HOWARD V WHITLEY

LAMAR-Services will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Konantz Warden Funeral Home for Howard V. Whitley, 96, Lamar, who died Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015, at Truman Healthcare.

Visitation will be held prior to the service, beginning at 1 p.m.

The obituary may be viewed and condolences sent online at www.konantzwarden.com.

Mr. Whitley was born June 13, 1919, near Stockton. He grew up on the farm and stayed home and worked the farm for two years after graduating from high school in 1938. He worked at G&H Tool Co. in Wichita, Kan., from 1941 to 1943, building aircraft parts and tools to build aircraft parts. In 1943 he entered the Army Air Corps, spending 33 months in aircraft maintenance and flight engineering. When he was discharged from the service he farmed about a year, then opened a general garage and welding shop, which he owned and operated until 1953.

Mr. Whitley went to work for Lawn Boy Mfg. Co. in Lamar in 1953, working in the engineering department. He was in charge of the model shop for five years, where he built experimental model engines and lawn mowers from raw castings. He worked for Lawn Boy until 1963, when he left Lamar and went to work for Fairchild in Joplin as a design engineer. He worked there until Feb. 15, 1964, when he was offered a better job opportunity at Citation Mfg. Co., in Siloam Springs, Ark. While there he helped design and bring to production the ROBO automatic car wash. In 1967 he went to work for Thorpes, where he worked until retiring.