Roger Walters Pond died suddenly May 29th, 2011. He was born February 9, 1944 to Roberta and Paul Pond of St. Paris, Ohio. One of seven children, Roger was raised on a dairy farm. He and his brothers had hair-raising stories of tractors (and their drivers) running amok and of early morning squirrel hunts. Roger graduated from A.B. Graham High School in 1962 and got his B.S. in Agriculture Education in 1966 and M.S. in Wildlife Management from The Ohio State University. He and Connie Carter, also from St. Paris, were married in 1966.
Roger tried one year of teaching vo-ag and decided 4-H Extension was a better fit for him. Roger was a 4-H agent in Ohio for three years before moving his young family including daughter Laura Lee in 1972 to Goldendale, WA, where son Russell Carter Pond was born. Roger was the Klickitat County 4-H Extension and then Agriculture Extension Agent from 1972-1985.
Coming from a long line of storytellers, writing a weekly rural humor column seemed a natural progression. In addition to being a photojournalist for Dow Chemical in the late 80s, Roger wrote his "Back Forty” column until his retirement in 2010. The column was syndicated to 50 papers nationwide at one point, and the stories were compiled into four books:
It’s Hard to Look Cool When Your Car’s Full of Sheep, Things That Go Baa in the Night, Our Dog Was a Redneck But We Got Him Fixed, and Take The Kids Fishing, They’re Better Than Worms. Roger truly loved the outdoors: hunting, fishing in the Columbia, John Day and Klickitat Rivers, mushroom hunting, and huckleberry and blackberry picking.
Roger and Connie had many great trips to the beach and around the U.S. and Canada, fishing, selling books, and seeing the countryside.
A celebration of Roger’s life will be held in Ohio on July 17th at the upper shelter at Ohio Caverns at 1 pm.
Click here to read the full obiltuary in the Goldendale Sentinel