Service Are Saturday For Osbert Ward

He was known as the flower man by those in the community because of the flower gardens he kept until recent years and kept restaurants, banks and courthouse girls supplied with flowers. He walked uptown every day until the week before his 100th birthday.

In addition to his love of gardening, he loved daisies and monarch butterflies. Although he had lost most of his hearing, his eyesight was good, and he could still spot a squirrel across the street.

Born while Grant was president, he received congratulations from President Carter on the 100th birthday and from President Regan for his 105th birthday.

He was preceded in death by his three brothers, two sisters and two half-sisters.

He is survived by his housekeeper since 1939 and friends, Miss Irene Hastings, of Blair; several nieces; and numerous friends.

Funeral services will be 2:00 p.m. Saturday, September 4, at Campbell Funeral Home for Osbert Oscar Ward, 105, who died August 30, 1982, at Good Shepherd Home. Pastor Robert Ammons will conduct the services. Burial will be in Rose Hill Cemetery.

Osbert Oscar Ward was born March 4, 1877, in Willmington, Vermont, to Oscar and Mary Ward, the next to the youngest in a family of four boys, two girls, and two half-sisters, who were older.

He lived in Vermont and helped his father with the farming until he was 21 years old. He attended South Lancaster Acadamy in Massachussetts, paying his way by helping on a near farm and working in the school kitchen and laundry. He spent two years in Mexico learning Spanish and teaching English, leaving when the Revolution broke out in 1911 or 1912. He came to Union College in Lincoln and graduated in 1914.

He was married December 31, 1914. He was divorced in 1928.

He worked in construction and as a mason until he went back to Vermont for a six week visit in 1929. That visit ended in 1947 when he came back to Nebraska. He moved to Blair in 1948 and had lived at 1307 Park Street since that time.

He built homes, including a lot of building near Valley, farmed, did yard work and remodeling during his lifetime. He rebuilt the house east across the street from his home and built the shed by himself. He re-shingled his barn when he was “a lad of 96”. He was a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Omaha.