LOGAN, Utah – Our beloved father, hero, warrior, friend, Reuben Merritt Drake, aged 93, passed peacefully into the loving arms of his Lord and savior, Jesus Christ and his beloved wife, Edan, Saturday, February 25, 2006 at Sunshine Terrace at Logan, Utah.
Dad was born April 26, 1912 in Cedron, Victor, Idaho, to Merritt Frank and Eva Emaline Kunz Drake. He was very much loved and care for by his parents and grandmother, Phoebe Drake, who lived with them. Raised on a large farm in the Teton Basin, he loved the horses his father bred for racing, a love that continued throughout his life, and learned all the rudiments of farming, working from sun-up to sundown, even as a young boy.

Dad overcame many hardships and challenges, including the loss of most of his hearing due to red measles, and subsequent mastoid operations behind both ears as a young boy, and spinal meningitis as a teenager. He still went on to make something of himself because of his desires, and with the help of his sweetheart, Edna Johnson, whom he began courting in the fall of 1933, when she went to Cedron to teach in the country school.

Dad and mother were married March 1, 1934 in the Salt Lake Temple, after which they lived in the Teton Valley for awhile. Then they moved to Logan, Utah, where Dad continued the higher education he had started at Ricks College after high school. He graduated from the Utah State Agricultural College (now USU) in 1938, with a B.S. Degree in agronomy and animal husbandry.

Not long after he returned to do post-graduate study, taking the courses necessary to finish the Smith-Hughes teaching qualifications, enabling him to teach agricultural classes in high school. In the 1950s he attended ISU, and earned his M.Sc. degree in education.

Dad began working for the Soil Conservation Service in 1938, as a surveyor. He was meticulous and conscientious in everything he did, and was a master surveyor. His surveys in Utah, Idaho and Louisiana are used today. He had to move his family many times in these states. He was also given the assignment with the State Forest Service Dept. of Agriculture to plant shelter belts in the wind-blown counties of South Dakota and Nebraska, hard-hit by dust storms.

In 1941, Dad was transferred to Malad, Idaho, where he moved his family and where they lived until Dad resigned in 1947, from the SCS and moved his family to Pocatello, Idaho, where they lived on an acreage with a few animals, lovely garden, apple trees, raspberries and leased several acres for planting corn, thus passing on his high work ethic to his children.

Dad worked many different jobs in Pocatello, including deputy sheriff. He then taught agriculture classes at Pocatello High School, math at Franklin Jr. High School and worked for three years for the Dept. of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs at Fort Hall, during which time he surveyed all of Arbon Valley, something he could still point out with pride in his rapidly decreasing mental state in his final years.

He later served the Pocatello school district as the principal of Emerson and Roosevelt Elementary Schools, which he loved, and was loved by teachers and student alike.

Dad loved people, particularly children, and they loved him. His children and numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren loved and honored him.

Dad loved good music and had a beautiful singing voice, which he used right up to a week before his passing. He had belonged to glee clubs in college, had soloed and sung duets with our mother, performing publicly.

Dad was an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and held many positions, including one of the seven presidents of the Seventy in both the Malad and East Pocatello stakes, a bishop’s counselor and head of the name extraction program for many years in the East Pocatello Stake, and always as a teacher, especially to his family. He had a deep and abiding love for and faith in the Savior, Jesus Christ, and His gospel, and was a prolific writer of those things sacred to him.

Dad is survived by his six children: Sherrill (John) Redd and Ronald (Adonna) Drake of Pocatello, James Merritt Drake of Logan, Utah, Richard (Bonnie) Drake, David (Linda) Drake and Janey (Berniel) Maughan, all of Salt Lake City, Utah; brothers, Monroe (Vera Jean) Dustin of Victor, Idaho, Dent (Betty Lou) Dustin of Whittier, Calif.; and sisters, Iona Bailey of Albion, Idaho and Bonnie (Calvin) Putnam of Layton, Utah; 28 grandchildren, 64 great-grandchildren, with two on the way, and four great-great-grandchildren, with three on the way. He was preceded in death by his wife, Edna, his parents and grandparents, his stepfather, Monroe Dustin, Sr., a sister, a brother, a grandson, a great-granddaughter and a brother-in-law.

Memorial services will be handled by Downard-Hansen Funeral Home at 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 4 in the Sixth Ward Chapel on Princeton Ave., following the burial service in Plott 44 at Mountain View Cemetery at 1 p.m.