George Ivan Walton

George Ivan Walton was born April 16, 1934 at home in Rock Creek, Idaho, a town which has since been incorporated into the city of Hansen. He was the fifth of seven children born to Simeon and Florence Walton. George grew up helping his parents and older brothers farm. As a boy he enjoyed the company of many pets, including a duck and more than one dog. Throughout his life, George enjoyed telling tales of the many characters he met in Rock Creek as a child, including his fun-loving grandfather, H.P. Larsen. He attended schools in Hansen until eighth grade, when the family relocated to a farm in Gooding for two years. They then moved back to Rock Creek, and George attended Hansen High School, graduating in 1952. As a teenager he played the trombone and accordion and enjoyed friends, dating and attending local barn dances. He was taught how to dance by his older brother Howard and was an avid dancer into his sixties. George started school at the College of Idaho in Caldwell in 1952 as an engineering major. He made many lifelong friends, lived in the dormitories, served as a resident advisor, worked in the college cafeteria and became a member of the Beta Chi fraternity on campus. After two years, he returned home to help farm when his father became ill and began showing the effects of Parkinson’s Disease. In 1956, George returned to the College of Idaho and began to study education and industrial arts. He participated in the college choir and sang with them on their first extended tour through California. He also met freshman Joan Barnhouse from Twin Falls and got to know her when C of I students would carpool on weekends and holidays to the Magic Valley and back. He asked her for a date to a Pat Boone movie in July of 1957, and by October, back in Caldwell, Joan wrote in her diary that the two were unofficially engaged. They became officially engaged in December at the college’s Christmas dance. Joan earned her teaching certificate in May of 1958, and the two were married August 17, 1958 at the First Christian Church in Twin Falls, where each would remain a devout lifelong member. George worked as an upholsterer for two years in Twin Falls while Joan taught second grade at Harrison Elementary School. In 1960 they returned once again to the College of Idaho and both earned bachelor’s degrees in education in 1961 while George worked at the Fearless Ferris Stinker Station. He completed his student teaching in the summer at Boise High School, and the couple moved to Bellevue, Idaho, where George taught five different subjects until 1963 at Bellevue School and served as the assistant coach for every sport. Their daughter Lori was born in September of 1961. In 1963 the small family moved back to Twin Falls, where George began teaching at Twin Falls High School. He remained there for 35 years, first teaching art, then crafts, then finishing his career in the science department. He also taught driver’s education, was an advisor to the school’s art club, ran the concession stands for several years for football and basketball games and spent many summers teaching art to the children of migrant farm workers at Bickel Elementary School. George and Joan’s son Chris was born in August of 1965, and George was an active parent in Boy Scouts, Awana, DeMolay and years of baseball and basketball. From the 1960’s to the 1980’s he spent many evenings and weekends at the high school firing student pottery projects in the kiln, served as a church deacon, made nightly phone calls to his mother, visited his parents at their home in Hansen at least twice a week and traveled with his family around the western United States in a Datsun pickup truck equipped with a TeePee camper. The family lived from 1964 on in a house just a few blocks from the high school. George added onto the home in 1977, nearly doubling its size. Joan began teaching again in 1975 at Morningside School, where she would work for 26 years, and in 1983 George and Joan began legal guardianship of their two grandsons, Geoffrey and Steven Gable, due to their daughter’s extended illness, and ended up raising the two from infancy through adulthood. In George’s later years he served as a church elder, including many terms as the board chairman and 20 years as the church treasurer. He enjoyed a yearly camping trip with Joan’s relatives to locations like Wallowa Lake, Redfish Lake and Yellowstone National Park and in 2002 purchased a large family camping trailer for that purpose. He also enjoyed reunions, including the Twin Falls High School Over 50’s annual event, and spending time at the family cabin on the Snake River near Thousand Springs. George and Joan were married for 60 years until she passed away in 2019. Throughout his life, George was known as a good and polite man of decorum who was a devout Christian and always strove to do the right thing. He was known as a great teacher to his students, a great friend to many and someone with a ready sense of humor who always enjoyed good stories and conversation, raising schnauzers and cooking holiday turkeys. He was preceded in death by his parents, three brothers, two sisters, his wife, his daughter and one grandson. He is survived by his sister Marilynn Friling (Bjorn) and his son Christopher (Deborah) of Boise, grandson Steven of Twin Falls, and grandson Cruz, granddaughter Claire (James Callahan) and great-granddaughter Nia, all of Boise. A visitation will be held on Thursday October 8, 2020 from 5-7 PM at Parke's Magic Valley Funeral Home, 2551 Kimberly Road in Twin Falls. Funeral services will be held on Friday October 9, 2020 at 2 PM at Parke's Magic Valley Funeral Home, burial will follow at Sunset Memorial Park Those wishing to or needing to view the funeral service may do at www.zoom.com Meeting ID 87381694012. No password, if so 12345. In addition, those wishing to share memories and condolences may do so on George's memorial page at www.magicvalleyfuneralhome.com Go to this link to view the funeral service of George Walton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH74JMCeFBw