Richard Benjamin Henrickson 1930 - 2025

Richard Benjamin Henrickson, the last surviving of 13 siblings, passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by loved ones, on Tuesday, October 28, 2025. He was 95 years old.

Born December 11, 1930, near Wasau, Nebraska, the twelfth child of Selma Enquist and Alfred Henrickson, Richard was raised knowing the joys of the hard work of farm life, even riding to school on horseback. He also learned the hardships of 1930s farming in the U.S. heartland; when he was ten, the family headed west to join his oldest sister in Oregon.

Always a man about family, he found his way back to Nebraska to help out on his older brother Fred’s farm. After graduating early from Dallas High School, he got a job at the lumber mill in Sweet Home, where he met and fell in love with who would become his lifelong sweetheart, Luella May Nothiger.

He first enlisted in the Navy Reserve as a gunner on a destroyer, then joined the Air Force to serve in the Korean War, where he was stationed in Alaska and then at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane. In 1952, he was granted leave and the two were wed. After he finished his service, they moved to Corvallis, where he graduated from Oregon State University and then attained a master’s from Western Oregon University-- all while raising three boys!

The young family moved around the Valley pulling “The Long, Long Trailer” (Desi and Lucy movie from that period) before buying a ranch-style home in Beaverton. Richard put his degree to use, teaching in Tualatin and then Tigard, before beginning his own construction company and training his three sons in the trade.

In later years, the couple enjoyed a rural life on an acreage with a three-story house between Yamhill and Gaston before living with their daughter, Linda, in McMinnville, Oregon, until Luella’s passing in 2019, after which Richard lived with their son, Glen. They are survived by their four children, Glen and wife, Elena; Dan and wife, Rita Rex; and Linda and husband, Gary; 15 grandchildren; and 23 great-grandchildren.

Funeral service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Nov 15, 2025, with a viewing at 9:30 a.m., at the McMinnville Stake Meetinghouse of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1645 N.W. Baker Creek Rd. McMinnville, OR 97128.

Interment is at 3 p.m. in Gilliland Cemetery, Sweet Home, Oregon, which overlooks the lumber mill pond.

Richard and Luella served the Lord some 50 years as faithful members of the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in various capacities with great devotion and charity.