Bert Glen Speers

Our loving father, grandfather, great grandfather, fisherman, and friend passed peacefully into the arms of his savior just at sunset Saturday evening.

Bert Glen Speers was born at the family homestead in White Owl, South Dakota. He was the oldest son of six boys born to Glen Elmer Speers and Edna Marie Harris Speers. He lived a lifetime full of adventures, and some were downright epic! If it swims he‘s caught it, if it runs he’s shot it, or trapped it, or chopped it! He even answered the phone, “Fish On!“

When he was about 12, the young one room school house “teacher” handed him an axe and sent him to get the rattle snake under the floorboards. He cornered it, crawling between the 2 x 12s, on a slope, in the dark, and came out with a dead chopped snake!

After the eighth grade he started work at a nearby ranch as full time cowboy and he rode in the last big cattle drive out of South Dakota. He became friends with the son of chief Crazy Horse. He recalled being paid 50 silver dollars and purchased a 32 lever action rifle with two notches from the Texas range wars, 1 pair Levi’s, 2 shirts, and a brick of 22 shells.

Bert proudly served active duty, 1954 thru 1958 in the Navy, on the USS Prime, a mine sweeper, during the Korean War. Then was in the Reserves for 2 years. He met and married his wife, Joanne, of 66 years while stationed in Tacoma. He settled here in the NW and his was the first wooden drift boat on the Puyallup and Nisqually rivers. In later years he followed his dream of a 10 day drift on the Yellowstone! 

Bert worked over 40 years for Buffelen Woodworking Co in Tacoma, WA.

He was an avid collector, not only of fish, but rocks, and arrowheads, and petrified shark teeth, marbles and coins and was an active member of the Tacoma Stamp club for many years.

Like his father he loved to sing the old hymns, and like his mother he loved to garden. He also planted multiple fruit trees and even successfully spliced a South Dakota plum with a local variety. When apples were ripe you could always find him peeling and slicing them for mom’s apple crisp. And if the blackberries were ripe he would pick gallons for wild blackberry jelly.

The door was always open to family and friends and was “ the” place to be every Friday and Saturday night for a sturgeon or salmon fry and Pinochle or cribbage game. He had special nick names for family and friends and even mosquitos were the, M ‐boys!

Bert is survived by 3 brothers: Lowell, Stanley (Lupe), and Patrick, 3 children: Bert Jr. (Marlene), Debbie Gordon, Dean (Kelly), and daughter in law Brenda Martin (Terry). Grandchildren: Jason, Jeremy, Philip, Shoshannah (Rob), Josiah (Bethany), Theodore (Misty), Ashley (Tyler), Cody, Samantha, and Nate. He also has 11 great grandchildren across the US and Canada and many loving nieces and nephews and cousins.

He is preceded by his parents, his wife Joanne last October, his son John L, his grandson Robert, and two brothers Glen, and Russell.

Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Bert Glen Speers, please visit our floral store.