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Lincoln News Messenger (CA) - Thursday, May 26, 2005
Deceased Name: Will Franklin "Frank" Farnsworth
Will Franklin "Frank" Farnsworth died in Lincoln, CA, where he had made his home since 1939, when he and his wife Martha decided that the Los Angeles area was not a good place to raise their daughter Shirley Lee. Frank was born January 2, 1909, on a cattle ranch in Silver City, the Territory of New Mexico, the son of Will Silas and Mary Ella Bunker Farnsworth.
With the family on hard times, it took Frank seven years to graduate from high school in Phoenix. He'd go to school for a year and then work a year to help support the family. After his junior year, the owner of a cemetery where he had a job digging graves offered Frank a job as manager. "I could have worn a suit," Frank told his daughters, "but I told him I had to go back and finish school." Frank maintained this belief in education, serving on boards for Lincoln schools for more than twenty-five years. Appalled by the low teacher salaries when he first joined the board, Frank noted that teachers were afraid to complain, so he rallied support in the business community to raise the pay. In later years during budget crunches Frank always fought to maintain a full music program, noting "Man does not live by bread alone. Music is an important as mathematics."
When Frank entered Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles for an appendectomy, he met Martha Jones, a student nurse. Frank and Martha were married twice, the first time in secret and the second time, inviting her mother. Frank became a family man who read aloud from the Saturday Evening Post each week and sang his children and grandchildren to sleep each night with songs ranging from "The Sugar Plum Tree" to "Saint James Infirmary."
Looking for a place to raise a family, Frank and Martha were struck by the friendliness of Lincoln, where they'd heard a funeral home was for sale. Together they operated the Farnsworth Mortuary until 1959, when, on his fiftieth birthday, Frank told his family he couldn't bury friends any more. When Frank became a Placer County Lay Judge, he used his long experience as ambulance driver to caution drivers appearing in his court with speeding tickets. The constable soon learned the same thing Frank's family knew: When he started whistling, he was losing patience.
As funeral director, Frank usually enlisted a high schooler to play taps, but he liked to tell the story of when, at the graveside of an important military funeral, the military brass realized they'd forgotten to bring a bugler. He told someone, "Go to my house and tell Martha I need my trumpet." After Frank blew taps ("not cracking a note"), a general said, "Now I've seen everything: an undertaker playing taps!"
The Farnsworth family yard on First Street was a gathering place for games: From the sandbox with a real stove to the tallest swing in town to hoops, volley ball nets, tetherball poles, Frank filled the yard with possibility. His grandsons and their friends soared through the air on a flying Dutchman, and they continued the go-cart tradition started a generation earlier. Neighborhood children over three generations recall Frank's help in "building things" in the garage.
Frank had lots of good stories about working at different jobs in Arizona, admitting he didn't last long in the car repossessing business because peoples' misery was hard to ignore. Antique collectors would be aghast at Frank's surprise for his grandchildren; Using his collection of authentic, hand-woven Navajo rugs as "skins," he built teepees wired together with bailing wire and bamboo grown on the property. Those beautiful rugs were left to the elements - sun and rain - and his grandchildren's imaginations.
In the 1950s, Frank's building projects became more ambitious when he decided to build his family a home on I Street. He told his daughters, "Everything you need to know you can find in a book," and he never passed up a fix-it book at library sales or at Denio's market in Roseville, where he was a weekly visitor. Books on plumbing, electricity, cabinetry, and car repair filled his shelves. In the 1940s when Frank put his daughters on a train to visit their grandmother in Los Angeles, he gave each one $20 and instructions to fill an empty suitcase with books they chose at a city bookstore. In later years, whenever Susan came home to visit, he handed her $100 and drove her to a bookstore. In his seventies, he bought a set of the Great Books. And read them.
Martha figured it took six years for Frank to complete the new home because he often took time off to play softball with neighborhood kids on an empty lot he owned across the alley. And of course he figured that time helping younger children build a boat or two was time well spent.
Frank was active in community events ranging from the town band and Rotary softball to certifying Boy Scouts on their knot tying expertise. Most often, he was active in lending a hand - and a hammer- wherever it was needed.
Frank was proud to be a member of Lincoln's Volunteer Firemen. He would let daughters Shirley and Susan go to the fires if they could get to the car before he did. The fire whistle would sound, everyone would rush to the car and the girls would look for the smoke and direct their dad to the fire. When the new station was built on H Street usually was first to the station and he would drive the truck. The girls no longer joined him.
Unknown even to his family, he kept a small fund to lend to people who needed help getting over a rough patch. He never charged interest and nobody ever defaulted on a loan.
Sensing her loneliness when her husband was away on sabbatical, Frank started writing his daughter Susan a daily letter. She wrote back. They maintained this correspondence for more than thirty years (even though he threatened to quit every time the cost of a stamp went up).
Long before federal hot lunch programs were even a dream, Frank was upset to learn about children coming to school with only a raw potato for lunch. With the school board's agreement, he and Martha mortgaged their home to buy two surplus butler buildings (to be reimbursed when district funds became available). He and principal Karl Bayliss drove to San Francisco to buy the buildings. The entire community worked to erect those buildings and launch a program that guaranteed a good, hot lunch for every schoolchild. When Shirley and Susan worried about phone calls from officials from the State Department of Education threatening to put Frank in jail for "persistently violating school building codes," he told them that children were more important than bureaucrats. Lincoln school kids ate in that non-code cafeteria for decades, and Frank nailed up an 18" x 4" board from one of the packing cases in his garage: No 58-1395.400-500. A badge of doing what's right for kids.
Frank was preceded in death by his wife, Martha Jones Farnsworth; sister, Marianna Margaret "Molly" Farnsworth Nearpass; brother, Jonathan Bunker Farnsworth and his son-in-law Edward B. Russell, Jr. Frank is survived by daughters, Shirley L. Russell of Lincoln and Susan Ohanian (Hans) of Charlotte, Vermont; sister-in-law, RoVal Remington Jones of Alta Loma, California; grandsons James Franklin Kimbrough of Cucamonga, California and Michael James Kimbrough of Lincoln; great-granddaughters Rachel Kimbrough of Lincoln and Katherine Anne Kimbrough of Michigan; nephews Greg (Donna) Nearpass of Idaho and Lawrence (Judi) of Australia.
Bring your stories of Frank and join the family and friends at the celebration of Frank's life to be held at 931 First Street in Shirley's backyard on Saturday, June 11 at 10:30 a.m., followed by lunch.
The family requests that memorial donations be made to the Farnsworth Memorial Scholarship fund for Lincoln High School seniors at the U.S. Bank, 525 McBean Park Drive, Lincoln.
Arrangements by Chapel of the Valley, Carmichael.
Copyright (c) 2005 Lincoln News Messenger, Brehm Communications Inc., All rights reserved.
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Lincoln News Messenger (CA) - Thursday, May 26, 2005
Deceased Name: Will Franklin "Frank" Farnsworth
Will Franklin "Frank" Farnsworth died in Lincoln, CA, where he had made his home since 1939, when he and his wife Martha decided that the Los Angeles area was not a good place to raise their daughter Shirley Lee. Frank was born January 2, 1909, on a cattle ranch in Silver City, the Territory of New Mexico, the son of Will Silas and Mary Ella Bunker Farnsworth.
With the family on hard times, it took Frank seven years to graduate from high school in Phoenix. He'd go to school for a year and then work a year to help support the family. After his junior year, the owner of a cemetery where he had a job digging graves offered Frank a job as manager. "I could have worn a suit," Frank told his daughters, "but I told him I had to go back and finish school." Frank maintained this belief in education, serving on boards for Lincoln schools for more than twenty-five years. Appalled by the low teacher salaries when he first joined the board, Frank noted that teachers were afraid to complain, so he rallied support in the business community to raise the pay. In later years during budget crunches Frank always fought to maintain a full music program, noting "Man does not live by bread alone. Music is an important as mathematics."
When Frank entered Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles for an appendectomy, he met Martha Jones, a student nurse. Frank and Martha were married twice, the first time in secret and the second time, inviting her mother. Frank became a family man who read aloud from the Saturday Evening Post each week and sang his children and grandchildren to sleep each night with songs ranging from "The Sugar Plum Tree" to "Saint James Infirmary."
Looking for a place to raise a family, Frank and Martha were struck by the friendliness of Lincoln, where they'd heard a funeral home was for sale. Together they operated the Farnsworth Mortuary until 1959, when, on his fiftieth birthday, Frank told his family he couldn't bury friends any more. When Frank became a Placer County Lay Judge, he used his long experience as ambulance driver to caution drivers appearing in his court with speeding tickets. The constable soon learned the same thing Frank's family knew: When he started whistling, he was losing patience.
As funeral director, Frank usually enlisted a high schooler to play taps, but he liked to tell the story of when, at the graveside of an important military funeral, the military brass realized they'd forgotten to bring a bugler. He told someone, "Go to my house and tell Martha I need my trumpet." After Frank blew taps ("not cracking a note"), a general said, "Now I've seen everything: an undertaker playing taps!"
The Farnsworth family yard on First Street was a gathering place for games: From the sandbox with a real stove to the tallest swing in town to hoops, volley ball nets, tetherball poles, Frank filled the yard with possibility. His grandsons and their friends soared through the air on a flying Dutchman, and they continued the go-cart tradition started a generation earlier. Neighborhood children over three generations recall Frank's help in "building things" in the garage.
Frank had lots of good stories about working at different jobs in Arizona, admitting he didn't last long in the car repossessing business because peoples' misery was hard to ignore. Antique collectors would be aghast at Frank's surprise for his grandchildren; Using his collection of authentic, hand-woven Navajo rugs as "skins," he built teepees wired together with bailing wire and bamboo grown on the property. Those beautiful rugs were left to the elements - sun and rain - and his grandchildren's imaginations.
In the 1950s, Frank's building projects became more ambitious when he decided to build his family a home on I Street. He told his daughters, "Everything you need to know you can find in a book," and he never passed up a fix-it book at library sales or at Denio's market in Roseville, where he was a weekly visitor. Books on plumbing, electricity, cabinetry, and car repair filled his shelves. In the 1940s when Frank put his daughters on a train to visit their grandmother in Los Angeles, he gave each one $20 and instructions to fill an empty suitcase with books they chose at a city bookstore. In later years, whenever Susan came home to visit, he handed her $100 and drove her to a bookstore. In his seventies, he bought a set of the Great Books. And read them.
Martha figured it took six years for Frank to complete the new home because he often took time off to play softball with neighborhood kids on an empty lot he owned across the alley. And of course he figured that time helping younger children build a boat or two was time well spent.
Frank was active in community events ranging from the town band and Rotary softball to certifying Boy Scouts on their knot tying expertise. Most often, he was active in lending a hand - and a hammer- wherever it was needed.
Frank was proud to be a member of Lincoln's Volunteer Firemen. He would let daughters Shirley and Susan go to the fires if they could get to the car before he did. The fire whistle would sound, everyone would rush to the car and the girls would look for the smoke and direct their dad to the fire. When the new station was built on H Street usually was first to the station and he would drive the truck. The girls no longer joined him.
Unknown even to his family, he kept a small fund to lend to people who needed help getting over a rough patch. He never charged interest and nobody ever defaulted on a loan.
Sensing her loneliness when her husband was away on sabbatical, Frank started writing his daughter Susan a daily letter. She wrote back. They maintained this correspondence for more than thirty years (even though he threatened to quit every time the cost of a stamp went up).
Long before federal hot lunch programs were even a dream, Frank was upset to learn about children coming to school with only a raw potato for lunch. With the school board's agreement, he and Martha mortgaged their home to buy two surplus butler buildings (to be reimbursed when district funds became available). He and principal Karl Bayliss drove to San Francisco to buy the buildings. The entire community worked to erect those buildings and launch a program that guaranteed a good, hot lunch for every schoolchild. When Shirley and Susan worried about phone calls from officials from the State Department of Education threatening to put Frank in jail for "persistently violating school building codes," he told them that children were more important than bureaucrats. Lincoln school kids ate in that non-code cafeteria for decades, and Frank nailed up an 18" x 4" board from one of the packing cases in his garage: No 58-1395.400-500. A badge of doing what's right for kids.
Frank was preceded in death by his wife, Martha Jones Farnsworth; sister, Marianna Margaret "Molly" Farnsworth Nearpass; brother, Jonathan Bunker Farnsworth and his son-in-law Edward B. Russell, Jr. Frank is survived by daughters, Shirley L. Russell of Lincoln and Susan Ohanian (Hans) of Charlotte, Vermont; sister-in-law, RoVal Remington Jones of Alta Loma, California; grandsons James Franklin Kimbrough of Cucamonga, California and Michael James Kimbrough of Lincoln; great-granddaughters Rachel Kimbrough of Lincoln and Katherine Anne Kimbrough of Michigan; nephews Greg (Donna) Nearpass of Idaho and Lawrence (Judi) of Australia.
Bring your stories of Frank and join the family and friends at the celebration of Frank's life to be held at 931 First Street in Shirley's backyard on Saturday, June 11 at 10:30 a.m., followed by lunch.
The family requests that memorial donations be made to the Farnsworth Memorial Scholarship fund for Lincoln High School seniors at the U.S. Bank, 525 McBean Park Drive, Lincoln.
Arrangements by Chapel of the Valley, Carmichael.
Copyright (c) 2005 Lincoln News Messenger, Brehm Communications Inc., All rights reserved.
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Lincoln News Messenger (CA) - Thursday, May 26, 2005
Deceased Name: Will Franklin "Frank" Farnsworth
Will Franklin "Frank" Farnsworth died in Lincoln, CA, where he had made his home since 1939, when he and his wife Martha decided that the Los Angeles area was not a good place to raise their daughter Shirley Lee. Frank was born January 2, 1909, on a cattle ranch in Silver City, the Territory of New Mexico, the son of Will Silas and Mary Ella Bunker Farnsworth.
With the family on hard times, it took Frank seven years to graduate from high school in Phoenix. He'd go to school for a year and then work a year to help support the family. After his junior year, the owner of a cemetery where he had a job digging graves offered Frank a job as manager. "I could have worn a suit," Frank told his daughters, "but I told him I had to go back and finish school." Frank maintained this belief in education, serving on boards for Lincoln schools for more than twenty-five years. Appalled by the low teacher salaries when he first joined the board, Frank noted that teachers were afraid to complain, so he rallied support in the business community to raise the pay. In later years during budget crunches Frank always fought to maintain a full music program, noting "Man does not live by bread alone. Music is an important as mathematics."
When Frank entered Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles for an appendectomy, he met Martha Jones, a student nurse. Frank and Martha were married twice, the first time in secret and the second time, inviting her mother. Frank became a family man who read aloud from the Saturday Evening Post each week and sang his children and grandchildren to sleep each night with songs ranging from "The Sugar Plum Tree" to "Saint James Infirmary."
Looking for a place to raise a family, Frank and Martha were struck by the friendliness of Lincoln, where they'd heard a funeral home was for sale. Together they operated the Farnsworth Mortuary until 1959, when, on his fiftieth birthday, Frank told his family he couldn't bury friends any more. When Frank became a Placer County Lay Judge, he used his long experience as ambulance driver to caution drivers appearing in his court with speeding tickets. The constable soon learned the same thing Frank's family knew: When he started whistling, he was losing patience.
As funeral director, Frank usually enlisted a high schooler to play taps, but he liked to tell the story of when, at the graveside of an important military funeral, the military brass realized they'd forgotten to bring a bugler. He told someone, "Go to my house and tell Martha I need my trumpet." After Frank blew taps ("not cracking a note"), a general said, "Now I've seen everything: an undertaker playing taps!"
The Farnsworth family yard on First Street was a gathering place for games: From the sandbox with a real stove to the tallest swing in town to hoops, volley ball nets, tetherball poles, Frank filled the yard with possibility. His grandsons and their friends soared through the air on a flying Dutchman, and they continued the go-cart tradition started a generation earlier. Neighborhood children over three generations recall Frank's help in "building things" in the garage.
Frank had lots of good stories about working at different jobs in Arizona, admitting he didn't last long in the car repossessing business because peoples' misery was hard to ignore. Antique collectors would be aghast at Frank's surprise for his grandchildren; Using his collection of authentic, hand-woven Navajo rugs as "skins," he built teepees wired together with bailing wire and bamboo grown on the property. Those beautiful rugs were left to the elements - sun and rain - and his grandchildren's imaginations.
In the 1950s, Frank's building projects became more ambitious when he decided to build his family a home on I Street. He told his daughters, "Everything you need to know you can find in a book," and he never passed up a fix-it book at library sales or at Denio's market in Roseville, where he was a weekly visitor. Books on plumbing, electricity, cabinetry, and car repair filled his shelves. In the 1940s when Frank put his daughters on a train to visit their grandmother in Los Angeles, he gave each one $20 and instructions to fill an empty suitcase with books they chose at a city bookstore. In later years, whenever Susan came home to visit, he handed her $100 and drove her to a bookstore. In his seventies, he bought a set of the Great Books. And read them.
Martha figured it took six years for Frank to complete the new home because he often took time off to play softball with neighborhood kids on an empty lot he owned across the alley. And of course he figured that time helping younger children build a boat or two was time well spent.
Frank was active in community events ranging from the town band and Rotary softball to certifying Boy Scouts on their knot tying expertise. Most often, he was active in lending a hand - and a hammer- wherever it was needed.
Frank was proud to be a member of Lincoln's Volunteer Firemen. He would let daughters Shirley and Susan go to the fires if they could get to the car before he did. The fire whistle would sound, everyone would rush to the car and the girls would look for the smoke and direct their dad to the fire. When the new station was built on H Street usually was first to the station and he would drive the truck. The girls no longer joined him.
Unknown even to his family, he kept a small fund to lend to people who needed help getting over a rough patch. He never charged interest and nobody ever defaulted on a loan.
Sensing her loneliness when her husband was away on sabbatical, Frank started writing his daughter Susan a daily letter. She wrote back. They maintained this correspondence for more than thirty years (even though he threatened to quit every time the cost of a stamp went up).
Long before federal hot lunch programs were even a dream, Frank was upset to learn about children coming to school with only a raw potato for lunch. With the school board's agreement, he and Martha mortgaged their home to buy two surplus butler buildings (to be reimbursed when district funds became available). He and principal Karl Bayliss drove to San Francisco to buy the buildings. The entire community worked to erect those buildings and launch a program that guaranteed a good, hot lunch for every schoolchild. When Shirley and Susan worried about phone calls from officials from the State Department of Education threatening to put Frank in jail for "persistently violating school building codes," he told them that children were more important than bureaucrats. Lincoln school kids ate in that non-code cafeteria for decades, and Frank nailed up an 18" x 4" board from one of the packing cases in his garage: No 58-1395.400-500. A badge of doing what's right for kids.
Frank was preceded in death by his wife, Martha Jones Farnsworth; sister, Marianna Margaret "Molly" Farnsworth Nearpass; brother, Jonathan Bunker Farnsworth and his son-in-law Edward B. Russell, Jr. Frank is survived by daughters, Shirley L. Russell of Lincoln and Susan Ohanian (Hans) of Charlotte, Vermont; sister-in-law, RoVal Remington Jones of Alta Loma, California; grandsons James Franklin Kimbrough of Cucamonga, California and Michael James Kimbrough of Lincoln; great-granddaughters Rachel Kimbrough of Lincoln and Katherine Anne Kimbrough of Michigan; nephews Greg (Donna) Nearpass of Idaho and Lawrence (Judi) of Australia.
Bring your stories of Frank and join the family and friends at the celebration of Frank's life to be held at 931 First Street in Shirley's backyard on Saturday, June 11 at 10:30 a.m., followed by lunch.
The family requests that memorial donations be made to the Farnsworth Memorial Scholarship fund for Lincoln High School seniors at the U.S. Bank, 525 McBean Park Drive, Lincoln.
Arrangements by Chapel of the Valley, Carmichael.
Copyright (c) 2005 Lincoln News Messenger, Brehm Communications Inc., All rights reserved.
**********************************************
Lincoln News Messenger (CA) - Thursday, May 26, 2005
Deceased Name: Will Franklin "Frank" Farnsworth
Will Franklin "Frank" Farnsworth died in Lincoln, CA, where he had made his home since 1939, when he and his wife Martha decided that the Los Angeles area was not a good place to raise their daughter Shirley Lee. Frank was born January 2, 1909, on a cattle ranch in Silver City, the Territory of New Mexico, the son of Will Silas and Mary Ella Bunker Farnsworth.
With the family on hard times, it took Frank seven years to graduate from high school in Phoenix. He'd go to school for a year and then work a year to help support the family. After his junior year, the owner of a cemetery where he had a job digging graves offered Frank a job as manager. "I could have worn a suit," Frank told his daughters, "but I told him I had to go back and finish school." Frank maintained this belief in education, serving on boards for Lincoln schools for more than twenty-five years. Appalled by the low teacher salaries when he first joined the board, Frank noted that teachers were afraid to complain, so he rallied support in the business community to raise the pay. In later years during budget crunches Frank always fought to maintain a full music program, noting "Man does not live by bread alone. Music is an important as mathematics."
When Frank entered Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles for an appendectomy, he met Martha Jones, a student nurse. Frank and Martha were married twice, the first time in secret and the second time, inviting her mother. Frank became a family man who read aloud from the Saturday Evening Post each week and sang his children and grandchildren to sleep each night with songs ranging from "The Sugar Plum Tree" to "Saint James Infirmary."
Looking for a place to raise a family, Frank and Martha were struck by the friendliness of Lincoln, where they'd heard a funeral home was for sale. Together they operated the Farnsworth Mortuary until 1959, when, on his fiftieth birthday, Frank told his family he couldn't bury friends any more. When Frank became a Placer County Lay Judge, he used his long experience as ambulance driver to caution drivers appearing in his court with speeding tickets. The constable soon learned the same thing Frank's family knew: When he started whistling, he was losing patience.
As funeral director, Frank usually enlisted a high schooler to play taps, but he liked to tell the story of when, at the graveside of an important military funeral, the military brass realized they'd forgotten to bring a bugler. He told someone, "Go to my house and tell Martha I need my trumpet." After Frank blew taps ("not cracking a note"), a general said, "Now I've seen everything: an undertaker playing taps!"
The Farnsworth family yard on First Street was a gathering place for games: From the sandbox with a real stove to the tallest swing in town to hoops, volley ball nets, tetherball poles, Frank filled the yard with possibility. His grandsons and their friends soared through the air on a flying Dutchman, and they continued the go-cart tradition started a generation earlier. Neighborhood children over three generations recall Frank's help in "building things" in the garage.
Frank had lots of good stories about working at different jobs in Arizona, admitting he didn't last long in the car repossessing business because peoples' misery was hard to ignore. Antique collectors would be aghast at Frank's surprise for his grandchildren; Using his collection of authentic, hand-woven Navajo rugs as "skins," he built teepees wired together with bailing wire and bamboo grown on the property. Those beautiful rugs were left to the elements - sun and rain - and his grandchildren's imaginations.
In the 1950s, Frank's building projects became more ambitious when he decided to build his family a home on I Street. He told his daughters, "Everything you need to know you can find in a book," and he never passed up a fix-it book at library sales or at Denio's market in Roseville, where he was a weekly visitor. Books on plumbing, electricity, cabinetry, and car repair filled his shelves. In the 1940s when Frank put his daughters on a train to visit their grandmother in Los Angeles, he gave each one $20 and instructions to fill an empty suitcase with books they chose at a city bookstore. In later years, whenever Susan came home to visit, he handed her $100 and drove her to a bookstore. In his seventies, he bought a set of the Great Books. And read them.
Martha figured it took six years for Frank to complete the new home because he often took time off to play softball with neighborhood kids on an empty lot he owned across the alley. And of course he figured that time helping younger children build a boat or two was time well spent.
Frank was active in community events ranging from the town band and Rotary softball to certifying Boy Scouts on their knot tying expertise. Most often, he was active in lending a hand - and a hammer- wherever it was needed.
Frank was proud to be a member of Lincoln's Volunteer Firemen. He would let daughters Shirley and Susan go to the fires if they could get to the car before he did. The fire whistle would sound, everyone would rush to the car and the girls would look for the smoke and direct their dad to the fire. When the new station was built on H Street usually was first to the station and he would drive the truck. The girls no longer joined him.
Unknown even to his family, he kept a small fund to lend to people who needed help getting over a rough patch. He never charged interest and nobody ever defaulted on a loan.
Sensing her loneliness when her husband was away on sabbatical, Frank started writing his daughter Susan a daily letter. She wrote back. They maintained this correspondence for more than thirty years (even though he threatened to quit every time the cost of a stamp went up).
Long before federal hot lunch programs were even a dream, Frank was upset to learn about children coming to school with only a raw potato for lunch. With the school board's agreement, he and Martha mortgaged their home to buy two surplus butler buildings (to be reimbursed when district funds became available). He and principal Karl Bayliss drove to San Francisco to buy the buildings. The entire community worked to erect those buildings and launch a program that guaranteed a good, hot lunch for every schoolchild. When Shirley and Susan worried about phone calls from officials from the State Department of Education threatening to put Frank in jail for "persistently violating school building codes," he told them that children were more important than bureaucrats. Lincoln school kids ate in that non-code cafeteria for decades, and Frank nailed up an 18" x 4" board from one of the packing cases in his garage: No 58-1395.400-500. A badge of doing what's right for kids.
Frank was preceded in death by his wife, Martha Jones Farnsworth; sister, Marianna Margaret "Molly" Farnsworth Nearpass; brother, Jonathan Bunker Farnsworth and his son-in-law Edward B. Russell, Jr. Frank is survived by daughters, Shirley L. Russell of Lincoln and Susan Ohanian (Hans) of Charlotte, Vermont; sister-in-law, RoVal Remington Jones of Alta Loma, California; grandsons James Franklin Kimbrough of Cucamonga, California and Michael James Kimbrough of Lincoln; great-granddaughters Rachel Kimbrough of Lincoln and Katherine Anne Kimbrough of Michigan; nephews Greg (Donna) Nearpass of Idaho and Lawrence (Judi) of Australia.
Bring your stories of Frank and join the family and friends at the celebration of Frank's life to be held at 931 First Street in Shirley's backyard on Saturday, June 11 at 10:30 a.m., followed by lunch.
The family requests that memorial donations be made to the Farnsworth Memorial Scholarship fund for Lincoln High School seniors at the U.S. Bank, 525 McBean Park Drive, Lincoln.
Arrangements by Chapel of the Valley, Carmichael.
Copyright (c) 2005 Lincoln News Messenger, Brehm Communications Inc., All rights reserved.
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