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Daniel L. Frahm, age 63 of Blair, passed away June 8, 2019 at his home in Blair, Nebraska. A celebration of life will be held Wednesday June 12, 2019 at Petersen's Bar 75 in Herman at 12:00PM.

Dan was born on January 3, 1956 in Atkinson, Nebraska the son of Heinie and Aggie Frahm. He graduated from Chambers High School in 1974, and then attended Northeast Community College in Norfolk, Nebraska. On December 3, 1983 he was united in marriage to Kathy Andersen and the couple made their home in Blair. Dan retired from the Frito Lay Company in December of 2010. He enjoyed fishing, hunting, playing poker with the guys and was an avid reader. Dan will always be remembered as a man who had a deep love of family. He cherished his mother, brothers, and sisters, and especially loved his time with Kathy, their children and grandchildren.

Dan is survived by his wife Kathy, children; Vickie (Aaron) Melling and Jill (Jesse) Johnson, grandchildren; Jordyn, Brody, Ryder and Boyd, his mother Agnes Frahm, siblings; Pat (Steve) Ronnebaum, Doug (Mary) Frahm, Sue (Kevin) Shafer and Greg (Pam) Frahm, his mother and father in law Imogene and Dale Albus, along with numerous extended family members and friends.

Campbell Aman Funeral Home.

#2 Funeral leaflet

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In Loving Memory of Daniel Leon Frahm

Born January 3, 1956 Atkinson, Nebraska ~ Entered Into Rest June 8, 2019 Blair, Nebraska

Celebration of Life Wednesday, June 12, 2019 Petersen’s Bar 75, Herman, Nebraska

Campbell-Aman Funeral Home

Memories:

As told by Jenny Brungardt (Dan’s niece)

I remember, as a little girl, Uncle Dan trying to teach me how to swing. He tried to show me how to pump my legs to make the swing go. I wasn’t very quick about learning the pumping method but he was patient and tried! I would always lose at Mexican Train Dominos when I played Uncle Dan. It’s not that he would always be the one to win, but I would always lose when he played. I am glad that I was able to play dominos with Uncle Dan and Aunt Kathy for a couple of games over Memorial Weekend.

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As told by Julie Fletcher (Dan’s niece)

I remember when I was in high school, after I had been busted at a party with underage drinking going on. Uncle Dan would always tease me by asking if I had “been to any good parties lately?” I think he was secretly proud of me for inheriting the Frahm family party gene.

I also remember being in Grandma and Grandpa Frahm’s motor home camping somewhere and he was telling stories of the five siblings growing up and torturing one another. He would also talk about their pet raccoons. I remember thinking he was funny and a good storyteller. I didn’t want the stories to end that evening!

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As told by Tom Andersen (Dan’s brother-in-law)

Dan once told me a story about him driving home and he had likely been drinking. He said he swore he had just been passed by a rhinoceros. When he took another look, he realized it was just a tumbleweed.

Another time we were out at the Driftwood on New Year’s Eve and Dan was pretty drunk. He was telling a story about falling out of a boat and getting wet. He got so into the story that he fell right out of his chair and soaked Kathy with his drink. We always joked that he had fallen out of the boat again, but this time Kathy got wet!

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As Told by Jesse Johnson (Dan’s son-in-law)

I remember when Jill and I first started dating, I came to the house and Dan started talking about his gun collection. I think he was trying to scare me, but it quickly turned into a good conversation when I started talking about the one my Dad and I had.

Over the years Dan has tried to teach me a lot of things, but it usually ended up in arguments about the best way to do things. Sometimes it took some convincing that there was another way to do things. My favorite was when he dropped a joist on my head because he didn’t believe me that we needed to cut that part of the wood down.

There was one time I can remember him getting really mad at me and it was while we were in college and driving home from Norfolk. I was bored and messing around and found a pistol in the glove box (not unusual at the time). I started messing with Dan and playing a bit of Russian Roulette. I would put a shell in the gun and then take it out and point it at him and pull the trigger *click*. I would do it over and over and each time he would get even more mad and say, “stop doing that!”. I started pointing it at cars driving by and playing the same game. I got bored and laid the gun on the dash and as a big truck was coming at us, I pulled the trigger. This time the gun went off. It was deafening, and put a hole right through the passenger side of the windshield. We couldn’t hear each other for a while after that and took side roads all the way home. He wasn’t happy with me for that one!

Another time Dan scared the crap out of me when we took out the ’67 Mustang that I had rebuilt from top to bottom and beefed up. We were headed back to Amelia from Atkinson and Dan said he could get the 120mph speedometer to go all the way around and start back at the beginning. There was a dip in the road that we liked to go over and I knew it was coming up so told him he’d better slow down. But Dan didn’t let up. He got up to 130 or 140, made that speedometer go all the way around and hit that dip. I braced myself, but we never felt a thing because we flew right over it. He said that ain’t nothing and started turning the wheel side to side so I got after him and said you better slow that crap down.

We had so many plans to travel all over the country from place to place sleeping in the car. But we never got the chance. We both got married and started families and our conversations turned from girlfriends and wives to kids and then grandkids. I’m not much of a conversationalist but Dan and I could talk for hours.

My other memories of Dan involved the hunting car we built. It was a ’69 Impala that we had cut the top off of and taken the doors and windshield off of. We put big wide tires on it and shields underneath so we could go through the sand. We had a cage built across the front to keep the weeds out of the radiator and then camouflaged it. Every year right before [prairie] chicken season we would do something new to the hunting car. We raised the seats up so they were sitting higher up and installed a seat up on the rear window deck so someone could sit up there. When we would hunt chickens, we would always have a game warden stopping us and checking our birds and making sure we weren’t doing anything illegal. At one point we got a new game warden and he waved us over to talk to us. He checked our licenses and then took his hat off and scratched his head and said, “You know, I heard about this car and needed to see it for myself.” He didn’t care about our birds, just wanted to see the car!

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As told by Dale Briggs (Dan’s cousin)

Dan, Doug and I grew up together, and there wasn’t a bird or frog that was safe because we all had wrist rocket slingshots. There was a time when we were younger, all out by the creek in our underwear, and getting into trouble. Aunt Aggie found us and dragged us all up to the house. She pulled down Doug and Dan’s britches to give them a swat and I figured I was safe since my mom wasn’t there. Turns out that day I was a part of her family because I got it too.

A lot of Dan and my time spent together was driving around all hours of the night. There was a time we drove out to the state park and just slept in the car, one of us in front and one in the back. There were a lot of drives from Atkinson to Amelia. We would always stop in front of the flowing well for a drink. Once we stopped there to sleep and were woken up by Uncle Heinie laying on his horn coming up on us. He said, “I’m glad you guys are up, we got lots of work to do.” He would then put us to work in the fields knowing we were probably tired. Our nights driving were usually just us because everyone else was asleep. The only other person on the road was Officer Hurley who would sometimes pull us over just to chat because he would get bored too.

As we grew up and Doug went to the military, Dan and I went off to college together in Norfolk. I became a “gear head” (auto tech) and Dan was a “nail pounder” (construction). Dan would primarily hang out with the gear heads and in between his classes he would find his way into our group. Any class trips we went on, Dan was included. We spent a lot of time driving around. Sometimes we would be out all night long and it would come time to go to school and we hadn’t even been home yet. We would park in front of the garage at school and sleep in the car until the instructor got there and woke us up.

After my classes I would go to the rec room and play pool and foosball. When Dan’s classes got out, he would join us. We would try a bunch of trick shots and really got pretty good at both foosball and pool. We eventually started going to the local bars and talked some people into playing us for money. As college kids it was a good way to make some extra cash. People stopped playing us because they figured out the hustle. So, we went to a different bar and tried to play some new guys for money. We whooped them too, and then someone who had seen us at the other bars called us out as pool hustlers. Everyone got down off their seats and started coming towards us to beat us up. We looked at the bar tender thinking he was going to put a stop to it, but he just pulled a club out from under the bar, intending to beat us up. We saw an opening and ran through the door. We knocked some people down on the way out but made it out alive. We laughed about it later.

As we were dragging mains in O’Neill one night, we drove by a bar and saw a foosball table just inside. There were people surrounding the table and we had gotten pretty good at foosball, so we decided to maybe run a hustle on that too. There were two guys that were beating everyone, so we stepped up to the table and ended up stomping these two guys. They were so mad and wanted to know who we were and where we were from. We said we were just a couple of college kids from Norfolk. We turned to a guy we went to school with and said what’s these guys’ problem? Turns out these two guys had just come from a foosball tournament and were state champs.

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As told by Pat Ronnebaum (Dan’s sister)

Dan would sometimes call me “the old witch” here in our later years. My choice of weapon to get after the twins when we were younger was the broom. Those boys could be so naughty when we were in the house alone; my only avenue of discipline was the broom! They would get mad and I would have to run into the bathroom and slam the door. That was the only room that had a door that could be locked. They would kick and bang on the outside of that dor. I’d holler at them that they better quit it because if they broke the door, we would all be in trouble. I doubt if any door made nowadays would handle such abuse without damage!

I vividly remember digging a hole behind the yard fence north of the house on the Dvorak place with Dan and Doug. We were going to bury a dead critter: either a snake or a lizard/salamander, but I think it was a lizard. That was a long time ago to remember for sure. Anyway, I was digging with a claw hammer. On one swing of the hammer, I hit Dan right between the eyes with the claw. Of course, it made a big gash that bled a lot. He had a scar there for a long time. I think Grandma was staying with us at the house because Mom and Dad were gone. He didn’t get any stitches but probably should have. I didn’t get in trouble with that “hit” since it really was a total accident.

My favorite memory of Dan and me is from the hayfield. Dan and I always did the mowing of the hay. One afternoon, we had finished the patch we were working on south of the Fullerton house. We were heading over to the next place we were supposed to mow down. I was in the lead on my tractor. Dan thought he could speed ahead of me and get there first. As he went around me, he didn’t quite judge the distance correctly between us. His mower bar end sickle nicked my front tractor tire and it went flat right away. He had the guiltiest look n his fact as he hit that tire, I will never forget it. It was like “oh no, now I’ve done it! I’m going to be in so much trouble. We won’t get the mowing finished and Dad will kill me.” I was always so glad that I could proclaim that I didn’t do it, wasn’t my fault. Made me feel superior since I hadn’t pulled such a fool stunt and could blame it on Danny.

I played a game of cribbage with Dan when they were at Mom’s in Chambers over the Memorial Day Holiday. I lost to him by one pegging point. That was disgusting at the time but now I’m so glad he got to win that last game against me! We played many games of cribbage over the last few yeas but that one I will always remember now. Peg away, Dan, I know you are having a good game with either Dad or Grandpa now!

Mom has a story from way back and Doug will agree! We used to watch “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” on Sunday evening. It was the adventures of a submarine crew, and usually something far-fetched would be attacking them each week. The episode that really got to the twins had giant seaweed taking over the sub and tangling itself around the crewmen. I remember the episode, myself! Creepy. Mom even had to go into the pantry and turn on the light to prove to Sue and Greg that the seaweed wasn’t hiding and waiting to wrap around them when they wanted the cereal box. Dan would shudder his shoulders whenever he would recount that scary story!!

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As Told by Greg Frahm (Dan’s brother)

Dan and Kathy and Pam and I shared many times together while we all lived in Falls City. There was one day after work where we all went fishing and caught three 5-gallon buckets full of crappie. We had a blast. At the time we didn’t have an electric fillet knife, so we used Pam and Kathy’s electric bread knives. By the time we were done we had to buy them new electric bread knives because we burned them up.

Around the same time Pam and Kathy were making ham and bean soup. They bought way too many beans and Dan and I had to eat ham and bean soup for at least a month after that. Dan and Kathy weren’t there very long, but we had some good times those 6 months.

I remember a time in Amelia when Dan and Doug and Dale all came out for grouse hunting. Early in the morning Dan and Dale got all dressed up to go out in Dale’s hunting car. They spent weeks every year fixing up that hunting car. We had open heifers at the time and out to the west there were the neighbor’s bulls. There was a double fence keeping the bulls in. Dan and Dale tore through the fence and left the heifers exposed to the bulls. I asked Doug to help me get the bulls back in their pen. The bulls were already fighting to prove their dominance. We couldn’t get them back while they were fighting. We called Dennis Murphy and he brought his horse. Allen brought his three-wheeler and I had my truck. We were all on the hill watching the bulls and heifers after fixing the fence and making it so the bulls had to go out through a gate. Here came Dan and Dale in their hunting car all camo’d out and guns hanging off the side. We explained what had happened and Dan says, “I will show you how to get them bulls back in their pen.” Dan and Dale took off in the hunting car down to the bulls. One of the bulls took off and charged the car and rammed right into Dale’s side of the car right in front of him. Dale scrambled over Dan to get to the other side of the car. The bull wanted to join Dan and Dale in the car. We could see their faces from up on the hill and were laughing so had as they made their way back up. “Maybe they ain’t ready to go out of the pasture yet”, Dan says. Us four could hardly talk we were laughing so hard.

There was a time when we were grouse hunting with Randy Ward. Dan and Dale were in front. Dan was driving as usual and Randy and I were in the back. We were west of Amelia driving through the field and come up on a bull hole. Dale hollers “BULL HOLE” and Dan slammed on the brakes. Randy shot over the top of the car straight as an arrow, shot gun in hand and came down and caught his leg on the radiator cover. It was a pretty ugly injury. Randy never got in the hunting car again. East of Amelia once during grouse season Doug, Dale, Dan and I were in the hunting car. It had rained a lot that year and there were water puddles everywhere. There was one puddle that was a good eighth of a mile around and puddles out there that might be a foot deep. It runs off or soaks in eventually, but they stand around for a while. We were coming over the hills and Dan decided to go through instead of around. We were all objecting, saying you should go around and not through! Doug and I especially because we knew it would be deep. We were trying to tell him we didn’t want to have to walk back because it was a long way back to Amelia. The car hit the water and there was water flying everywhere. We went in for so long and pretty soon the car dies. It starts swaying side to side and sinks. Water got clear up to the seats and our butts started getting wet. We were scrambling to grab everything, calling him an idiot the whole time. We said Dan you are walking back to Amelia to get the pickup and the log chain to get us out. Everything floated out into this water hole. Dan waded through that water and walked all the way back to Amelia in the cold. He came back with the truck and the log chain, slightly embarrassed. I can still close my eyes and picture all that stuff floating around in the water.

There was a time that Dan really made me mad. He came up to show off his new 17mm rifle. We set up a target and shot a few rounds. Dan didn’t police his brass, and a piece ended up in my camper tire. Pam and I were on the way to somewhere the next day, and got about 12 miles down the road and had a flat tire. It set us back an entire day.

Dan loved to fish but he never would sit in the boat and just fish. He always had to be tinkering around with the motor, just like his dad. Aside from fishing, Dan loved to tell stories. Some of them never should have been repeated. The last time Sue was in town, our cousins Lola and Bob were here, and Dan got to telling his stories of all his misadventures. Mom was sitting in the living room and Dan couldn’t see her sitting there. He started into some of his stories from high school that shouldn’t have been told, and Mom says to me, “He’s just in there telling a bunch of lies”. I told Mom he may be exaggerating but they are all based on truth.

Dan had made me promise that when he passed away, I would come get his body and put it in a sand dune he had picked out. Dan also hated pine trees. He hated the way the wind sounded when it blew through them. It reminded him of something scary from his childhood. Whenever he was getting mouthy with me, I always threatened to put him out in the pine trees when he was gone. That or send him down the creek in a boat while I shot flaming arrows at him. It always made him think twice about talking back to me!

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As Told by Doug Frahm (Dan’s brother)

Growing up, it was the longest time before we knew we had first names because we were always called the twins or “hey twin”. We would switch shirts one in a while to cheat while playing kick the can, but being a twin came in most handy when Dan got arrested for lighting off fireworks that I had lit off. I had lit them off then headed home because I didn’t want to get in trouble. Dan stayed around and got arrested and thrown in jail. The lawyer came into court and said do you have a twin brother? Dan said yes and the judge said case dismissed! They couldn’t prove which one of us had done it, so they dropped it.

The memory of Dan and I that I always remember the most is when Mom had killed a bull snake. It was laying in the back yard, and I picked it up and was swinging it around in circles. I let it go and it hit Dan just right in the back of the neck. It wrapped around his neck and he took off screaming. He ran right through a junk pile and ended up cutting an artery in his foot. He wound up in the ER, blood shooting everywhere.

We were always getting together and doing something stupid. We would cover the salt blocks with cow poop just to watch the cows lick it off to get to the salt. We would go over to the blocks and give them a lick ourselves when they were all cleaned off. There was another time when we would take the lathe out of the barn and scoop up poop and fling it at each other. One time I got a frog scooped up and flung it at Sue and it hit her right in the face. She started crying and had frog slime al over her face.

I can remember a time when we stayed out too late partying. Dad knew we were hung over so he said “Let’s get to work.” It was a Sunday. He took us out to the bale piles and said I want you to move these bales from “here” to “here”. It was only about ten feet or so. We had no water, and we were just sick, and it was nasty. We found a little mud puddle and tried to drink out of it. That really made us sick. We never did finish moving those bales.

Another memory I have was at the Dvorak pond. The pond had a little island that we always wanted to get to. None of us could swim so it was always just out of reach. We would wade in and it was always so muddy. We got up to our chins and couldn’t get any further. Once we found a rowboat stuck in the mud. We got it dug out and all cleaned up. We spent hours cleaning it up. We left it in the sun to dry and came back to it to try to get out to the island. We didn’t have any oars or anything to row with, so we attached a fish hook to the boat and Dan and Dale stood on the shore holding the pole. They gave me a push and as I was floating out the boat started taking on water. I hollered for them to reel me in, but the line snapped as soon as they started. I thought for sure I was a goner. The boat kept sinking and finally hit the bottom and I realized I was only in knee deep water.

There was a time when we were digging a post hole using a hand-held post digger. We dug a hole in the middle of the road up at the north place. We were maybe four or five. Pat was with us and we didn’t know what we were going to do with it, so we picked Dan up and set him down in the hole with his hands at his sides. He got stuck. We somehow got it in our heads that Aunt Fern was going to be coming down the road any second and we were sure she wouldn’t see him and take his head right off. So, Pat rand to get Mom and I stayed back to wave off Aunt Fern if she came down the road. Mom got there and pulled Dan out and said, “Never do that again!”

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As told by Jill and Vickie (Dan’s daughters)

Dad always told us stories from his childhood. One of the stories I will always remember is of him and Doug getting in trouble and Grandma told them to go get a stick to get swatted with. They each brought back one that was too tiny to do any damage. Grandma said “bigger”. So, they brought back one that was so big that they both had to carry it. By that time Grandma was laughing and they didn’t get into trouble.

Dad and Doug were always torturing Greg. There was a time when they had Greg tied to a calf up in the loft of the barn. The calf got scared and jumped out of the loft window with Greg still tied to it. It landed on a dirt pile below. There was another time that Greg was minding his own business and had come into the barn while Dad and Doug were up in the loft. They decided to scare Greg by dropping a brick next to him. Doug dropped the brick and it landed right on the top of Greg’s head.

When we were little Dad would always use us to his advantage. He always said the only reason he had kids was so we could do stuff for him. We would be playing upstairs, and he would call us down just to get him a glass of ice water from the kitchen even though it was only 20 feet from him. Or we would have to go out to his Frito Lay truck to get him a bag of chips. There were countless times we went to get him McDonald’s when we got old enough to drive. I (Vickie) remember Dad taking me to Star Trek in the theater when I was little just so he had someone to go with. I fell asleep. It’s something I will always remember.

We were pretty tame compared to Dad when he was a kid, but we both remember a time where we were supposed to be in bed, and we were still messing around upstairs. Our room was right above the living room, so he could always hear us if we were messing around. We got to joking around and said, “Pretty soon Dad is going to hear us, and yell get to bed!” It wasn’t 2 minutes later one of us knocked a bottle behind the bed and it crashed to the floor and sure enough Dad yelled up the stairs, “GET TO BED!” We still laugh about it today.

We could usually get out of a trouble if we had a good lie lined up, like when we put a hole in the drywall or broke the window, but sometimes there was no getting out of it. Especially when he caught us tearing up the sidewalk with a sledgehammer. I’m pretty sure we got a spanking for that one.

We had got access to a small black and white 19-inch antenna TV and would always be up later than we were supposed to be watching it. There was a time when we were up past midnight and we had the TV on. We heard Dad coming up the stairs and panicked because we didn’t have time to turn the TV off, so we just pretended we were asleep. He game into our room and got after us to get to bed—and took the TV with him.

Knowing the stories about Dad that we do now, it is amazing that he could ever be mad at us, because the things we did don’t hold a candle to the things he did. He did let us make our own mistakes so that we could learn from them. I think he knew what he learned the hard way and we would have to, too. Dad was never more proud than when he had each of us holding on to one of his fingers walking through the store. We knew we were loved.

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As Told by Kathy Frahm (Dan’s wife)

Dan was my best friend. He got me. He understood why I was the way I was, and knew how to offer me different perspectives. He was very logical and knew how to comfort me. He was forever inquisitive and needed to understand stuff. He would be up for hours googling different things.

I’m the one who asked him out. I half expected him to say no, but when I called him up and asked, he said yes. I almost said, “You heard me, right? I’m asking you out.” But he agreed and we were to go to a concert that weekend. He took his motorcycle up to a party in Amelia that weekend and most likely drank a bit too much, but he still got back on his motorcycle and drove all the way home to make it back for our date. The rest, as they say, is history.

Dan actually knew my mom before we met. She would go into Safeway where he was working, to buy groceries. He could never figure out why she would name two of her daughters Amy.***for those that don’t know, Kathy has a sister named Amy, and when her mom re-married after losing her husband, her new husband also had a daughter named Amy who was the same age*** Obviously it made a bit more sense once I explained that one of the Amy’s was actually a step-sister.

When I went into labor with Vickie, I told Dan it was time to go to the hospital. I was in pain and needed to go. Dan apparently didn’t get the severity of the situation because he decided at that time that he needed to take a bath before we left. I will never forget that.

After Vickie was born, I remember a time when Dan, Doug, Doug’s wife and I took the Bronco across a frozen pond. I can remember sliding across the pond and being terrified. We then took the Bronco up to the sand dunes. I’m sure if you could find that car my finger indents would still be in the back of the seat.

There was another time at Gavin’s Point Dam when I went fishing with Dan and Dale. I had got a huge carp on the line, and worked it and worked it to reel it in. I finally got it in the boat and was excited. Dan and Dale didn’t care for carp and wouldn’t eat it. Dale picked up the fish and held it up and over the water and let it go on purpose. “Oops” he said. I was sooo mad. It was a memory I won’t forget. I also remember at the same place Dan and I had lost our anchor. We continued fishing and along the way I had hooked something. I reeled it in, and it ended up being a different anchor! So, we replaced our anchor with one I had fished out of the bottom at Gavin’s Point Dam.

I asked Dan for a new sink drain once, just because it was getting gross and needed replaced. He went out and got me a whole new sink. When I wanted a new toilet seat, he went out and got me a whole new toilet. But I waited for years for him to get my bathroom done. It was always “I will get to it”. Might have been a year later, but “he would get to it!”

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The Misadventures of Dan (re-told by Jill Johnson)

Some of these stories have been re-told several times and some of the details may be a bit exaggerated or skewed, but all of them are based in truth. Dan didn’t have as many years in his life as a lot of people, but he had a lot of life in his years. He loved telling stories from when he was growing up, and laughed and smiled every time as if he were re-living the things he had done. These are the stories told by him and others of his misadventures.

~~~Obituary and funeral leaflet courtesy of the Nebraska Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Blair Public Library at Blair, Nebraska. ~~~