Gary Meeker
Dec. 31, 1937 - Nov. 8, 2024
Gary Lee Meeker died peacefully in his Sacramento home on November 8, 2024, from complications of post-polio syndrome.
Born December 31, 1937, in The Dalles, Oregon, Gary was raised on a ranch rooted in the 1890s homesteads of his great-grandfathers Lewis Anderson and Philip Meeker. A born risk-taker who always evaded disaster through his unerring sense of direction, remarkable problem-solving ability, sheer determination, and iron stomach, as a youth he engaged in misguided adventures ranging from solo cliff ascents to blizzard expeditions to inadvertently drinking from a cistern full of dead squirrels. On the flip side, his Zen-like serenity also made lying on the ground watching the clouds a favorite childhood pastime. Always interested in learning, he enjoyed evenings in his family's Pleasant Ridge farmhouse reading the multi-volume encyclopedia cover to cover by the light of the oil lamp—this was before the New Deal brought electricity to the rural area—while his father, Earl Meeker, read the farming news, his grandfather, Samuel Meeker, read the Bible, and his mother, MaryAlice Bates Meeker, baked Parker House rolls in the wood-burning range oven.
Gary's interest in mountain-climbing
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