Warner Rhodes Jr.

Kearney resident, 78

KEARNEY - Warner "Dusty" Rhodes Jr., 78, of Kearney, formerly of Anchorage, Alaska, died Friday, July 2, 2010, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney.

Memorial services will be at 2 p.m. Saturday at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Kearney with Dr. Ross Jutsum of State of the Heart Ministries and the Rev. Jerry Ness officiating. Military honors will be by Kearney American Legion Post 52, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 759 and the U.S. Navy Military Honors Team. Burial of cremains will be later.

There will be no visitation. Horner Lieske McBride & Kuhl Funeral and Cremation Services of Kearney is in charge of arrangements.

He was born Jan. 10, 1932, in Bay Shore, N.Y., to Warner and Marguerite (Cappe) Rhodes.

On Oct. 3, 1975, he married Margaret "Peggy" (Williamson) Shults in Anchorage.

Survivors include his wife; daughters, Kim Hilliard and her husband, Russell, of Kearney, Lisa Koudijs and her husband, Pieter, of Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, and Laurie Childers and her husband, Berry, of Anderson, S.C.; sons, Chris Shults and his fiancée, Jolene Oster, of Denver, Jim Rhodes and his wife, Joan, of Belmont, Mich., and Jeff Rhodes and his wife, Renee, of Ellwood City, Pa.; 15 grandchildren; and brother, Kenneth Rhodes of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

He grew up in Bay Shore, graduated from Woodmere High School and immediately joined the U.S. Navy as a flight engineer/gunner in a patrol squadron flying PBMs. From 1953 to 1961, he worked in private aviation as a dispatcher for ARAMCO in the Middle East, Northeast Airlines at LaGuardia, Transocean Airlines in the Middle East, Iranian Airways in Tehran, and Reeve Aleutian Airways on Shemya, at Cold Bay, Cordova, and in Anchorage. In 1961, he joined the FAA, where he worked until his retirement in 1993.

He was a life member of VFW Post 1685 in Anchorage. He was a foster grandparent volunteer in Grand Junction, Colo., and was the chief supporter of his wife's equine breeding and training operation.

He was preceded in death by his parents; stepsister, Jeanne Adele Powell; and sister-in-law, Patricia Rhodes.

Memorials are suggested to Make-A-Wish Foundation or St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

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