Ernest Gale Krause

Gale passed away peacefully at his daughter’s home on October 2nd, two days before the death of his wife of 68 years.

Gale grew up on a ranch/farm in Copeland, Idaho on the Kootenai River. He knew how to ride a horse, herd cattle, bale hay, and fix almost any machine on the farm. He graduated from Bonners Ferry High School in 1947 and the University of Idaho in Moscow in 1952 with a degree in Agricultural Engineering. He shoveled coal and worked summers as a farm hand to pay his way through school. His first job was with the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs at the Colville Indian Agency in Nespelem, WA, as an Irrigation and Soil Conservation Engineer.

He was drafted on February 10, 1953 and was stationed for two years at Fort Lewis, WA as part of a rifle company. After his discharge, he reentered the Federal BIA at the Nez Perce Agency in Lapwai, ID. There, he met his future wife Wanda Childers, whose father Clarence also worked at the BIA. They moved considerably with the BIA from Lapwai to Nespelem, to Fort Hall, ID, to Sells, AZ, to Poston, AZ, to Window Rock AZ, and had two kids along the way. They ended up in Shiprock, NM in 1966 where he worked exclusively on the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project until his retirement. He helped to develop farming and irrigation techniques on an experimental farm known as Area Seven in Shiprock that would be used on a much greater scale by the Navajo Agricultural Products Industry.

Gale grew up hunting and fishing for recreation and continued this pursuit at all of his federal postings from sturgeon fishing on the Kootenai River of Idaho to elk hunting in the Olympic Park of Washington state, Arizona, and New Mexico, along with deer hunting all over. He took the family tent and trailer camping from the East Coast to West Coast. This travel included most of the national parks in the Western US and many in British Columbia. He was proud to say he’d been all the way from Key West, Florida to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska where he dipped his toes in the Bering Sea. Nighttime travel almost always included his recitations of Robert Service poems like the “Cremation of Sam McGee,” and his favorite western songs like “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” He often went out of his way to help his fellow man. He was a loving, steadfast husband, father, and grandfather. He will be missed greatly.

He was preceded in death by his parents, William Thomas Krause and Gwendolyn Eve Robel; brother, Robert Krause; sisters, Alice Yvonne Hinthorn and Dolly Josephine Krause; and grandparents, Robert Fremont Krause and Mary Teresa Conlon.

He is survived by his wife, Wanda (Childers) Krause; children, Robin and Dawn Krause; sister, Willa Lynn Krause; and grandchildren, Brandi McAlexander, Lacey Guinn, Gaila Sanchez, Chase Maxwell, Jane Lord-Krause, and Katherine Lord-Krause. He is also survived by great-grandchildren Josephine, Ed, Katie, Ernest, Seamus, Polly, Finnerus McAlexander, Bridget and Archer Guinn, and Gwendolyn Sanchez.

He elected to have his remains interred with the rest of the Krause family in Mount Hall, ID.