George Joseph Trosper

George Joseph Trosper, passed Friday peacefully of natural causes at the Park Regency nursing facility in Chandler at the age of 93. Funeral Services will be Tues, Nov 23, 2004 at Bueler Mortuary at 14 W. Hulet Drive Chandler. Graveside services will follow at Mesa Cemetery, 1212 N. Center St., Mesa. Bueler Mortuary will also host a viewing and Masonic Ceremony Monday, Nov 22, 2004 at 7:00 p.m. As a member of the Chandler City Council in the 1940's, Trosper was instrumental in getting the 15 mile per hour speed limit for school zones passed, as well as the requirement of trains to slow to 35 miles per hour when passing through Chandler. He was a fifty-year member of the Chandler Masonic Lodge. As a young man Trosper helped drill the first well in what was to become Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point). Trosper was an Arizona pioneer. He was born July 4, 1911 in Alliance, NE, but he arrived in Arizona at the age of three months - five months prior to Arizona's admission as a state. Trosper's father, George Jackson Trosper, a refrigeration engineer, was responsible for the construction of many of the ice plants in Arizona that served the railroad and the mines in the early part of the last century. Although, he spent time in many of the towns around Arizona, Trosper always considered Gila Bend (where a street is named for his family) to be his home-town. After serving as mechanics foreman for Standard Oil of California (now Cheveron/Texaco) for 27 years, Trosper retired to Show Low in 1979. Trosper and his wife Bernice, were married October 3, 1931 in Florence, Arizona, where they had eloped. That marriage survived for 73 years until his passing on Friday. Trosper's sense of mischief and humor was legendary to those who knew him. He once horrified his family by driving down the middle of the road in England. When he was asked, he simply replied that he couldn't figure out which side of the road to drive on. He is survived by his wife, Bernice Trosper, his daughter Sharon Dixon - four grandchildren, three great grandchildren, three sons-in-law, and two great-granddaughters-in-law.