Kenneth Millen Moore Jr.

Kenneth Millen Moore Jr. went to meet his Lord and Savior on Jan. 14.

Born to Kenneth Millen Moore and Emily Francis Morrison Moore, both previously of Gonzales, he was born in Houston, Texas and lived there until he joined the US Navy in 1960. He met and married Sandra Ellen Yocum while stationed at the naval air base in Alameda, California. He spent the last two years of his enlistment at Quonset Point, Rhode Island and McMurdo Sound, Antarctica (then referred to as “Operation Deep Freeze”).

While on “The Ice” a ham radio operator was able to contact him with the news that he had become a daddy. His first son had just been born on Christmas Eve. Was that “cool” or what?!

After the Navy came college and three more sons. He received a BS in Range Management and Wildlife Biology from Texas Tech University and worked as a range conservationist for the BLM until he got so homesick for Texas that he transferred to the Department of Defense and worked as an environmental biologist at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio for 13 years. He received an Award of Merit from the Texas Historical Commission for his contribution to the preservation of some of the beautiful historic homes on the post.

He came home one day and announced he had just taken early retirement and that we were moving to Gonzales, where he had always wanted to live anyway. He eventually worked for Kitchen Pride Mushroom Farm and from then on, every time he went into any grocery store anywhere he headed straight to the produce department to see if they were smart enough to carry the only brand of mushrooms worth having and to be sure they had only fresh ones on the shelf. If they didn’t, someone was sure to hear about it and then he had to go looking for his wife who was trying to pretend she was looking for Cheerios in a faraway aisle!

He was preceded in death by his parents and is survived by his wife Sandy, his sons of which he was so proud: Dr. Kenneth Page Moore (Patty), John Russell Moore (Carla), William Patrick Moore (Rosa) and Matthew Scott Moore (Rebecca); grandchildren: Nathaniel, Benjamin, Hannah, Samuel, Sarah, Evan, Emily, Jonathan and Noah; great-grandchildren: Lila, Anastasia, Keysi Faith, Christopher and Joanna. Most of all he loved God, his family, his country and the Gonzales Breakfast Lions Club.

In lieu of a public memorial service his family chooses to wait for the wild flowers in the spring to bloom on the Texas land that he loved so much to commemorate him in a way we believe would please him. Arrangements under the care and direction of Seydler-Hill Funeral Home, Gonzales.