PERRY WILSON obituary

BOISE, Idaho Perry Kenneth Wilson, 83, died at SunBridge Health System in Boise, Idaho, on Sunday, July 9, 2006

A service will be held at Summers Funeral Home in Boise at 2 p. m. Friday, followed by burial at the Idaho State Veteran's Cemetery in Boise. Perry, who also went by P.K. or Ken, was born on April 13, 1923, in Sun Prairie to Perry A. Wilson and Virginia Watson. His early years on the ranch in Sun Prairie began his lifelong love of horses and the cowboy lifestyle. P.K. graduated from Malta High School in 1942, and shortly after enlisted in the Navy. During his basic training at Farragut, Idaho, he met and married his first wife, Gayle Cleveland. During World War II, P.K. served on several ships, including the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga, and late in the war was stationed on the island of Okinawa, where he served as a yeoman for the commanding admiral.

After the war, P.K. and Gayle lived in Malta and Havre for a few years, before moving to north Idaho in the late '40s, finally settling in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. P.K. worked in the Lucky Friday mine near Wallace, and later as a backhoe operator for the Idaho Water Company in Coeur d'Alene. It was during this time that P.K. began his rodeo career. Throughout the 1950s and early '60s P.K., Gayle and son, Steve, who was born in 1952, traveled to weekend rodeos all over the Northwest where P.K. competed as a calf roper. In mid '60s to mid '70s, P.K. worked as a warehouse foreman for the Port of Seattle. In the mid '70s, he went into the real estate business, specializing in the sale of farms and ranches. He retired in the early '90s in Port Orchard, Wash., where he lived until 2002, when he moved to Boise and became a resident of the Idaho State Veterans Home.

Survivors include his son, Steve Wilson of Nampa, Idaho; sister, Dorothy Depner of Redmond, Wash.; brother, Tom Wilson of Havre; granddaughter, Kimberly Wilson Kipping of Nampa, Idaho; grandson, Christopher Wilson of Nampa; two great-grandchildren; and several nieces and nephews.