Eldon Charles Palmer was born October 10, 1931. He served in the
Korean War aboard a
ship named the USS Brimerton. He became a police
officer and moved his way up and ran for Ada County Sheriff. He won.
Grandpa started the Idaho Escort Service. He escorted people in many
different situations. Funeral processions to Presidents. He started the first
ambulance service in Idaho as well. They started off with hurses for
ambulances. They would charge people a flat fee of $30 for
transporting in their ambulance. He also started Rocky Mountain Air while he was
a police officer. Grandpa and his family transported many things
including dead bodies and prisoners, even dirt.
Grandpa always had a way of getting what he wanted done done the way he
wanted it done. Whatever he says goes. You just didn't argue
with him. My uncle Mike is the same way today. One time when
Grandpa went to
pick up a prisoner to transport him
by plane, the officers that brought him to the airport said there was no way
they were going to transport him by plane that day. He was being very
uncooperative. My Grandpa took him to the side, whispered something in
his ear. The prisoner then quietly boarded the airplane, and was
transported safely. No one knows what exactly it was he said, but like
many times before, it worked. What he says goes.
When I was about five-years-old, Grandpa dug a pond on his property for
irrigation. He owned twenty acres in eagle at the time. I spent
many many hours in that pond. This raft was built by a neighbor kid
shortly after the pond was dug. It remained there, still floating,
long after my grandparents sold the property the pond was on. Grandpa
also stocked the pond with trout every year. We used to have scouting
trips out to Grandpas to go fishing. The picture at the right shows
one of the many fish I caught in Grandpa's pond.
Grandpa and I had something that the rest of the
grandkids didn't. I was with him every
chance I could. I spent probably half of my summers during elementary
school at his house. It didn't matter what he was doing, he would
always take me a long. He even let me drive a lot of the time.
Once, after dropping off Grandma Jo (grandpas mother) at home in Nampa, he
let me drive all the way home because he was tired and doing the head bob
while driving. It was about 11PM. I was ten years old, driving
down the freeway at about 45 MPH while sitting on a phone book.
Anything my parents wouldn't let me do, I could count on Grandpa to not only
let me do it, but show me how.
On January 15, 2002, Grandpa and Grandma were at our house for dinner. After dinner we were sitting around watching TV. What happened is hard to explain, you really had to know him to understand this. He was very active in the LDS Church. We all knew he knew the church was true, but he never told us that. The night of the 15th, he started talking to us, he bore his testimony, and told us a lot of things we had never heard from him before. It seemed very weird that he would be saying the things that he did, but we thought it was great. We realized the next day that it was almost as if he knew that was his last night on earth. He died in his dream house he had recently built with his wife of fifty years, Vella Palmer, on February 16, 2002. He had had two heart attacks before, one recently, the other a few years before while flying an airplane.
He is loved and missed greatly by all who knew him...
Ty Palmer