Gordon Rydholm

Thank you Bill Berrigan for letting us know of, yet another, sad loss. The following is from Dignity Memorial's Obituary page.

Mary; Gordon's sister has given us a warn bit of Rydholm (with Gordon) history. Check it out below.

Gordon Andrew Rydholm passed away on March 15, 2026, at the age of 79. He was born on September 5, 1946, and was a resident of Plummer, ID.

A Message From Mary

We were saddened and shocked by the passing of our brother, Gordon, my twin. He was active and seemingly healthy when his massive stroke began. Still on his feet when he got on the stretcher heading to medical, it was only the beginning; he was gone in just a few days. We are very thankful his suffering was short-lived. And thank you, Sharilyn, for accompanying him so that he was not alone.

Cuter than a bug’s ear, Gordon grew into a tall, handsome muscular man. He, with an unending curiosity about what was inside things & how they worked, was a tinkerer. At a very early age, Mom found him taking apart their only alarm clock. She told him he’d better get it put back together and ticking. He did! He was brilliant that way and it would become his life’s work, professional & otherwise. During his latter years, he would endear himself to the ladies on the Plummer ranches keeping everything in good repair. Indeed, on the day of his stroke, he was out repairing a gate.

Gordon spent four years in the Navy, and we as a nation thank him for that service.

We as twins were never close. But we did grow up together. Some of my memories include the time we, as first graders, were let off the school bus in a blizzard. We lost our bearings & were rescued by our neighbor who heard our cries. Then there was the time we decided to go get a Christmas tree. We loaded our baby brother, Dicky, on a sled, & away we went over the fields to find our tree. On the way back, Dicky began to cry. It took us a moment, but we did figure out that he was probably very cold since he wasn’t walking like we were.

We hightailed it back to the house as fast as we could, and thankfully no permanent harm was done. How fortunate we were to grow up on a wheat farm without tech. Tech in those times was a dial phone on the wall, a Bendix washing machine in the basement, and an electric stove & ice box. No TV; we read books. In Gordon’s case, he was probably out working on his two story tree house in the upper pasture or tinkering with something.

We climbed trees & spent many happy hours in the hay loft, jumping in the hay, playing “dog pile”, or climbing up the ladder to get a bird’s eye view of Viola, our little country town. We played in the wheat during harvest, & set up house under the crab apple tree from which Mom made delicious pickles.

We adored our older brother, David, who was the best storyteller! We were always begging for more. There is only one I remember about how in the 2nd grade you get punched in the stomach & pelted with snowballs by the third graders. I was sure I never wanted to get to the 2nd grade! LOL

Life would take us down different paths far away from each other, but one day when we were in our 30’s, I received a letter from him wanting to get to know me.

Life intervened & that did not happen, but I kept that letter for many years; it was so unusual and meant a lot.