Clyde L. Tyler 5/6/32 to 3/25/12

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My father passed away on March 25, 2012 after many years of dealing with complications of high blood pressure, diabetes and renal failure. The stories below are from family and friends, submitted and posted with their permission.

“Do you want to go to an auction sale?” by Trudy MacKenzie-Lofgren

“Ahoy, the Tranquilizer!” by Bob Tyler

“Introduction to the family” by Jack MacKenzie

“Fishing, helping others and game playing” by Tony Nickelsen

“Strong friends and Bridge games” by Sue (& Pete) Thompson

“The Mayor of Baudette” told by Lois Rand

“Getting to know Clyde” by Kathryn Kvinge

“Uncle Clyde” by Kevin Tyler

“Cafe Stugga clean plate club” by Bob Tyler for Uncle Bud

“Hugs and Lutefisk” by Joanne Oyen

“Shared good times and birthdays” by Judi Eliason

I also offered, to my facebook friends, the opportunity to private message me any memory or other message they might want included in this sort of a memorial. This is what I received.

Memories of Clyde, via Facebook

  • David Oyen

    I have a lot of good memories about Clyde but I recently recalled an amusing incident that happened so long ago that I had pretty much forgotten about it.
    This took place in the late ’50s and I guess it would have been when Clyde and Bem were living in Dell Rapids when Clyde worked at the bank there before they moved to Baudette. I was in high school at the time.
    We were having a family get-together at the Baltic farm for the 4th of July. Our 4th of July gatherings were noted for three things – watermelon, mosquitos and lots of fireworks and assorted explosive ordnance. Clyde seemed to love gunpowder as much as I did. We would shoot off all our “official” fireworks for the family after it got dark but Clyde and I spent the better part of the afternoon rigging up Black Cats, cherry bombs, m-80s, etc. into assorted soup can bombs and “artillery”. You could buy the “really good stuff” at the fireworks stands in those days. Our crowning achievement that day was a cannon we made out of a 4 foot long piece of galvanized well pipe. We packed the butt end of it with a huge bundle of large firecrackers, used some newspaper for wadding and loaded it with a rock about the size of a small golf ball.
    We had it aimed toward the south wall of the barn but we were about 40 yards away from the building so we didn’t think much about it. We lit it off and the projectile came flying out of that pipe in a manner that would have made you think that we actually knew what we were doing and hit the small glass window way up high on the barn wall and shattered it. The odds of that happening had to be astronomical. Clyde just looked at me and said something like “Oh My – I think we just killed the barn”.
    We were men about it though and told my dad. I don’t know what my father’s reaction would be if I had acted alone but as it was, dad just said “Well, that was a pretty good shot”. In retrospect, I guess it should have been a good shot seeing as how Clyde had been an artillery officer in the army. I don’t remember for sure if dad ever even replaced that window.
    It was a fun day.

  • admin

    Thanks for sharing Uncle David. Dad did like his fireworks, but he must have toned it down a bit for us kids as we certainly never got to set up something like that!