 just 3 months before his enlistment was due to expire. Despite his 12 years of active service, he did not re-enlist, instead he returned to the Seattle area where he was employed by Boeing from 1966 to 1973. He was on the team called the Incredibles that delivered the first 747.

In 1973 he went to work for the Woodland park zoo as a zoo keeper. Later he was asked to be a security guard and was one of the first Woodland park zoo security guards to go through and graduate from the Seattle Police Academy. While working at the zoo, he returned to the Air Force reserves as a C-141B Flight Engineer, eventually attaining the rank of Master Sergeant. He retired from the Air Force with 20 years of service. In 1976 he was able to return to Boeing working until his retirement at the age of 57 in 1994. After retirement from Boeing, he drove bus for Laid Law and 1st Student until 2007. He enjoyed a variety of hobbies throughout his life time: Softball, Bowling, Fishing, Camping, Motorcycling, Archery and Cruising on ships.

Wilbur is survived by his wife of 53 years Ellen; his sons Dale (Margie) White, Brian (Colleen) White; his daughter Carol (Bill) Freeman; grand children Jacquelyn, Eric, James, Mary Ellen, Kevin, Bailey & Mark; great grand children, Ashley, Alex; Twin sister Patricia (Roger) Hicks.