Obituary: Rene R. Whitney
Author: Chris Holt, Funeral Director Anderson Stevenson Wilke Funeral Home
Rene R. Whitney Chris Holt, Funeral Director Anderson Stevenson Wilke Funeral Home Rene Ricard Whitney, on January 31, 2023, at 3:30 a.m., passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by his loved ones. Rene was 90 years old.
Rene was born March 23, 1932, at home in the very small town of Pittsfield, Vermont, to father, Clifford Whitney, and mother, Maricia Josephine Longley. Dad was born during the great depression, he often shared stories of surviving on dandelion soup while a lot of the county was very hungry.
Dad worked many jobs throughout his life. His sister, Patricia, tells a story of him working as a paper boy at a very young age in Vermont in order to pay for Patricia’s birth. He worked in construction, building a lot of roads in Montana and neighboring states, as a gandy dancer for the railroad, he worked at some of the farms and ranches around town, as a logger in the woods and for many years on the Libby dam project. He ended his career as a night foreman at the local sawmill. He enjoyed beating the production of the day shift, and in all of his twenty years at the sawmill, he never slept more than five hours a night and raised hell almost every weekend.
Dad and Cal spent most Sundays together, dad called it “father and son day”. The days were spent drinking beer and shooting pool, both of which dad thoroughly enjoyed.
Dad had a gift of fixing anything, cars, trucks, motorcycles, or tractors. Dad always had a way to make them run. He was still changing motors and transmissions well into his eighties, stuff that most men half his age find challenging. He could operate any piece of equipment from scrapers to skidders and drive anything with two to eighteen wheels.
When dad retired, he and his partner, Debbie, went to Arizona and bought a small place, fixed it up and sold it and bought another. He continued doing so until he found the place he was happy with and started working on it; building rooms and huge covered porches, all by himself.
Dad continued to ride motorcycles well into his eighties and believed some of his secrets to longevity were simple; he did not worry, and, at times, it drove Cal nuts. If they were riding together, pulling a trailer, often a far bigger load than it should be, Cal would be worried sick and dad would say, “Don’t look back, if it’s there when we get there, then good! And if not, guess we will just go back and look for it.”
Some of the things dad survived throughout his life amount to nothing less than one tired guardian angel. He was shot in the stomach at seventeen. Later in life, he was struck by lightning which caused him to act strangely for a few weeks; he eventually came around. A mobile home furnace that dad was working on blew up, thankfully blowing him out of the door as the explosion blew off the walls, causing the roof to collapse.
Dad’s favorite saying reflects how he looked at life, “Never going to be another bad day”. He will be loved and missed by many.
He is survived by his sister, Patricia Westerfuld, his partner for the past twenty-three years, Debbie Whitney; his children, Cal (Cheri), Robin (Lauri), Nathan (Patricia) La Rena Whitney-Krieg (Ben), Natalie Alexander; nine grandchildren, Richard and Shawn Whitney, Misty Reeves, Kaylene Whitney and Abigail, Jael, Arin Whitney and Leland and Nicholas Alexander; four great-grandchildren, Korlyn, Domonic, Baylie, Jaxson - All he so loved.
Visitation will be held from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, February 10th at Stevenson Wilke Funeral Home, 212 Broadway in Townsend. A funeral service will be held at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, February 11th at the funeral home. Burial will follow the service at Deep Creek Cemetery. The family requests that donations be made to an animal shelter of your choice for he had a love for dogs. Please visit https://www.aswfuneralhome.com to offer a condolence to the family or to share a memory of Rene.
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