Gilbert "Gil" A. Schumaker

Gilbert (Gil) Schumaker died on February 12, 2021, at The Bridge of Valley View in Boise, Idaho. Gilbert was born on August 30, 1928, the son of Fred and June Schumaker. His parents farmed in Cass Township, Hamilton County, Iowa. Gilbert’s schooling for grades one through eight was at a one-room school. After doing morning chores, Gilbert would be off to school, walking nearly one mile with his twin brother Wilbur and his sister Wilda, each carrying a lunch bucket. Gilbert graduated from Lincoln High School in Webster City, Iowa, and received his Bachelor of Science degree from Iowa State University majoring in Agronomy with a minor in Soil Science. While attending ISU, friends began calling Gilbert “Gil,” and that was a name that even followed him to Idaho.

Following college, Gil began work at the Iowa State University Soil Physics lab, and later he was employed by USDA Agricultural Research Service as a Soil Scientist working in Montana and Colorado. In 1966, Gil began a tour in Uganda, Africa, as a part of a team working on the Major Cereals Project under the USAID agency. After a tour of four years, Gil returned to the United States to pursue his career at the Northwest Watershed Research Center in Boise, Idaho, as a Soil Scientist.

After retirement, Gil remained in Boise pursuing two of his hobbies ~ photography and travel.

Gil was a member of the Red Rock Christian Church and leaves behind many dear friends.

Those preceding Gil’s death are his parents Fred and June and his sister Wilda. His surviving family members include brother Wilbur, nieces Rita Schmidt and Karen Conley, and nephews Russell and John Teig, and Ron Schumaker; additional family include their children and grand children.

Gratitude is expressed for the support given by his caregivers at The Bridge at Valley View and the Lighthouse Hospice. Gil’s family will hold a Memorial at a later date in Iowa.

Memorials can be designated for The Red Rock Christian Church camp program.

An online memorial service will be held at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, February 26, 2021. The link for the livestream can be found below the video tribute that follows the poem:

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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