Christena T. O'Brien
Eau Claire Leader-Telegram Staff

It’s only fitting that Garth Ryder’s last ride will be on the town of Pleasant Valley’s new fire engine.

Ryder spent close to 50 years serving Township Fire Department as a firefighter, deputy chief and bookkeeper.
He also held various posts on the department’s board of directors, which he joined in 1965.

“Garth was Mr. Township Fire,” said Mark Behlke, a battalion chief for the department, which serves the towns of Brunswick, Pleasant Valley, Seymour, Union, Washington and part of Clear Creek.

Until recently, Ryder kept a fire coat and helmet in his truck, said Lynda Womack, his daughter.
He also never went anywhere — even out in his yard — without his pager.

Ryder also served as town chairman for 36 years. He died suddenly Monday at Sacred Heart Hospital
of a massive heart attack. He was 79.

“He put people in his community before himself,” Womack said. “He loved Pleasant Valley, and
he never wanted to leave.

“He truly was an amazing man. I’m so proud he happened to be my dad.”

Following his funeral Saturday, Ryder will be transported from Grace Lutheran Church to Lakeview Cemetery by the new engine, No. 41.

“It’s a new truck, and he always wanted to ride in it, but he never did,” said Bonnie Vik, the department’s full-time dispatcher.

The department’s other two newest trucks — a tanker from Seymour and a brush buggy from Brunswick — also will escort Ryder to his final resting place, she said.

Ryder was a native of Pleasant Valley for most of his life — all but two years he spent at the University of Minnesota.

He returned home in 1947 to run the Cleghorn Mercantile Co., the store operated by his parents, Harry and Irene Ryder, after his father died, he said in a 2001 interview.

He married his high school sweetheart, Betty Lou Johnson, in 1948, and they operated the store for 20 years. He then took a job at Northwest Hardfacing Co., where he worked from 1969 to 1989.