Finley's Rigging Shack
Special logger, Lonnie Williams
Lonnie Williams of the State of Idaho. Lonnie and I were friends yet without warning he died on July 9 of 01. A devasting surprise. A massive heart attack was the cause of death I think. When I heard about it I couldn’t believe it .
Just the visit before that he and I were riding along with our friend Pastor Don Brown and I said to Lonnie: “Lonnie how are you feeling? What is the state of your health?” He answered, “You know that I don’t like to talk about my health, or the lack of it. It seems when we get older we are thrown in with a bunch of folks who talk about nothing but their last operation, their general state of sickness or the hurts and sickness of their family members or friends. I don’t want to be a part of this circle of doom and gloom. You know I had an operation for Prostate Cancer about 3 years ago. That turned out okay. There are a few little things wrong but generally I am in excellent health.”
Within a few weeks of this statement he caught us all by surprise and died of a massive heart attack. He had this heart attack in Post Falls during the dinner hour and was taken to the Hospital in Coeur D’Alene and from there to Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane.
In April of 1987 I was staying at a Motel in Post Falls. I had a heart attack on a Friday afternoon and was taken to the hospital in Coeur D’Alene and it was there the doctor determined that I had what I had. They sent for a Helicopter and flew me to Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane. That night I had an Angioplasty. Next morning I called Lonnie and his wife Helene. They lived in Moscow, Idaho at that time. They jumped into their car and drove to Spokane. Once at Spokane they volunteered to take over many details for me. They checked me out of the Motel and they got my car and put it in a storage garage. They organized a Prayer Chain for me and their eldest son, Bruce who lived in Spokane, came to the Hospital to visit me. 
That was Lonnie. He’d drop everything in order to help others. He’d help anyone who needed it. Yet when almost the same thing happened to him, in the same town I was in there was no way for me to help him or his family. No way--but pray. That I believed in and was willing to do---pray every day. 
Hundreds of people were praying for Lonnie and his family and yet the Lord took him home. 
They had a family only private ceremony at the cemetery and a week after held a memorial service for Lonnie at Moscow. I had planned on being at that memorial service and had made Motel Reservations. The day before I was to leave home I was visited by a bug, a violent bug, and couldn’t leave the homestead.
That was the end of the time on earth for Lonnie Williams. I believe it is true that the most important decision of our life is to choose where we are going to spend Eternal Life. I’m intending to go to Heaven and if I get there and Lonnie isn’t there I’ll know there is a better place. 

Lonnie Williams the logger!
Like many of us Lonnie was raised in tough times. He worked at odd jobs and when a young man declared his belief in God and then attended a Bible College. He said that after some months at that particular school he returned to the woods where he knew many loggers who practiced the Christian Relationship better than some of the instructors in the Bible school. Due to the time spent in the Bible College, and other training, he became a minister of the word of God. 
He also joined the Military and when the war was over he was a Cadet in the U.S. Army Air Force. I believe that it was after that he attended the University of Idaho Forestry College in Moscow, Idaho and graduated in 1950.

Lonnie the college professor
He was a professor of forest economics and taught one year at U of I and 9 years at Washington State University at Pullman, Wash. 
During the years previous to going to U of I and during the years he attended college he worked as a Logger and as a Forester. 
Helene Elijah and Lonnie became man and wife in June of 1955. Four children were the result of this marriage: Bruce Williams of Spokane, Wash., Nalini Harrold of Post Falls, DeAnn Wiesner of Los Vegas and Rodney Williams of Martinez, Calif. If any children ever had a more loving father and mother than Lonnie and Helene Williams I have yet to meet them.

Lonnie Williams the Minister
It has been my privilege, and honor, to know and become friendly with many Ministers. I am convinced that Preachers (Ministers) are called by God to serve Him by loving and taking care of His people. They all have a Spirit of Love and their first thought is of other people and not of themselves. The ministers that I know all fit that description. In 1982 a Helicopter crashed in S.E. Alaska. Five of the loggers riding in that Helicopter were killed. The widows of two of these men called and asked Allan Merrill if he would officiate at the funerals of their husbands. Allan Merrill, a long time logger and a bull buck at Long Island Development in S.E. Alaska, was on the verge of graduating from a “Preachers School” in Salem, Ore. I heard about this accident and offered to take Allan to Idaho and Montana in our Motor Home and to help him in any way I could. 
It was there that I noticed the deep feeling of concern for hurting people that I believe all good preachers possess. Allan was very helpful to families and friends of the families. I had the pleasure of traveling and working with him for about a week and admired him even more at the end of that trip than at the beginning. 
That same spirit was exhibited by Lonnie Williams many times when I was with him. For years he served as Minister at a Church in Juliaetta and Southwick, Idaho. Two small churches and he was pastor of both of them at the same time. Another time he served as Pastor of a church in Plummer.
As he was doing this work for the Lord he was holding down another job or two in order to keep his family happy and well fed. He never left the woods and a friend said of him, “Lonnie knew the forest was a place where he could marvel at God’s handiwork.” 

Lonnie Williams the educator
I first met Lonnie Williams shortly after we were forming the Christian Loggers Association and publishing Christian Loggers Magazine. As a result of our Association he became our ‘Eastern Rep.” of CLA and was the main man in starting CLA Chapters in Idaho and Montana. Yet our first meeting almost became our last.
Lonnie had a dream that he was pursuing.. That was forming small contract logging companies by partnering with graduate Foresters who were also loggers. When he explained this to me my reaction was, “Lonnie I don’t believe it will ever work but I’m willing to help you.” He was immediately on the defensive, “Why won’t it work?” I said, “Because you are combining two professions in one man and I don’t believe there many who can be good foresters and good loggers at the same time.”
We went out on a job of his and my first reaction appeared to be correct. Lonnie was convinced of that also when we left the job. As we were driving from North Idaho back to Moscow we got into a discussion of log scaling methods. Again we found we were on opposite sides of the fence and a forceful augment started and grew. I was about to ask him to stop and let me out and I’m sure if I’d of asked he would have obliged. Before our argument got too heated and before either of us had said something that would have prevented us becoming friends Lonnie said: “I don’t think you are right about the business of Scaling Logs but we can’t let that stop a good friendship. You are a Brother in Christ and that is the most important thing.”
Thus he was educating me in a manner I deeply appreciate.

Lonnie Williams, host
I had formed the habit of never staying at anyone’s house during my hard traveling years. I was driving 50,000 miles a year and staying away from home a third of the time. The only way I could do my work and get the needed rest was to get a Motel. A place where I could work up my notes each evening and get a good night of sleep. 
I had not figured on the gift of Hospitality possessed by Lonnie and Helene. I was going to stay in their spare room and to have breakfast with them the next morning. This proved to be a better program for me than for them. They were the most genuine of people and liked having visitors at their home in Moscow. One night I was there when Helene looked out the window at a car coming into their driveway. She delightedly said, “Oh good, here comes George and Liz and they brought their children.” Before they were in the house she had a supply of toys, coloring books and other things for the kids all spread out on the tables and floor. She spent that entire evening entertaining those children---and loved it. Lonnie was just as delighted as his wife.
I’m in a hard spot here and I just realized it---between a rock and a hard place. I started out trying to introduce to the many faceted Lonnie Williams and I’m not doing it well. To cover the life of this simple, yet complicated, man of the woods and church would take a complete book and if I don’t go farther you won’t have the central theme of a man like Lonnie---- of Lonnie himself.

Honest Lonnie Williams
Referring to a booklet titled ‘ IN LOVING MEMORY OF E.L. “LONNIE” WILLIAMS. December 17, 1925---July 9, 2001’, I quote: “Lonnie and Helene met in Spokane and were married in 1955. They had four children and five grandchildren. Lonnie taught his family by example----hard work and honesty were important to him and these are qualities he sought to instill in his children and his children’s children. He also enjoyed introducing his family to his passion-----the woods.” 
In his career he was a teacher; a business man and for 10 years held a job of helping different businesses start up operations in Latah County--his county. He held this job, and did it well, for 10 years. From then on he was a Forestry Consultant. That is he would represent the land owner who wanted to harvest timber from his, or her, land. He’d advise as to the right way to take out some trees that would benefit the remaining trees and show a profit to the land owner. In this capacity he’d hire the logging operators to do the logging under his supervision. He would fairly, and honestly, represent the land owner and the logging operator. 
His whole life style was of the type that allowed him to blow the horn of a friend at the slightest provocation but would never let him toot his own. This whole attitude of self depreciation and humility carried over into his business and his ministering. He’d never brag at all about his preaching or teaching ability yet there stood the record that many people said never expressed adequately his great abilities and his true worth. 
His success in the ways of business was always blamed onto someone else. He had a College Professor friend and teacher he called ‘Doc’. Doc told him many years ago that if he would buy pieces of timber land it would multiply in value during his lifetime. Lonnie was able to acquire some timbered acres and they multiplied in value just as Doc predicted. Several years ago Lonnie and I were talking about how fortunate we were to live thru the times we had and how well things had turned out.
“Only in America”, he said, “only in America could a couple of dumb guys like us come out on top. Further than that I think that we, you and I, have lived during the best years this country has ever enjoyed.” I said a quick, ‘Amen’ to that because I’ve long believed the same thing. I believe we have lived during the best 70 or 80 years in the History of this world. 
Lonnie was a real patriot. He believed it was a privilege to offer to serve his country in WWII. Again I was in agreement and our pasts were remarkably alike except he handled his problems better than I did mine. This was, and is, a great country.
Almost 2 months to the day after Lonnie’s passing was when the age of terror arrived in the United States. That was when the three passenger carrying Jet airplanes became bombs and struck in New York and Washington D.C. 
I know that Lonnie would have been very proud of the reaction of our President and our people. Lonnie was a very patriotic American who believed in our God and our Country.
Lonnie was also a writer and did a terrific job of writing letters to the local newspapers. He believed in our God and our Country and defended it with well chosen words. Lonnie wrote, and took pictures, for Loggers World Magazine and for Christian Loggers Magazine. 
As I look back over what I’ve written about my brother and my friend I find it is woefully inadequate and sorrowfully incomplete. He deserves much more credit than I’ve give him.
I am sure that if our positions had been reversed he would have done a much better job than I have done. So be it.

Good bye Lonnie. 
I’ll be with you one of these days.