Chester Fry

Chester Fry WILTON, Iowa - Chester Fry, 88, of Wilton, passed away on Friday, July 25, 2008, at Simpson Memorial Home, West Liberty, Iowa. Funeral Service will be 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 30, 2008, at the Bentley Funeral Home, Wilton. The Rev. Tom Zeleny will officiate. Musical selections will be provided by organist Deb Mohr and vocalist Henry Bentley. Casketbearers will be Dick Valet, Larry Soteros, Jim Driscoll, Leon Dietz, Bill Kepke, and David Thompson. Interment will take place at the Oakdale Cemetery, Wilton. Visitation will be from 4 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 29, 2008, at the funeral home. In lieu of gifts of food or flowers, the family request contribution be made to the Wilton Food Pantry or the Wilton First Responders in his memory. Chester was born on November 13, 1919, in Mansfield, Missouri, the son of George and Lula Dennis Fry. He married Marie E. Schneider on May 21, 1950, in Wilton. He attended Mansfield High School. In the Depression years (mid 30's and early 40's) he picked and delivered fruit and vegetables from the orchards and fields of California to Los Angeles and Yuma, Arizona. He came to Iowa in 1948, and worked at the Case Im...[more]

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ment Factory in Bettendorf and in the Moline Iron Works. He started his trucking business in 1949 with only a straight truck hauling castings from Stockton, Iowa, to Chicago, Illinois, and any other jobs he could find. By the mid 50s, he was yearning for bigger and more equipment, thus the 18 wheelers began to appear and his travels of ICC government authority approved products which took him to the Mid-Western states. Great distances, more government approved authority, and more equipment plagued his mind, so more Federal ICC hearings were scheduled. He finally wound up with Federal ICC general commodity authority for the continental U.S. This led to business expansion and development of Fry Trucking Inc. in the mid 60s. He was president of the company and spent most of the time on the road. Fourteen of his units worked out of Wilton. Numerous owner-operator units were based from around Central and Eastern Iowa, Central and southwestern Wisconsin, St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota area and Quincy, Illinois. In February 1971, he received a diploma and award certificate with also a book entry in publication for distinguished achievement in The Two Thousand Men of Achievement from London, England. The loves of his life were his 18 wheelers and delivery travels. After retirement Chester and Marie wintered at their condo in Yuma, Arizona, from 1988-2004. He needed no road maps. His mind was a road map recalling highway numbers wherever he went. Tell him where you were leaving from and where you wanted to go, and he could give all the necessary highway numbers and quite often the distance. He is survived and lovingly remembered by his wife, Marie Fry of Wilton; his daughter, Elouise McDaniel of Columbus, Mississippi; three grandchildren: Susan Young and husband, Charlie, of Charleston, South Carolina, Lynn McDaniel and wife, Kim, of Columbus, Mississippi, and Lisa Hayes and husband, Rick, of Caledonia, Mississippi, six great-grandchildren and one great-great granddaughter; a brother, Lester Fry of Wilton, and a special, helpful friend, Dick Valet of Wilton. He was preceded in death by his parents and his son-in-law, J.W. McDaniel