Alvin Leroy League, 86, died at his home in rural Salina on June 9, 2023
Alvin was born in rural Furley, Kansas on October 24, 1936, the son of Harold and Leva League. He attended Furley grade school and Whitewater high school. He then joined the U.S. Navy in September 1954 (a month before his 18th birthday) and was honorably discharged in 1957.
He worked as a machinist at Roberts Mfg, Federal Mogul, and then Great Plains Mfg until his retirement in 1994.
Alvin married Evelyn Noell on August 17, 1958 at Ebenezer Methodist Church, rural Burns, Kansas.
Alvin’s great joy in life was travel, which he enthusiastically and generously shared with his wife and three daughters. As his girls were growing up, Alvin would devote his two weeks vacation time each year to take his family on camping trips across the U.S. Every summer without fail the family packed up the car and headed out, with three young girls in the backseat. Sometimes the girls would squabble about something or other, and Alvin would say “do I need to turn around?” But he never did, as he really was very patient with his daughters and glad to share the travels with his entire family.
The family travels started with a small green tent. When the girls got too big for everyone to fit in, the next step was a bigger blue tent. When that no longer sufficed, Alvin bought a pop-up camper. From tents to pop-up camper, the family spent a lot of time camping in and exploring National Parks around the country.
By the time the girls were grown, Alvin and Evelyn acquired a travel trailer. After Alvin’s retirement, Alvin and Evelyn used the travel trailer to take a long road adventure to Alaska, spending the summer of 1996 there.
But the adventures were far from over. Alvin and Evelyn then spent the winter of 1999-2000 exploring Old Mexico in their new 5th wheel with an RV caravan. They drove all over Old Mexico.
Alvin and Evelyn continued RV-ing every winter for about ten years.
In 2009, Alvin and Evelyn branched out to Europe, gathering their grown daughters together on yet one more family adventure, this time to Italy as part of a tour group. A few years later Alvin and Evelyn returned to Europe with a tour group to explore Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. And yet a few years after that they took a trip to explore Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji.
Alvin’s love of travel is also reflected in the fact that he was a member of the Twin Dam Sams RV group, a member for many years of the Escapees RV club, and also held lifetime membership in the Good Sam Club.
Another special feature of Alvin was his innate musical talent. As the girls were growing up, they loved to hear their dad improvise on the piano. He would come up with his own lengthy and catchy boogie-woogie riffs, with a hint of surfer-style music too. He was really very talented. Sometimes the girls would beg him to play more, but he was a bit reticent and humble about it and only played when he was really inspired to do so.
When Alvin received a diagnosis of stage four terminal cancer in August 2022, his daughter Kathleen began collecting his memoirs. The process of talking through his memories revealed that, although Alvin had not been feeling well for some time, often felt exhausted and short of breath, and had some problems remembering recent events, yet his memory of his growing up years remained impressively vivid and ordered. His detailed telling of childhood anecdotes and the events of his life made it very easy to write down his memoirs.
One of Alvin’s amusing youthful memories of note is that at the age of 2 or 3, he was convinced that he had seen the devil. He had been sleeping in his big baby bed next to the window when he happened to wake up and see a face staring at him through the window. He thought “that’s the devil!” He hid beneath his covers, then peaked out. The devil was still there. In the morning, he told his folks he’d seen the devil. They laughed and thought it was funny. But Alvin’s dad Harold decided to look outside by the window. Well, what he found was a cow who had gotten out of his pen. The cow was the devil's face at the window! Quite a tale for the family lore.
Another curious tale of dad’s happened when he was about ten years old. He and a buddy named Verl rode their bikes over to a pond near Furley. Alvin saw a 50-gallon barrel sticking up out of the pond and figured the pond was shallow enough to wade in, so he took off his clothes and started to wade over to the barrel. But just a few feet off the bank, his feet went out from under him and his head sank under the water. He didn’t know how to swim, and he couldn’t get any traction with his feet because there was slick gumbo mud beneath. He panicked. He thought he was a goner. Then, suddenly, he felt a slight pressure at his back. He felt that pressure gently move his feet up to a level where his head was above water. There was no breeze or wind, and the pond was still so it wasn’t wind that pushed him, nor any wave of water. It didn’t feel like a hand touching him, just a slight pressure. It was enough to get him back safely. What a mysterious thing, and what a relief. He had only been under the water a short while, but it had felt much longer. When he got back onto shore, dad says his buddy Verl’s eyes were as big as saucers, because Verl had thought dad was a goner too.
One more lively tale from dad’s youthful escapades in Furley, KS has to do with when he was around four years old. His next-door neighbor was a girl his own age named Patsy Ulmer, whom dad called Pats. They enjoyed riding stick horses up and down the lane together. Sometimes, however, Mrs. Ulmer didn’t want her daughter Pats running off where she couldn’t see her, so she'd use a long string to tie her daughter to the clothesline in their backyard. Well, for some reason at the tender age of four Alvin already had a trusty pocket knife. Little Alvie would take his pocket knife and cut Pats loose from the clothesline so they could go ride their stick horses together!
Fortunately, Alvin never really got in trouble for doing this, because Pats’ parents liked him. In addition, when Alvin’s grandpa Carl got wind of this tale, he was just tickled pink and seemed rather proud of Alvin for this escapade. Grandpa Carl even made up a little ditty to the tune of the folk song ‘Wearin’ of the Green’. He’d sing: “Oh Paddy dear, have you heard the news that’s going round? Old Alvie is forbade by law to go on Ulmer’s ground!”
There are many more lively tales Alvin relayed about his youth in small town Furley, and also from his naval days and beyond. But these few stories give a flavor of Alvin’s excellent memory for details and the many homespun yet fascinating stories he was able to tell, giving such character to a different time and place during his growing-up time in small town Kansas. Even though he’d preface his tales with the caveat that ‘there wasn’t much to do,’ he obviously found things to do, and could relay them in fine story-telling style.
A few days before Alvin’s death, Kathleen was sharing an early Father’s Day card she’d gotten for him, which had the theme of camping. Kathleen told her dad once again how much his daughters had enjoyed all their camping adventures, and how grateful his daughters were that he was their father. He was laying on his bed in a weakened condition, but he smiled and said, “You look back, and there are things you realize you didn’t appreciate enough at the time. You enjoyed them, of course, but didn’t realize how much they mean. Then you look back, and those were the good days. Those were wonderful times. We were poor for a long time. But you don’t need money to have fun. Well, you need a little to pay the bills. We didn’t have much. But we had happiness. And we had love.”
These were really the last main words Kathleen heard from her father before he could no longer communicate. Alvin normally was not a talkative man. What a special gift to have received these parting thoughts from him of love and happiness.
Alvin was always a quiet man, and tended to be very self-effacing about his place in life, but his family knows he was always a special person, and we are grateful that when asked, he told us many interesting tales from his life that we can now keep in our hearts and remember him by.
Alvin is survived by his wife Evelyn; and his daughters Kathleen (Bill Martin) League, Linda (Rick) Hanson, and Loralee (Jeff) Tibbetts, all of Salina.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Harold and Leva League of Salina; and his brother, Larry League of Estes Park, Colorado.
Visitation will be at noon, funeral service will be at 1 pm, Tuesday, June 13, 2023, at Carlson-Geisendorf Funeral Home. Burial will follow in Gypsum Hill Cemetery.
Donations to the Friends of the Salina Animal Shelter or Smoky Hills Audubon Society in care of the funeral home.
To send an online condolence, visit www.carlsonfh.netor on Facebook.