Deryl Bish

This is written by Myra, Deryl Bish’s wife of 60 years plus, while sitting by our bed a few days before Deryl passed over peacefully after dealing with Alzheimer’s for 20 years. Deryl always remained living in our home with God granting me the health and strength to be his constant caregiver.
And thank you to all of you who helped and offered to help.
Thank you to All Faiths Funeral Home in Grand Island for all of their help and kindnesses.
Deryl was preceded in death by his parents, Oran and Mary Bish. His older sister and her husband, Maxine and Phil Sargent. His older brother and his wife, Doyle and Evelyn Bish. His father-in-law and mother-in-law, Bob and Dorothy Hawthorne. And his sister-in-law, Patty Marsh.
Actually, Alzheimer’s, although a nasty thief, gave us so many absolutely hilarious situations to laugh about over the past 20 years. We decided early on that we could laugh or we could cry. We decided to laugh.
Deryl was born in his family home near Giltner on Aug. 11, 1944. When Deryl was 2-1/2 years old, his parents purchased the family farm where Deryl remained for the rest of his earthly life. Upon Deryl’s graduation from Giltner High School in 1962, his loving and generous parents moved to Aurora and turned over the farm and family home to him. Deryl and I were high school sweethearts and we got married in 1965. We didn’t have two dimes to our name, but we sure were happy. And we were given a great opportunity if we wanted to work hard. 
We were blessed with our son, Todd (Heather) Bish, who live in Grand Island. And a few years later we were blessed again with our daughter, Bobbi Wendt, who lives on her ranch near Ogallala. She had her Daddy wrapped around her little finger from day 1. Deryl enjoyed all the usual fun things like following all of our kids’ activities over the years, hunting, bowling, card parties, working on old cars and tractors with friends and car drag races with my kid brother, Mike Hawthorne, and even my mom (her idea) out on what used to be the unofficial Giltner drag strip. Deryl blew her away. And occasionally skinny dipping with me in our pond behind our home...younger years, much younger!
The sign on our gangway to our dock says, “Deryl Skinny Dips, Myra Chunky Dunks.” Pretty brave for a guy who couldn’t swim! Deryl also water skied and was pretty good. I think fear and the Good Lord kept him on top of the water.
He’d try almost anything for a laugh at least once. We enjoyed many ski trips to Colorado with family and friends.
Our first ski trip was with friends, Steve and Barb Alberts and my sister Peggy and her husband, Ron Hinrichs, as well as the Hastings Ski Club. We were the only novices. They thought it would be best to start at the top of the mountain where the snow was better. We fell for it! Then we fell many more times... that was the year Deryl earned, (and I do mean earned) the name, “Snowman.” I think that’s self-explanatory. If he could have turned his skis into kindling wood that first day, he would have.
But Deryl became an excellent skier over the years...when you could keep him, Higgie and Traudt and the young guys out of the trees. Deryl was good, but never as fast as our son, Todd. But then no one else ever skied as fast as “The Blur.” I remember the rest of us were all waiting for Todd to meet us mid-mountain at the chairlifts. While waiting, we all watched with amazement at the hot dog skiers who would ski off a cliff...some crashes were horrific. Then to our shock, Todd zipped off of that cliff.
Todd was airborne for what seemed like forever, but he landed it perfectly. Todd skied up to us with a big smile on his face.
Maybe because he was just glad to still be alive! He had taken a wrong turn following the skiers ahead of him...Wow, was that ever a wrong turn!! Ty followed in his Gpa Deryl’s and his Uncle Todd’s skiing abilities. A few years later, this time deliberately, our grandson Ty repeated his Uncle Todd’s flight off of that cliff. Same results, perfect landing and the same Cheshire Cat smile when he skied up to us. Unbelievable! Bobbi was also a great skier, but you couldn’t keep her out of the trees either...she’d follow Deryl or Todd or Ty. Oh the fun they had! I preferred the ski runs, so I could be their camera man.
No matter how busy Deryl was, he’d always stop to help family members, neighbors, friends or really just anybody. He is an extremely kind person, never prideful and always wishing the best for others.
Deryl always loved farming. It wasn’t just the work he did all of his active life, but a true joy for him. He was definitely a hard worker. He would jump out of bed with a smile on his face before the sun was up. Except for the one day he stubbed his toe in the dark. No smile that morning, but I learned a new word.
Thought I knew them all. I was wrong. Fortunately we were both early risers. After our kids got a little older, I was able to join Deryl outside working on the farm, not just doing office work.
It’s not work if you love what you’re doing... and we did. Planting and harvest seasons were long days, but our favorites. Hours before sunrise to long hours after sunset, but we always had fun, especially harvesting together. That’s possibly because on the first day of harvest every year, I would hug my Sweetie and warn him, “Honey, you make me cry and I’ll go to the house.”
Apparently he needed his auger wagon driver, because I never cried and I always loved harvest time with him. GOD blessed us both far more than we ever deserved.
Deryl went from spud guns to a cannon that he and an old school chum, Jerry Preissler, built out of old pivot pipe.
Shooting our nasty rooster out of the cannon at a party we had here at our home for a houseful of our friends was the highlight of the evening. Don’t worry about the rooster, he had it coming...just ask our Grandson Ty, who was only preschool age at the time. The following morning Ty and his Mom, Bobbi, came down. Ty asked his Gpa what all those red feathers were out by our little island. Deryl’s eyes got big, but he didn’t want to ever lie to the little guy, so he told Ty the truth. Ty stood silent for a little bit, then looked up at his Gpa and asked, “Can we do it again, I hate that rooster!”
Alzheimer’s put an end to Deryl’s 12 years of Christmas lights displays. We’d start hanging lights at the end of harvest and throw the switch right after Thanksgiving. Always surprised when we’d get so many thank-you calls and notes from people across several states. I learned not to stand still for too long or I’d get wrapped in Christmas lights. Seriously, been there, done that! Some years we nearly froze our fingers hanging lights, but we had so much fun.
Alzheimer’s also put an end to our flying fun. Deryl’s cousin, Don Bish, got Deryl started. (I’m sure Don told his wife, Leola, that it was Deryl that got him started.) They each bought open cockpit ultralights. They were Fred Flintstone aircraft that we stopped with our feet. Tons of fun! Deryl and I took ground school together. While I was only certified to fly ultralights, Deryl went on to achieve his private pilot’s license. While our plane was being built in California, I would sit for hours on top of our tallest grain bin, to try to get over my fear of heights, so I could enjoy another adventure with my Sweetie. It worked. We flew to many fly-ins across the tri-state area. I prefer to fly really high...no need to look out for towers. During those flights, I renamed my co-pilot, “Mr. White Knuckles.” So it was best just to let Deryl be the P.I.C., and I would read the maps, look out for towers and be his bombardier to drop the candy bombs to the neighborhood kids. Deryl liked to fly low so he could buzz his fellow farmers...a trick he learned from Dale Traudt, one of his very best friends. Oh how Deryl would laugh when he was able to sneak up on them from behind. That was before the days of GPS, so Deryl was responsible for a bend or two in some otherwise straight corn rows.
And Alzheimer’s also parked our motorcycles. Early in our marriage, we would take our kids, Todd and Bobbi, still in pull-ups and diapers on our little 75 and 90 motorcycles to the river on Sunday afternoons for picnics and fun. Deryl’s mother and my mother were fantastic grandmothers, but failed to appreciate our choice of family fun with our babies. Maybe it was because the kids would sleep on the way home laying over our gas tanks. Should have kept that fact to ourselves. Later in life, when we became grandparents, we saw their point. But the kids loved it and it was low-dollar fun, which matched our low-dollar bank account in our early years. Our motorcycles grew in size over the years, ending with two 1800 Honda Goldwing touring bikes. They are heavy bikes and we were in our 50’s by then. So we triked them out with Leman Trike conversions...got old and had to put back on our training wheels! But it gave us larger trunks for all our travel treasures. Many short three-day trips to Watertown, S.D., to the Terry Redlin Museum and countless one-day Sunday trips to the Blue Bunny Ice Cream Parlor in LaMars, lowa.
What bikers won’t do for a bowl of ice cream! Many annual trips to Sturgis, sometimes with fellow biker friends, but mostly just the two of us. So many trips we didn’t pick a destination, we just picked a direction...the fun is in the ride!
One planned trip was to ride the four corners of Colorado.
We headed south through Kansas -- it was 104 degrees, our helmets on, so we could talk back and forth over our CBs -- so we were looking forward to Colorado’s cooler mountains. After riding the southern boarder of Colorado, we parked our bikes in Durango. We rode the train from Durango to Silverton and back to Durango. Beautiful scenery. The next morning we hopped back on our bikes and headed north needing to get over the continental divide. Still looking forward to those cooler mountain temperatures. Well, we got them. They had just opened the pass up there that day. We were way above the tree line, icy roads and we got those cooler temps we were wanting. It was 12 below zero with the wind chill making it feel like 24 below. (Kansas was starting to look good.) Stopped at the ranger’s station...he thought we were nuts to proceed.
But since it wasn’t the first time we’d been told that, we continued. Deryl was always a strong and non-complaining man.
But half way across that God-forsaken area, I thought my strong man might cry like a little school girl. He didn’t. After the slow, treacherously icy (treacherous because if we’d slid off the edge of the road, it would have been no stopping straight down and certain death), and seemingly endless frigid ride, we finally arrived at Estes Park. We laughed and laughed at the dangerous situation we had gotten ourselves into, while we inhaled their largest stacks of pancakes with more than one pot of very hot coffee. All in all, we made the four corners. It was a great trip. 
Our Bucket List was to tour all 48 of the lower states on our bikes. We only got a little over half of the states, but it was great! We live in a beautiful country!
A word of caution: Don’t put off making your souls happy until after you retire. Those years may not look like you thought they would. So I’m thrilled Deryl and I crammed a ton of fun and laughs together before Deryl’s forced retirement.
For me, those memories have really helped over these past years.
Alzheimer’s finally took farming away from Deryl. But GOD always provides. Our oldest grandson, Tyson Wendt, was just graduating from college and was willing to take over the farm for us. Finally, and worst of all, Alzheimer’s took away Deryl’s memory of friends and neighbors. Then the most hurtful blow, that nasty thief took away Deryl’s memory of his family. But it was heavenly when his memory of us would return, even if it was brief.
Deryl and I were both blessed to have our son, Todd and Heather, (they cooked for all of us five nights in a row), as well as our daughter, Bobbi, and our grandson Ty around him all of his final week to say their good-byes. Each one of them have been such wonderful help and comfort. We are truly blessed!
For the past few years, Deryl has been my little “Benjamin Buttons” (a movie). Although Deryl was a 6’ tall, 200-pound man, he became the sweetest little 2-year-old you could ever want to care for. Then God granted us all one more blessing, allowing Deryl to be back in present day as loving good-byes were smothered on him, and Deryl lovingly responded. We were all able to see that wonderful God-given gift.
Thank you for letting me share just a few of my memories of Deryl and giving you just a small glimpse of the man I love.
I know this doesn’t even resemble the normal obituary, but Deryl and I have never been accused of being normal...so why start now. I was so blessed to get to travel down the road
of life with my very best friend and the love of my life. For those of you that never had the pleasure of knowing Deryl, look him up when you get to the glorious home we’re all heading towards. He’ll probably be hanging around with two of his old buddies already there, Dale Traudt and Clayton Higgins.
If they’re anything in their spirit bodies as they were in their flesh bodies, the three of them are probably testing God’s patience. Oh how they each enjoyed life! What silly thing one didn’t think of, the other two did. So many times we laughed till we cried. It’d be worth your time...it was sure worth mine.
Deryl’s “silver cord” parted his shell God gave him to use while in the flesh on Aug. 12, 2025 at the age of 81 years and 1 day. Deryl decided over 10 years ago what his wishes would be for when he passed. A private family Celebration of Life will be held at a future date. Deryl’s wishes were to be cremated. Being a true farmer to the end, preferably shot out the end of Ty’s spud gun, onto our original Bish farm ground, on whichever field Ty feels needs a little more fertilizer. Told you we weren’t normal. 
I’m not sad, but rather happy for Deryl, because I know where he’s at and who he’s with and that he now has full mental recall. But mostly because I know I’ll get to be with Deryl again some day. I am very contented and blessed with that knowledge. Deryl was loved by many. May God be with you all. HE sure has had HIS arms around us.