John Eddie Ross

JOHN EDDIE ROSS Memorial services for John Eddie Ross will be held on Memorial Day 2010 in Silverton, Colo. at the American Legion Post #14. John Eddie Ross was born February 18, 1937 to Henry Alvis Ross and Myrtle Jeanette (Smith) Ross in the mining camp of Pinos Altos, Chihuahua, Mexico. He passed away at Southwest Memorial Hospital on Friday, September 11, 2009 at the age of 72. In the absence of a doctor, John was delivered by a Bruja or Curandera which may partly explain his checkered life. He lived there the first three years of his life as his father was employed as a constructions boss for the mill and smelter. The family then moved to Lake Maricaibo, Venezuela for two years where Mr. Ross was employed in building an off-shore pumping facility for Socony-Vacuum. The family returned to their native Oklahoma where John attended grade school at Lovelady, Rocky Chapel and Ahloso schools. He attended two years of high school at Stonewall and left precipitously in the first weeks of his junior year to enlist underage in the U.S. Army in Oklahoma City on September 13, 1952. He went through basic training in Fort Polk, La., A.I.T. and artillery school at Fort Sill, Okla., and was sent as replacement to Hq and Hq, battery, 171 field artillery Bn, 45th infantry Div. Korea. He served there until separation on September 15, 1954 when using his G.E.D. he enrolled in Oklahoma University. He graduated mid-term 1957-1958 as a Mechanical Engineer. After a two month career in Aero-Space, he ended up as an underpaid school teacher in the San Luis Valley of Colorado late in the winter of 57-58. Finding that teaching did little to keep body and soul together he worked summers at Empirious Mining Company in Creede and packed and guided on the upper Rio Grande and the Continental Divide where he renewed acquaintance with Silvertonians that he had met on a boyhood trip in 1949. In 1962 he moved to Silverton as a teacher and summer-time mine employee. After two years of teaching, he mined three years and went back to teaching one year, after that he devoted the remainder of his life to the mining industry worldwide. Coming from the bottom up as a Nipper, Trammer, Slusherman, Hoistman, Miner, he later sat for the State Boards and received his Mining Engineers license. He was a resident of Silverton off and on for forty six years until a damaged heart forced his retirement to Lewis, Colo., where in retirement he retained his ties to Silverton by remaining a member of Post #14 American Legion and contributing articles to the Silverton Standard. He is survived by a handful of elderly cousins, mostly in Oklahoma; a few very good friends, and you know who you are; and a host of warm enemies.