In Loving Memory of

Theodore "Ted" Kereluke

CELEBRATION OF LIFE

Friday, September 27, 2019

11:00 a.m.

Wadena Community Legion Hall

Wadena, SK

Ted was born at home on a farm at Tornea, SK, on September 20, 1921, to Jacob Kereluke and Annie (Achtemichuk). When he was a baby they moved south of where the new Viterra Terminal was built just last year; which is why Ted drove daily to see the construction progress. He was the fifth child in a family of two girls and five boys. Growing up, the brothers shared a bunkhouse with several cousins who came from, what is now, the Ukraine to start out in the early years.

Ted and Barb enjoyed children; many nieces and nephews would stay with them and neighbours who were always there such as Scott Headington and Kelsey, Kyall and Devin Glennie are counted as family.

Ted worked on the farm until he joined the army and was overseas from 1942 to 1946. He didn't talk about his war experience and lived the rest of his life professing nonviolence and always treating good folk without prejudice. He supported the Wheat Pool, Wadena Co-op, Credit Unions, CCF and NDP as the cooperative means to develop community, economy and country.

Besides actively farming with his brothers and Donnie Linde into his 80's or 90's, Ted was a skilled house builder of two homes in Wadena, a fine woodworker and a restorer of antique tractors and Volkswagon Beetles. He built seven grandfather clocks, all still ticking, a roll top desk and 32 perfectly identical candlestick tables, for gifts to friends and relatives.

Ted said he married Barb because she was a good cook and she got to spoil Ted and their visitors for all their years in Wadena. Barb's suppers in the field were the highlight of the harvest season. Ted cooked a great steak, liked to go for Chinese food, enjoyed his pie, but no cream, leftovers or lutefisk.

Ted and Barb camped or traveled all over Canada, the USA, England, Wales and Europe, China and New Zealand, Cuba and Mexico, with best friends Matt and Margaret Haag, Phil and Nola Norberg and Reg and Sheila Glennie, always visiting relatives and friends along the way.

Ted was persistent, independent and stubborn, but very careful about everything he did. When he was advised to give up driving a year ago, he took one more spin around the block with Barb, just to prove he could, before his license expired.  We think Ted drove from age 7-97 accident free (almost).

Losing his independence and dignity was Ted's hardest life task in the last year.  However, he continued, sometimes impatiently, luckily with wife Barb just down the hall at Pleasant View Care Home and slipped away quietly when his good, long life was over on September 22, 2019.

Ted is survived by his wife of 67 years, Barbara (nee Zimmer) as well as many nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. His siblings Nicholas, Margaret (John Klewchuk), Thomas, Pauline (Alexander McCombe), John (Olive Wyborn) and Alexander are all deceased, as well as Barb's thirteen siblings, except Tillie.