My dad's life sketch, yes I realize I switched formats half-way through.

Stephen Brent Dredge was born August 23rd, 1951 to Nathan Edward and Helen Margret Ivey Dredge in Wendell Idaho.
In his early years my dads father was a sheep rancher and the family moved around southern Idaho a lot, but Nathan went to night school in engineering and eventually got a job with the Highway Department and the family moved permanently to Pocatello.

Stephen had three brothers and there sisters. Anita, Andrew, Cheryl, Terrance, Mary and Wilford. Dad was the 5th of the seven.

Stephen was a quite kid but he was also very curious.

As a little boy he used to collect things, kind of random things, and put them in his pockets. Rocks, nails, bolts, beetles the occasional frog. It got to the point that it made his mother nervous when she had to empty his pockets for laundry.

Because he came from a large family the Dredges always had station wagons, so a sedan with an open trunk was a novelty worthy of being explored. On one trip, while stopped for gas, Stephen crawled into the trunk of a neighboring vehicle whose owners didn't notice and closed the lid on him. After his family figured out what had happened the owner of the gas station knew the owner of the car and the police were called to track the vehicle down and retrieve him.

One can image that scene, the officer, 'we think you have a small boy in your trunk', 'no we don't', 'lets open it and see', the cars owner was shocked, but Stephen was apparently quite calm.

In a large family there is a lot of teasing going on, and while he was low on the totem pole Stephen could give as good as he got. When his dad took the family to the movies each of the kids when get a cowtail, a chewy candy that would generally last one through the movie. Stephen was a natural when it came to rationing, so he would save most of his cowtail, and make a point the next day to be seen eating it front of his siblings who had already consumed there's. He did the same thing with Halloween candy.

He could be frustratingly slow when ordering ice cream, he didn't get it that often and he wanted to make sure he made the right choice when the family went out to get some. He actually kept this indecisiveness in ordering food his whole life, he was always the last person to order at a restaurant.

One day Stephen came out of the bathroom discoursing at length about the tooth past he'd just used. That was weird toothpaste, there was just something real funny about it, what a unique taste. Upon going into the bathroom to investigate his siblings found a tube of brill cream with the cap removed. He was just teasing.

During the summers Stephen would move pipe for money and was obliged by his parents to set some of it aside for school and some for clothing. He hated to shop and he wouldn't spend any money on clothes until his mother dragged him to the store. Some things never changed.

In high school Stephen was in a bad car accident, one that got his fathers auto insurance canceled. He rolled his vehicle, which was full of his friends and several of them were thrown clean from the car, but one had to have a metal plate put in his head. It was because of this incident that he could never quite get angry at me for any car accident I got into.

Stephen Graduated from Pocatello High School with the class of 1970.

After graduation he served for two years in the Indiana-Michigan Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from 1970-1972. He never talked much about his mission but he always know the area geography really well, and more then a decade ago he was contacted by a woman he'd taught who wanted to let him know that her oldest son had received his mission call.

Shortly after returning home from his mission Stephen's father Nathan died of cancer. This was very hard on Stephen, who very much loved his father and would go on to name me after him. The hymn 'Oh My Father' was played at Nathans funeral and my mom recalls that very early in their relationship my dad expressing his wish that that hymn be played at his funeral, which it will be today. Even just one day before he died when he was gathered with family arranging his mothers funeral Stephen re-iterated that request.

Stephen had no definitive plans about what he was going to do, school and career wise after he returned from his mission. He would receive a little money as a death benefit from his fathers passing, and his mother had noticed in the newspaper that there was a new votch program in microchip design at Idaho State University, and suggested that he should check it out. He did, and would go on to work in the industry for the next four decades.

As the industry was so new Stephen was prepared to work in it full time after only a semester of course work. He took a job in California working for AMI.

Stephen met my mother Janile at a youth fireside in December of 1973. She had decided to take a semester off from BYU to earn money and the two started dating in March of 74, by May my dad was sufficiently solid on my mom that he asked her to marry him, as he would say ' I had to keep her from going back to BYU'. They were married on September 14th, 1974 in the Idaho Falls temple.

As my father and mother we preparing to get married my mothers parents were in the midst of a rather unharmonious divorce, they agreed however to set differences aside for a night to take Stephen and Janile out to eat on the fisherman's warf in Santa Cruz, something that had always been a treat for my mother growing up. Now dad was a beef eater from eastern Idaho, his experience with sea food was limited. But it was important to impress my mom so when she suggested they split a crab louie (a kind of crab and shrimp salad) he agreed. ... Green is apparently a hue that human skin is capable of taking, and my dad did that night.

The wedding reception had a bit of a miss-hap, the cake didn't arrive, so there are pictures from the wedding of my parents cutting a sweet tart pastry, a short notice cake substitute.

After the honey moon my parents settled into the routines of married life, my father moved on to a job with National Semi-Conductor, and my mother worked as a secretary for the Stanford Research Institute.

It took them a while to have kids, but eventually I came along, canceling a planed trip to Hawaii that never got rescheduled, Sorry mom.

Shortly after my birth our family moved to South Jordan, Utah when my dad was transferred by his company.

Perhaps my first memory was of my father. I think I was around 3 and we were at a ward Easter egg hunt, my father spotted an Easter egg hidden on top of a fence post and lifted me up to retrieve it. Dad was good at finding Easter eggs, years later at another ward Easter egg hunt he found a plastic egg with a note inside it which said it could be redeemed for a special prize, turns out there was no prize anymore because that egg had been planted for an Easter egg hunt held several years previously.

In 1983 a second son, my brother Colin came along. He was a very active kid, I think he was my dad's main source of exercise for years.

1987 was a hectic year for our family, National was going to transfer my dads unit back to California and my parents had decided that that was not where they wanted to raise their kids, so when my dads friend and co-worker Randy Whitting offered to take him along to a new job opportunity at Micron, our family moved to Boise. This was complicated by the fact that my mother was pregnant at the time and we moved into the house on Hickory Dr, still the current Dredge homestead, just 2 1/2 weeks before my sister Autumn was born. My dad made sure to pick up a new kid in every state he and my mom lived in.

Stephen was a good father to his children. He spent time with each of us, he'd take us to movies and camping, teach us how to work in the yard, and help with school projects.

In the 1990's, a particularly prosperous period for stock at work I remember we went on three major family trips. In 1994 we went cross country to the Mississippi river, traveled down parallel to it, visited his sister in Arkansas, and then back home. That was the trip where dad introduced me to cheesy tourist traps like South Dakota's Corn Palace, my brother Colin to anything that had a ride, and my sister Auti to Graceland and Elvis

In 1996 we meet up with my mom's dad on a trip to Disney World.

And in 1998 it was off to exotic Canada, the only foreign country my dad ever visited, where we smuggled limited edition Canadian Bennie Babies across the boarder for friends. It was a different time.

Growing up I remember that one of my dads obsessions was the garage door, and maintaining a certain knowledge of its status, preferably closed. "Did you close the garage door" is possibly the most repeated phrase of his life. Coming back from my senior prom I remember remaking to those in the car with me that the first thing my father would ask me when I got home would not be 'how was prom' but rather 'did you close the garage door', and I was right, prom came in second place.

My brother and I would both serve missions to Knoxville, Tennessee, so my parents concluded that they should probably go see the place and went to pick my brother up from his mission in 2004. Some months later Colin meet Sarah and brought Ethan into our lives, he would be Stephens first grandchild

Colin and Sarah were shortly married and there followed grandchildren Brinna and Jaxon. For some reason when he was little Jaxon took to referring to my dad as Gobby, Stephen was a proud Gobby to all of his grandchildren.


I'd like to tell you some things I know about my dad:

Stephen loved babies and had a special rapport with them. If he was in a room with a baby, it wouldn't be long before he was holding that baby content in his arms. When my sister was fussy as an infant, and my mom couldn't comfort her, she would call up my dad and even over the phone he was able to put her at ease. The last picture taken of my dad, which is on the cover of your programs and was taken nine days before he died, is Stephen with a baby, his great grandnephew Wesley Lewis.

Of his many church callings over the years by far his favorite was nursery. But my dad would throw himself into whatever calling he was given, for the last several years that was insuring that this building was clean for Sunday services, and he did that with aplomb, always making calls to those who were to help him clean on a given week, always following up on things, always staying until the work was done, and when there was a shortage of people to help, always calling us to help him. If he were to come back as a ghost, he would probably haunt this chapel to make sure it stayed clean.

For years he worked as a ward clerk, and later with the scouts, making long time friends at Wood badge in the early 90's. He used to haul the water to scout camp, and the camping gear to girls camp. The ward kept a lot of their tents and camping supplies with my dad because they knew he'd always be ready to get them were they needed to go. He also kept Dutch ovens that he would employ in the making of cobbler, his signature dish, at any opportunity that would arise, be it a ward activity, a family reunion, and even one time for his father-laws retirement home.

My dad was a layout designer for microchips, a job that involved squeezing as much stuff as possible into as small a space as possible, and he was real good at it. One day my father came home from work beaming as he told my mother that he had achieved a new level of greatness in his profession, his bosses had told him that on his current project he had made things too small, he had to open them up so they'd be practical. This ability to maximize the use of space spread into other areas as well, you should have seen him load a dishwasher or pack a moving van.

While technically skilled in a great deal of things, there were other matters in which he was often befuddled. The man designed microchips, but if there was a problem with the house hold PC he'd go to my sister for help. For some reason he could seemingly never remember to pack pajamas when he was going on a trip, even when specifically reminded too. A number of years ago he forget his pajamas on a short trip, so he decided to make due with wearing his swim shorts to bed. The sound of the swim trunk material rubbing against the sheets made for a largely sleepless night. The weekend before he died traveling to Pocatello he mistakenly packed a second pair of my mothers pajamas, somehow thinking they were his.

My dad was one of the most friendly people you could ever meet. Even if he'd just meet you he'd like to have a conversation with you and be your friend. He wanted to talk with just about everybody, he was a guy that was sincerely interested in having a conversation with his casher, his waitress, or the guy you pay when you drop a load of garbage off at the dump. There were even times when this was kind of annoying, like any time when you needed to keep him on a tight schedule. He kept stocked M & M candy dispensers in his office at work as incentive for people to stop by and talk.

Stephen was incredibly loyal, to family, friends, and even to people many would never give a second though about. He was loyal to the guy who sold him cars, he was loyal to the man who did his auto body work, he was loyal to his pharmacist, to the lady who would sit us at our favorite Chinese restaurant, heck he even got to know the guy who ran the local snow cone place.

He was generous with his time, his talents, and his money, always willing to lend a hand however it was needed. I've never known a bigger funeral goer then my dad, even relatives that I'd never even heard of, he'd be there if there was any way that he could be.

Stephen loved M*A*S*H and The Poseidon Adventure. He loved American Pickers and NCIS. He loved Chevy Chase and Bruce Willis, westerns and disaster movies, popcorn and popsicles, and The Moody Blues. And don't forget Ham. He loved his friends, his neighbors, his co-workers, and most of all his family. When my brother died four years ago he took it hard, there are no words for how it affected him. He lost a little of his spark, a little of his drive, and a little of his optimism, but he kept going, he kept living life, giving it all that he could.

The last few months of his life were busy ones, in addition to a full load at work, we had extensive landscaping done at the house, and much of the interior painted. He had carpets pulled out and new ones installed at our rental property, hauling multiple loads of refuse from that site to the dump in my sisters truck, which he also helped arrange service on after it was hit while parked in front of the house. One day his father-in-law slipped into an apparent coma, six hours and no one could get him to respond, as the hospice personal came to pick him up it was my dads voice that rousted him awake, he lived for an additional month and then my dad helped plan his funeral.

The Wednesday before he died his own mother too feel into a coma, he made it to her bedside in Pocatello with only a few hours to spar before she passed that Saturday. He, my mother and sister came back home on Sunday, and Monday was to be spent packing and preparing to travel back to Pocatello for the viewing on Tuesday and the service on Wednesday. He went into work on Monday morning, but his friend and boss Paul could see he was upset and advised him to go home. He did. When I woke up Monday morning around 8:30 he was in the family room with my sister, half watching a movie he'd seen dozens of times, but mostly getting a big kick out of our rabbit and our new kitten (the first cat we've had that's ever taken to him) playing with each other on the carpet. Around 10:30 he went down to the master bedroom to rest, close to eleven he called for my sister to get him insulin, within about half an hour he was gone. My sister who had only weeks previously been re-certified in CPR did all that she could, as did the paramedics who were remarkably quick in there response time, even though it felt like it took forever.


I've tried to think of what we might take from his death. For me I know that I took my father too much for granted, he was always there and its easy to not appreciate someone that's always present. He didn't take care of himself like he should have, neglecting his diabetes and at 63 continuing to put as much effort into everything as he did when he was 30. Anyone who is aging or has a serious health condition should take note of my fathers mistakes in these areas. And anyone who may not be fully appreciating their loved ones should take heed as well.

But mostly what you can learn from my father is plain decency. Just be good. Just be kind. Be generous where you can be. Be forgiving of fault. Be the best kind of servant you can be and you'll find yourself. Stephen Brent Dredge is one of the best men I'll ever know, and I hope that I can truly live the lessons that he taught me.